Find founders before the round is announced: 6,140 ex-Big Tech founders and C-levels for $6, with Apify and Claude Code

Description and use

Using Apify and LinkedIn filters, 5,991 former Big Tech founders and C‑levels were acquired for $5.66, enabling rapid, up‑to‑date outreach for pre‑seed activities.

Problem

Buyers need up-to-date lists of ex‑Big Tech founders and C‑levels before public announcements, but existing data vendors provide late or expensive per‑seat lists.

Outcome

The workflow yielded 5,991 distinct ex‑Big Tech founders and C‑levels for $5.66, with 2,824 meeting the tightest pre‑seed cut.

Workflow

• Define filter JSON with mode, countries, pastEmployerDomains, leftPastEmployerAfterYear, seniority
• Run Apify Actor in "count" mode to get total rows
• Run in "market" mode to inspect free market brief
• Run in "people" mode with profileDetail "row" to download full rows, splitting into two runs to stay within free plan limits
• Optionally run "people" mode with profileDetail "profile" and compact:true to get concise career snapshots
• Export results to CSV or dataset
• Use results for outreach or further segmentation

Evidence

6,140 people.

Source

$5.66

Source

Run 1, maxResults: 4500: 11 minutes 32 seconds, 4,500 rows, 4,500 charged.

Source

Run 2, the same input with "excludeDatasets": ["<dataset id of run 1>"] and maxResults: 2500: 6 minutes 19 seconds, 1,491 rows, 1,454 charged, and a note row saying 149 people were already delivered or repeated and were skipped free.

Source