

Tell HN: Crunchbase searches are public - ig1

I'm assuming most people aren't using crunchbase for confidential searches, but just in-case anyone is, it looks like crunchbase saves every search and assigns it a sequential id which can than be used by anyone to look up that search.<p>For example a search I did:<p>http://www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/companies/506276<p>By incrementing/decrementing the counter on the end you can see the searches other people were doing at the same time.
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shykes
I can picture hundreds of data pack-rats writing the exact same shell script,
hoping they're not too late :)

~~~
ig1
Just realized this only covers company search, although the same issue is
there for people search:

<http://www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/people/1250638>

Interestingly it looks like people search gets hit much more often than
company search which is the opposite of what I would have guessed.

I wonder how long it's going to take for someone to make a high-score table of
the most searched founders and startups ;-)

~~~
nletourneau
here, have the first step:

curl -s <http://www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/people/1250638> | grep
advanced_search_query | cut -d\" -f12

~~~
sharpemt
Likely much faster ways of going through this but to expand on your thought:

#!/bin/bash

    
    
         for (( i=1; $i < 1250646; i++))
    
         do
    
                    curl -s http://www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/people/$i | grep advanced_search_query | cut -d\" -f12 >> people.txt
    
         done

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bretthellman
This is the kind of stuff that made Arrington want to sell to AOL.

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maguay
Looks like they killed it ... all these addresses say "record not found". And,
when you run a new search, you get a more standard address, e.g. search for
IBM, the address is <http://www.crunchbase.com/search?query=IBM>

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kngspook
Appears to be sort of fixed? I think they're expiring them, but I'm not sure
based on what.

As of now, my search (#506811) appears to still work, as do a couple before
it, including 506800. But search numbers 1, 2, 100000, 500000, 505000, 506000
all fail.

(I'm sorry I didn't do a proper binary search.)

Someone can check on my search later and see if it's time based. Or do a bunch
of searches until it expires and see if they're just storing the N number of
last searches.

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tzury
I just wondered about the quality of information at crunch-base, so I searched
for a man who sold his first company "XIV" to IBM for $300M, his second
company "Diligent" for $165M (also to IBM) and just recently have left IBM and
founded a new one named "Axxana".

The only record I have found was about Axxana which secured $9M (seires b).

see at <http://www.crunchbase.com/person/moshe-yanai>

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mbyrne
ergo,

First search! <http://www.crunchbase.com/search/advanced/companies/1>

~~~
nysauhem
Which begs the question, if you search for a tree in an empty forest and
nobody logs it, does it make a sound? (Lumberjack pun not intended)

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staunch
People search for "mark" and "zynga" not "how do I kill my co-founder and get
his equity?"

I didn't see any searches that seemed in any way sensitive. Are there any?

~~~
ig1
I'm guessing people might search for their "stealth" business ideas or
companies might be searching for takeover targets.

Or say a VC posts a link to crunchbase search to their twitter, someone could
look at the previous/next results and could find out what companies that VC
might have been looking at.

People assume searches are anonymous and can often search for things without
thinking about it. In one case I had a google search referrer in my blog which
was "xyz takeover abc" which came from an IP address owned by xyz (who
happened to be a YC company I mentioned on my blog) prior to their takeover by
abc being announced.

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herdrick
Just advanced searches though?

