Fundbat is a free, open alternative to Crunchbase: companies, funding rounds, investors, founders, trending GitHub/HN projects, and daily roundup posts.
The founder’s bet is that unique data should get unique traffic. Right now that is not happening. Domain rating is essentially 0, organic rankings are empty, and the pages that used to pick up branded investor names have faded. The data exists. The pages do not look like the destination people would cite over LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Dealroom, or PitchBook.
This is the default indie-hacker trap for a scraped/built database: 10,000 entity pages of raw rows, then surprise that Google still sends people to Crunchbase.
Current performance
- Domain rating: 0.8
- Organic keywords / traffic: 0
- Backlinks: 27 from 18 referring domains
- AI responses: 12 (a start — ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity have a few mentions)
- Readability: contrast on the dark UI is weak
The links that do exist are not spammy — a Hoodline article citing Spark Capital, a Form Energy company page, StartupIntros — but none of them make Fundbat the citation. Unique data is not enough. Crunchbase (DR 91) wins because journalists already treat it as the source.
Company pages like OpenAI already have real numbers (funding, valuation, rounds). They are still hard to read, have no logos, and do not look like a page someone would screenshot or link.
Entity pages are thinner than every competitor
Compare a Fundbat person/investor page to the SERP it wants to win.
Crunchbase / LinkedIn / Evalyze / Dealroom / PitchBook usually have:
- Profile photo
- LinkedIn (and often X, website, YC)
- Company logos (
logo.devis the cheap way) - Jobs + investments on one profile (founders who later angel-invest)
- Check size, stages, geography, focus areas
- Timeline: founded → exited → now investing
- News, FAQs, charts (holdings, unicorns, AUM, exits by year)
YC’s Andrew Miklas page has a photo, LinkedIn, and a row of portfolio logos. That is the information-gain bar.
Fundbat currently has: a summary, “1 company,” a Founder badge, and PagerDuty. No photo, no LinkedIn, no investments. People can be both founder and investor. Split directories (/founders vs /investors) hide that. A unified /people/ profile would fix it.
Evalyze shows photo, LinkedIn, location, cheque size ($25K–$500K), and stages. That is why a writer (or a founder hunting angels) would use their page instead.
If the page has less information gain than everything already in the top 10, it will not rank. Full stop.
Do not compete for famous names on DR 0
Trying to rank for “Lightspeed Venture Partners” against Crunchbase, LinkedIn, Dealroom (DR 77), and the firm’s own site is a bad first move.
Fundbat’s Lightspeed page has founded year, location, deployed capital, and a wall of companies without logos. Contrast is already fighting you.
Dealroom’s same entity is screenshotable: logos, sized holdings, a one-line summary. That is the page people link when they need proof of a portfolio.
The keywords that actually work at low DR:
- Best free Crunchbase alternatives for startup funding data (relevance 95)
- Open source startup funding database
- Angel investors for startups (dedicated URL, not a client-side filter)
- Intent people type into ChatGPT: where to find angel investors for my app
Fundbat’s /investors angel filter is a generic grid: name + investment count. No check sizes, no stages, no socials, no unique URL.
OpenVC is the template: a real title (“List of Angel Investors for Startups in 2026”), a dedicated URL, 5,763 words, FAQ headings, then the table. That is why they show up in AI answers.
Google’s AI overview for “best free Crunchbase alternatives” already lists OpenVC, Signal, AngelList. Fundbat is not in it. DR ~19 listicles still rank for this query — that is the reachable fight.
Daily funding roundups in /blog are a poor SEO bet. The titles do not match how people search, and the body reads like a wall of tape. Put those in a newsletter and keep the blog for durable pages: Crunchbase alternatives, angel lists, “how to pitch.”
Design and contrast
Almost every ranking competitor is light mode. Fundbat’s tables are dark and low-contrast. That hurts dwell time, bounce, and accessibility. Either ship a real light theme or drop dark mode for this audience. Add logos, photos, and screenshotable charts so people actually cite the page.
Action items
- Enrich entity pages so they beat (or at least match) Crunchbase/Dealroom on useful fields:
logo.devlogos, LinkedIn/X, photos, check size, stages, location, co-investors, news, AUM/portfolio stats, unified/people/profiles. - Stop targeting famous investor names first. Ship comparison and list pages: Crunchbase alternatives, free funding databases, angel-investor lists with tables + FAQ — the pattern OpenVC already ranks for.
- Fix contrast / go light mode so tables are readable; treat daily roundups as a newsletter, not blog SEO.
- Earn citation links the Dealroom/PitchBook way: be the page a writer links when they need proof of a portfolio. That only happens after the page is obviously the better source.
The database can win. The pages have to look like the authority, not like a dump of the database.