Startup Funding Data Collection in Python

### Project Overview

I am looking for an experienced Web Scraping Developer to collect and organize data on recently funded companies across the **USA, Europe, and Australia**.

The objective is to build a structured, accurate, and regularly updatable database of companies that have recently raised funding, including their company details, funding information, website, and key decision-makers where publicly available.

### Scope of Work

The freelancer will be responsible for:

- Identifying recently funded startups and companies across the target regions.
- Extracting data from publicly accessible websites, funding announcements, startup databases, and news sources.
- Collecting and cleaning the extracted data.
- Removing duplicate company records.
- Organizing the information into a structured Excel or CSV file.
- Ensuring data accuracy and consistency.
- Developing a reusable scraping script or automated workflow for future updates, if feasible.

### Target Geographies

- United States
- Europe (including the UK)
- Australia

### Required Data Fields

For each company, collect the following information wherever publicly available:

1. Company Name
2. Company Website
3. Company LinkedIn Profile
4. Country
5. City / Headquarters
6. Industry / Sector
7. Funding Round (Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B, etc.)
8. Amount Raised
9. Funding Announcement Date
10. Total Funding Raised (if available)
11. Investors / Venture Capital Firms
12. Company Description
13. Company Size / Employee Count (if available)
14. Founder / CEO Name
15. Founder / CEO LinkedIn Profile (if publicly available)
16. Source URL for Verification

### Preferred Technical Skills

- Python
- BeautifulSoup
- Scrapy
- Selenium or Playwright
- API integration
- Data cleaning using Pandas
- Web scraping and automation
- Experience handling structured and semi-structured data

### Deliverables

- Clean and deduplicated Excel/CSV database.
- Source URLs for validating the collected information.
- Python scraping script or automation workflow, if included in the agreed scope.
- Brief documentation explaining the data collection process.
- Clear reporting of coverage, limitations, and any unavailable fields.

### Additional Requirements

- Data should focus on recent funding announcements, preferably from the last 30–90 days, with the exact period agreed before starting.
- Data should be reliable, verifiable, and free from unnecessary duplicates.
- Scraping must comply with applicable website terms, access restrictions, and privacy requirements.
- Please mention your proposed data sources, estimated number of records, delivery timeline, and relevant previous experience in your proposal.

### To Apply

Please include:

1. Your experience with web scraping and startup funding data.
2. Tools and technologies you intend to use.
3. Proposed sources for identifying recently funded companies.
4. Estimated number of companies you can deliver.
5. Estimated project cost and completion timeline.
6. A sample of similar work, if available.

I am looking for someone who can deliver accurate, well-structured data and potentially support recurring data collection in the future.