If you sell to startups, invest in them or recruit for them, timing matters. A company that has just closed a round has fresh budget, new hiring plans and a board asking how the money will be spent. The hard part is knowing who raised, and knowing it soon.

Press releases cover a small share of rounds. Paid funding databases cover more, but they cost a lot and often lag behind. There is a free, official source most teams overlook: SEC Form D.

This tutorial shows how to turn Form D filings into a daily list of newly funded US companies, filtered by state, industry and size, using the Form D Scraper on the Apify Store.

What Form D is

When a US company sells securities privately under Regulation D (the exemption most startup rounds use), it files a short notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission called Form D. The filing is due within 15 days after the first sale of securities.…