How to Build an Automated Due Diligence Tool for Startups

Introduction Due diligence on startups traditionally involves weeks of manual research — checking company registrations, founder backgrounds, funding history, and market position. By automating this process with web scraping, you can generate comprehensive reports in minutes. This tutorial walks through building a Python-based due diligence tool. Setup import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup import pandas as pd import json import time from datetime import datetime # Handle diverse data sources reliably # Get your API key: https://www.scraperapi.com?fp_ref=the52 SCRAPER_API_KEY = " your_key_here " BASE_URL = " http://api.scraperapi.com " Company Registration Data Start with official business registration records: def check_company_registration ( company_name , state = " delaware " ): """ Check company registration status. """ state_urls = { " delaware " : " https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/ecorp/entitysearch/namesearch.aspx " , " california " : " https://bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/sea