FindFounders

A Python application that automatically searches for and extracts the names of founders for each company listed in a given text file using SerpApi's Google Search Engine Results API and Ollama's AI models.

Features

• Reads company names and URLs from a text file
• Searches Google for founder information using SerpApi
• Extracts founder names from the search results using Ollama's Gemma3 4B model
• Outputs results to a structured JSON file
• Handles multiple companies in batch processing

Prerequisites

• Python 3.7+
• Ollama installed and running locally
• SerpApi account and API key, with a free tier of 250 searches each month
• Gemma3 4B model available in Ollama

Installation

1. Clone or download this repository
2. Install the required dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Set up your SerpApi API key in config.py:

   SERP_API_KEY = "your_serpapi_key_here"

4. Ensure Ollama is running and has the Gemma3 4B model available:

   ollama pull gemma3:4b

Usage

1. Prepare your companies list in companies.txt with the format:

   Company Name (https://company-url.com/)
   Another Company (https://another-company.com/)
   

2. Run the application:

   python main.py

3. The application will:

   • Process each company from companies.txt
   • Search for founder information using Google via SerpApi
   • Extract founder names using AI
   • Save all results to founders.json
   • Display an accuracy analysis table comparing results to correct_founders.json

Output

The application generates the following output files:

• info/info-[COMPANY-NAME].json - Contains search results from SerpApi for each company (one file per company)
• founders.json - Contains the final structured results with all company founders

Example founders.json structure:

{
  "Approval AI": ["Arjun Lalwani", "Helly Shah"],
  "Meteor": ["Farhan Khan", "Pranav Madhukar"],
  "Read AI": ["David Shim", "Robert Williams", "Elliott Waldron"]
}

File Structure

• main.py - Main application logic
• config.py - Configuration file containing API keys
• companies.txt - Input file with company names and URLs
• requirements.txt - Python dependencies
• founders.json - Output file with founder information
• correct_founders.json - Answer key with the correct list of names of the founders of each company
• info/ - Directory containing search results for each company

Functions

extract_and_concatenate_snippets(file_path: str)

Extracts and concatenates snippet text from SerpApi search results.

find_founders(company: str, url: str, file_name: str)

Uses Ollama's AI model to extract founder names from search result snippets.

search_companies(file_name: str)

Main function that orchestrates the entire process for all companies in the input file.

load_correct_founders(file_path: str)

Loads the correct founders from the answer key file for accuracy comparison.

analyze_accuracy(found_founders: dict, correct_founders: dict)

Compares found founders against correct founders and calculates accuracy metrics.

print_accuracy_table(analysis_results: dict)

Prints a formatted table showing accuracy metrics for each company with three dimensions:

• All Correct: Whether all correct founders were identified
• ≥1 Correct: Whether at least one correct founder was identified
• No Incorrect: Whether no incorrect founders were listed

Results

In the current results for the current implementation, 8 companies had their founders correctly identified without any errors, 1 company (Profound) had its founders correctly identified in addition to an incorrect name, and 1 company had one out of two of its founders identified.

Error Handling

The application includes comprehensive error handling for:

• Missing or malformed input files
• API request failures
• JSON parsing errors
• AI model response issues

Notes

• The application processes companies sequentially to avoid overwhelming the APIs
• Search results are stored in separate files within the info/ directory, one per company
• Only first and last names are extracted, excluding titles and suffixes
• The application will skip malformed lines in the companies file and continue processing
• Company names in filenames are sanitized to remove special characters for filesystem compatibility

Troubleshooting

• Ensure your SerpApi key is valid and has sufficient credits
• Verify Ollama is running and the Gemma3 4B model is available
• Check that your companies.txt file follows the correct format
• Review console output for specific error messages during processing

Future Improvements

• Support generic input text formats by using Ollama's Gemma3 4B model to extract company names and corresponding URLs.
• Run multiple searches for the same company and keep founder names that appear multiple times.
• Use reference websites like CrunchBase and/or LinkedIn to verify founder names.
• Use another API like Google's Custom Search JSON API to verify founder names.
• Examine organic results beyond the first 10 in case the founder name is missing from those first 10.