Selva

Selva is a web-based directory and map of Latin American startups, investors, and funding activity. It fits analysts, founders, investors, and researchers who need regional discovery with links to funding announcements. The free layers are useful for mapping a market, while precise financial analysis requires the paid tier.

Overview

Selva brings together company, founder, investor, and funding records across 21 Latin American markets. It reports 4,374 startups, 4,662 investors, and 4,479 company records, giving users a broad starting point for comparing businesses and following regional activity. Its focus is geographic and ecosystem-specific rather than a general global company directory.

The service aggregates 37 sources and parses articles in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. Each funding round is connected to its source article, so a reader can trace a reported event back to the announcement. Selva also compares disclosed yearly totals with LAVCA benchmarks and publishes coverage figures. That context helps assess the database's reach, but it does not make every record complete or current.

Selva warns that its records can be incomplete, outdated, or inaccurate and are intended for information and research, not investment advice. Treat it as a way to find leads and assemble market context, then verify a deal independently before making a financial decision.

Key features

Layered access

Public access shows an entity's identity, description, and rolled-up totals. That is enough for initial screening, ecosystem overviews, and finding relevant companies or investors, but not for reconstructing a deal's economics. Creating a free account exposes round structure, dates, and portfolio lists while keeping amounts hidden. This login tier is a meaningful upgrade for timeline and relationship work without requiring a subscription.

Premium financial fields

The Premium tier adds exact amounts, valuations, revenue, and check sizes. Those fields are the difference between a discovery directory and a dataset suited to more detailed financing comparisons. Buyers who only need names, descriptions, or broad totals are unlikely to recover enough extra value from the subscription.

Corrections and safeguards

Company corrections pass through domain-verified review restricted to company employees. That provides an identifiable route for updates, though it is narrower than an open community-editing model. Selva describes encryption in transit, access controls, and administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards, while acknowledging that absolute security cannot be guaranteed. It does not sell personal information, and Google Analytics loads only after visitor consent. Google Firebase Authentication and Cloudflare are identified as service providers.

The terms prohibit scraping, crawling, harvesting, and bulk downloading, and prohibit reselling or redistributing data except where expressly allowed. That makes Selva suitable for individual research and controlled internal use, not for quietly mirroring its database into another product.

Pricing

The Public plan is the right choice for casual browsing and high-level market mapping. Login costs nothing but requires an account, and is better for researchers who need financing chronology or portfolio relationships. Both free levels give up the actual amounts, so they cannot support complete valuation or check-size analysis. Premium, billed at $39 per month, is aimed at professionals whose decisions depend on those exact fields. There is no stated seat allowance, quota, trial period, or renewal term beyond the monthly billing shown.

Platforms

Selva is offered on the web. Its browser-based format suits desk research and link-driven investigation, but the service is not presented as a native mobile application or a separate API product.

Who it's for

Analysts and investors covering Latin America will value the combination of multilingual coverage, source-linked rounds, portfolio lists, and paid financial fields. Founders can use it to understand neighboring companies and investor activity, while researchers can build a regional map from one interface. A reader seeking a fully verified investment record, unrestricted data export, or a broad global database should look beyond Selva's scope and usage restrictions.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Regional breadth: Coverage spans 21 markets, with thousands of startups and investors for comparative ecosystem work.
• Traceable funding entries: Round links and multilingual source parsing make reported activity easier to follow back to its announcement.
• Useful free progression: Public browsing and the no-cost Login tier support discovery, timelines, and portfolio research before any purchase.
• High-value Premium fields: Exact amounts, valuations, revenue, and check sizes address the needs of serious financial comparison.

Cons

• Core figures are paywalled: Free users cannot see funding amounts, limiting financial analysis.
• Records require caution: Selva itself warns of incomplete, outdated, or inaccurate data, so it cannot replace deal verification.
• Restricted reuse: Scraping, bulk downloading, and redistribution are prohibited, which limits automated or resale-oriented workflows.
• Narrow correction route: Only domain-verified company employees can submit company corrections.

Alternatives

For a broader startup-database comparison, browse the Startup Databases list. Choose Tracxn instead when you need Android, iOS, API, or browser-extension access, a free trial, and a Premium option described as unrestricted with taxonomy and custom reports. Community Data is the better fit for an entirely free, open-source database with a public GraphQL API.

FlareSight suits readers wanting a much larger 127,228-plus-company browseable universe, filters, and a five-profile-views-per-day free cap. Pick Discover Startups for a free, forever directory centered on dedicated startup profiles. StartupDB is preferable when you need a free database with MCP and REST APIs, no account or API key, and 120 requests per minute per IP.

Dealflow.Africa offers free-forever startup access without a credit card. FirstGlance is a free option on Android, iOS, and the web. The Venture Codex provides access at no cost.

Verdict

Choose Selva if your work centers on Latin American startup and investor mapping and you need source-linked rounds, with Premium financial fields when exact deal metrics matter. Look elsewhere if you require open data reuse, guaranteed accuracy, or a broader platform and export model.