As someone on the other side (BUIDLing), I'm heartened to see people like you talking about research and real projects. Most of those directory and listing sites are straight up shakedowns, many of them just scraping data from wherever, not updating info (unless you pay), and/or waiting with their hand out for you to buy a "premium" listing. It's a racket, and if I were advising a friend who wanted to invest, I'd tell them to go straight to the sources (the white papers, the alphas, the team track records) and ignore the hype machinery.