It depends. If this is a confidential survey that requires no specific identification, then a CEO or member of the management of a startup might be willing to participate in your research. However, if you insist on carrying out this research with specific information about a startup, then there are two possible ways to go about it.
The first, as well as the only ethical way, is to use the information provided to the public. With a good Google search, CrunchBase Data, Word of Mouth, and in-depth analysis of these startups you will get a lot of information needed. For instance, Mark gave out some insights into Hotel booking business at some point. Jumia once posted a loss, Konga is on its way to profit according to this report, dealdey sacks 60% of workforce and konga once laid off some staff. For other startups, check their revenue model and estimate the growth. Look at LinkedIn profiles for staff and maybe Jobberman for current and previous vacancies. This is pure research and the plain truth is that the data is out there, aggregate them together and make sense out of it. Once you can correctly estimate the return on a product or user, then you should be able to create models for the profitability of the business provided other variables such as standard marketing cost remains constant.
The other way is to make friends with staff and management of these startups. For instance, most startups use 3 major payment gateways in Nigeria, Get hold of account manager via LinkedIn profiles? Customer Success Rep and since your intention is to work with the govt. then a visit to the FIRS could be extremely helpful too. I can go on but this is very unethical and I wouldn’t recommend it but then again this is what some folks on Wall Street do for a living.
Goodluck, you will need it.