Pietro Invernizzi runs firedrop, an angel fund backed by 150 top founders, operators, angels and VCs. He exclusively invests at pre-seed, and aims to find founders when it's 'too early' for other investors.

He also has a strong preference for first-check investing. firedrop usually has the first foot in the door with the highest potential founders, putting forward £100-250K initial tickets before they are on the radar of even the earliest-stage investors.

Pietro shared with us how Specter has helped him to advance and scale his mission to identify and back the best European founders.

It’s Never Too Early

firedrop’s £8 million first fund was born out of Pietro's seven years of experience in the VC world. Prior to launching two years ago, Pietro honed his skills at Stride running their First Check programme, and at The Family, building an accelerator motion envisioned as Europe’s answer to Y Combinator. He also spent a lot of time angel investing on the side before officially starting firedrop.

“Over the years, I realised that I thoroughly enjoyed being this ‘small player’ as an individual, which allowed me to form a connection with each founder on a more personal level. What started as a passion project evolved into something I really wanted to pursue full time, so that’s what I decided to take on with the launch of my own dedicated angel fund.”

He knew from his first-hand experience across different firms that he would need access to a platform like Specter to make his own fund more data-driven. As a one-man operation with strong existing ties to the industry, he knew his network would already be highly applicable to finding founders, but he also didn’t want to take the chance of not seeing this talent early enough.

Hunting for Talent

“As one person, it is impossible to have eyes in all corners of the startup ecosystem. This said, having access to the right tools for putting together a systematised sourcing effort helps push further in this direction.”

Pietro leverages Specter to power through what he calls the "hunting" process for finding the best rising and potential founders, dedicating most days to deep dives into the platform. That’s how he gets ahead of the best signals for talent movements in the market, and knows who to start building relationships with at the prime moment.

“Specter's most valuable feature is the ability to build custom searches, which I create to target defined groups of people I know should be regularly prioritised, based on their real-time career changes. I first look at those who have just become founders, or recently left a company, and have the kind of experience I know would be applicable to building ambitious companies.”

Sometimes, these will be emerging talents worth exploring further. Other times, there are evident significant transitions that merit immediate attention, for instance if the Head of Product at Revolut left their role, signalling a potential new venture. Pietro has so far cultivated a list of around 250 such profiles, all identified through Specter.

Trend Spotting and Thesis Refinement

"The platform provides so much intelligence beyond just signals. We’ve already made an investment that was identified as an opportunity through Specter, but there’s a lot more value I get on a daily basis that goes beyond fulfilling direct sourcing needs.”

He explained that he spots a lot of trends as they’re happening, and uses Specter to help him develop a broader understanding of markets. Talent migrations, such as a large number of employees leaving the likes of DeepMind or other notable companies, are much easier to spot this way.

The Notable Talent Movements section on Company Signals is especially useful for picking up on the nuances of who are the New Hires, Recent Leavers and Promotions, by seniority and function. We also display graphs to show these notable signals against the historical headcount, which helps visualise any shifts. 

“Talent Signals are what I consult the most on Specter as part of my daily routine, but I always find myself uncovering unexpected insights in the other, interconnected parts of the platform too. The signals and data I can access about companies and investors as well as people stop me wasting time seeking lots of dispersed information elsewhere, and paint a broader picture of the tech landscape that informs my ever-evolving investment thesis.”