Specter Monitor #101 ⚡

Specter Monitor is a data-driven newsletter for investors interested in learning about the latest market trends, signals, and opportunities. Our audience includes some of the most legendary VC investors in the world. We’ll work hard to bring you actionable insights into what’s happening in today’s markets while celebrating data-driven wins and predictions. ✨

"Shadow of Light" by Maurizio Nannucci

🔮 Talents of the Week

Specter tracks real-time top talents movements across the world to detect actionable investment opportunities before anyone else.

🪄 Predicted:

Awais Nemat (US, 2022): Founder & CEO at Chkk.

Featured by Specter on: 2023 - Week 05.

Advantage on Latest Funding Round: 265 Days.

Description: Chkk helps enterprises minimize availability risks and ensure safe upgrades for mission-critical applications running on Kubernetes.

Prev. Experience: Amazon Web Services, Founder, CEO and Board Member @PLUMgrid Inc (Acquired by VMware), Marvell, Founder and CEO @D5 Networks (Acquired by Marvell), Cisco Systems, Mentor Graphics, Data Communications and Controls.

Total Funding: $5.2M / $5.2M Latest Seed Round in 10/2023.

Notable Investors: Sequoia Capital.

👻 Opportunity:

Nico Barawid (US, 2023): Co-Founder at 🎽 Tunic.

Featured by Specter on: 2023 - Week 42.

Prev. Experience: CoFounder & CEO @Casai, Nova Credit, Beneficial State Bank, SunEdison, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), European Investment Bank (EIB), United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

🎱 Strategic Intelligence

Inspired by Michael Lewis’ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game - Strategic Intelligence is a stealth engine that tracks online and social behaviour of corporate insiders and leading investors.

🪄 Predicted:

CentML (CA, 2022) - Featured by Specter on: 2023 - Week 23.

Advantage on Latest Funding Round: 143 Days.

Description: CentML accelerates Machine Learning workloads by maximizing training and inference efficiency leading to compute cost reduction.

Total Funding: $30.4M / $26.9M Latest Seed Round in 10/2023.

Notable Investors: Gradient Ventures, Radical Ventures, AAL VC, Thomson Reuters Ventures, Deloitte Ventures, NVIDIA, Misha Bilenko, Ivan Zhang, Pavel Stoev.

👻 Opportunity:

Humanlike (US, 2022): Featured by Specter on: 2023 - Week 43.

Description: Humanlike is a cloud platform for deploying voice bots with human-like intelligence.

Total Funding: $500K / $500K Latest Seed Round in 01/2023.

Notable Investors: Y Combinator.

Signal: Increased VC Interest in 10/2023.

🍒 Cherry-Picked Companies

Specter tracks the alternative data performance of millions of companies and, on a monthly basis, flags the ones who are likely to increase in valuation.

🪄 Predicted:

WIZ.AI (APAC, 2019) - Specter Rank: 31,977 📈

Description: WIZ.AI develops humanized voice AI and provides automated customer service to enterprises.

Total Funding: $56M / Latest $30M Series A Round in 10/2023.

Notable Investors: Gaorong Capital, Hillhouse Capital Group, GGV Capital, ZWC Partners, Yunqi Partners, K3 Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, Singtel Innov8, Insignia Ventures Partners.

6 Months Growth: Web: 220%; Team: +31%; Social: +108%.