Specter Monitor #177 😎

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. ✨

🍊 200+ YC Requested Startups

YC just published RFS spotlighting areas they’d love founders to explore—internal agent tools, scientific discovery, robotics software, voice AI, and more. We’ve done the heavy lifting—mapped over 200 standout startups driving innovation in these frontier spaces. Here’s what we found 👇

200+ YC Requested Startups

YC just published RFS spotlighting areas they’d love founders to explore—internal agent tools, scientific discovery, robotics software, voice AI, and more. We’ve done the heavy lifting—mapped over 200 standout startups driving innovation in these frontier spaces. Here’s what we found 👇

Specter InsightsSpecter Team

🔮 Stealth Opportunities of the Week

Specter monitors real-time global talent movements to spot investment opportunities before anyone else.

Roi Tiger

Former Meta VP Engineering and co‑founder of Onavo (acquired for ≈ $130M in 2013), Roi is now quietly spearheading a next‑gen cyber‑security venture in Tel Aviv. Two exits and 24 years of scaling infrastructure make him one of Israel’s go‑to operators for hyper‑growth security plays. Currently in stealth. 👻

Kevin Phung

Kevin is a manufacturing‑tech entrepreneur. Employee #1 at YC‑backed UpKeep, he helped push the CMMS startup from $0 to $10M ARR and through Series B. He later co‑founded Fora (avatar‑driven gaming) and Parasol, whose blockchain tools for Japan’s entertainment giants were acquired by Mysten Labs in 2023. Currently in the Bay Area, building AI solutions that let factories spin up new production lines in hours, not months. An operator at the intersection of industrial automation and deep tech. Currently in stealth. 👻

Nicolas Keller

Nicolas is a Munich‑based deep‑tech operator and angel investor. Turned Franka Robotics’ force‑sensitive arm into a marquee German hardware exit, joined Meshcapade to restructure the Max‑Planck spin‑out into a Gen‑AI “digital humans” company—raising a $6M seed and striking licensing deals with seven of the NASDAQ‑10. He runs BIRDIE Investments in parallel, backing tech‑bio and robotics start‑ups such as Zama, Trisk Bio and Planet A Foods. Nicolas left Meshcapade last August - now building at the intersection of AI agents and advanced manufacturing. Currently in stealth. 👻

Aaron Michel

Aaron is a Harvard‑educated operator‑turned‑VC with 20 + years in ed‑tech and fintech. After selling PathSource—the #1 US career‑navigation app—to AcademixDirect in 2017, he co‑founded 1984 Ventures, delivering top‑quartile returns across two funds. Now on leave for a stealth civic‑tech project. Based in DC. Currently in stealth. 👻

Royce Fullerton

Royce is a product‑driven technologist with 17  years spanning payments, SaaS and AI. After eight years as technical co‑founder of Nobly POS—acquired by Revolut in 2021—he led product at Portrait, building AI‑powered photo tools for creators. Now he's building a venture that unifies product and business data so executives can make AI‑backed decisions in real time. Currently in stealth. 👻

🎱 Investor Signals of the Week

Specter analyzes the online and social activity of leading investors and industry insiders to predict upcoming funding rounds and acquisitions.

Dot Product (🔥 featured 2x in 90 days)

Dot Product is building AI coworkers for operations teams, founded in 2024, based in San Francisco. Ex‑Stripe/Coinbase engineers building “Operators,” voice‑first AI coworkers for customer‑support and other ops workflows; the San‑Francisco duo of Maksim Stepanenko and Usman Masood banked a $6M seed from Index Ventures and Lachy Groom last May and have since opened founding‑engineer and ML roles while rolling out their first production Operator to early design partners.

Strawberry (🔥 featured 3x in 90 days)

A browser that puts AI superpowers into your daily workflows. Strawberry is the Stockholm‑based AI browser whose “Companion” agents can now follow on‑screen video tutorials to automate multi‑step tasks; after a pre‑beta launch on Product Hunt two months ago, the nimble team is iterating weekly and touts time‑savings of 18 hours per user, with power users sharing hands‑on demos across DEV, GitConnected and Reddit.

zero (🔥 featured 4x in 90 days)

zero is an open‑source, AI‑native Gmail alternative that went live on GitHub this spring; the London startup just announced acceptance into YC W25 on Twitter, kicked off a public bounty programme to crowd‑test its Tailwind/‍shadcn UI, and is positioning full self‑host + Google‑auth as a privacy‑first path to “inbox autonomy.” Bootstrapped, founded in 2025, based in London, England.

Vercept (🔥 featured 2x in 90 days)

Vercept burst out of stealth two weeks ago with Vy, a native Mac agent that “sees and acts” on your screen; co‑founded by AI veteran Oren Etzioni, the Seattle team is partnering with Together AI on model infrastructure and drew buzzy coverage when early users demonstrated Vy completing real desktop workflows end‑to‑end. Bootstrapped, founded in 2024, based in Seattle, Washington.

Joseph Mahavuthivanij (🔥 featured 7x in 90 days)

Building something new. Ex-Early-stage Investor @ Thanks Partners (Health, Wealth & Happiness). Joseph is a repeat founder (ex‑Mythic Markets – Acquired by Sydecar, and Go Boldly) back in “builder‑mode”.

🍒 Company Opportunities of the Week

Specter tracks the performance of millions of companies and identifies the ones who are likely to increase in valuation.

Opal (🌟 Specter ‑ Global Rank 19)

Opal’s screen‑time‑control app, hitting a 42k‑rating iOS. April’s “Keynote 2” unveiled social Leaderboards, daily Streaks, and a rebuilt Mac app—features aimed at turning the focus tool into a cross‑device habit loop. Founder Kenneth Schlenker is growing the New York team and is currently hiring a Lead Android Engineer to open a new platform line, alongside a product‑design search in Paris. With 200 m+ hours of distraction blocked and $7.6M in seed funding, Opal remains the category’s pace‑setter for digital well‑being. Backers range from Speedinvest to Harry Stebbings and Kima Ventures. Displaying strong growth metrics from headcount to web traffic and app downloads.

Rive (🌟 Specter ‑ Global Rank 64)

Rive’s interactive‑animation platform has gone from design tool to full UI pipeline. That follows last month’s general launch of Data Binding across the web editor, hailed by the 54k-follower community as a “contract” between design and engineering. Co‑founders Guido and Luigi Rosso are positioning 2025 as “the year of production‑ready graphics,” rallying an SF-based team and an expanding partner ecosystem. Rive now counts enterprise customers, including Adobe and Duolingo, and is fast becoming the de facto motion layer for cross‑platform apps. In Growth stage, backed by Acrew Capital, YC Continuity and others, with total funding of $14M, last raised on 01-2023.

Helicone (🌟 Specter ‑ Global Rank 108)

Fresh off passing 2.1 billion logged LLM requests and 2.6 trillion tokens, Helicone has rolled out V2—a full‑lifecycle observability stack that spans logging, evaluation and cost optimisation. Its January integration with Nebius AI shows how a one‑line base‑URL swap can extend Helicone’s cache‑driven savings to new model providers. A new comparative guide (published last week) positions Helicone as “fastest time‑to‑value” among open‑source rivals, while GitHub stars have climbed to 3.8k. Backed by YC W23, the SF‑based core team continues to hire full‑stack engineers as it chases enterprise SOC‑2 deals.

Structured Labs (🌟 Specter ‑ Global Rank 240)

Structured is turning Python notebooks into live data apps via Preswald, its open‑source semantic‑metrics layer. Y Combinator lists the startup as “build once, deploy anywhere,” and recent LinkedIn chatter highlights community PRs and open‑source contributions. With $2.2M in seed capital, Structured aims to capture the growing “analytics‑as‑code” market for mid‑market enterprises.

Taskade (🌟 Specter ‑ Global Rank 324)

Taskade is repositioning as an autonomous‑AI‑agent hub: the May product update lets users auto‑generate full projects from an email prompt, clean datasets with AI, and launch “AI Kits” templates. A January feature wave added Agent Search, chat‑history export, loops for automation and WhatsApp integration—turning the YC S19 app into a workflow automation engine for SMBs. Taskade’s download base crossed 1 million last year and continues to benefit from influencers listing it among the “top 5 AI tools founders need in 2025.” In Growth stage, backed by Y Combinator, Grishin Robotics and others, with total funding of $5.75M, last raised on 10-2023.

That’s all for this edition of Specter Monitor!

Stay tuned for the next updates and feel free to share with your friends.