Last week, we launched our brand new Specter Monitor. The amount of feedback we received from all of you has been overwhelming. Please bear with us while we work our way through each and every one of those🙏
This week we share insights from our co-founder Marco on product pricing. The obvious challenge, especially for bootstrapped businesses (of which Specter, is one), is that competing on being the cheaper alternative is simply not sustainable in the long run. Bootstrapped businesses actually need to build a better solution and prioritise profitability as the best type of both short- and long-term funding. Full article published on Sifted in the link below.
Specter Monitor is a 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 on what’s happening in today’s markets, while celebrating data-driven wins and predictions ✨
🔮 Talents of the Week
Specter tracks real-time top talents movements across the world to detect actionable investment opportunities before anyone else.
Nelson Lee: Co-Founder / Head of Tech at iLife Technologies
Featured by Specter on: 2020 - Week 13.
Advantage on Latest Funding Round: 424 Days.
Description: iLife is a life insurance sales automation platform for insurance agents, brokers, and customers.
Prev. Experience: J.P. Morgan, Tencent, Pacific Advisors, Stanford, University of California.
Total Funding: $4M / Latest Seed in 05/2021.
Notable Investors: Foundation Capital, Cherubic Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures.
Matthew Rocklin: Founder / CEO at Coiled.
Featured by Specter on: 2020 - Week 11.
Advantage on Latest Funding Round: 435 Days.
Description: Coiled helps the Data Science community build scalable, distributed, and intelligent applications powered by Python.
Prev. Experience: Nvidia, University of Chicago, Berkeley.
Total Funding: $26M / Latest Series A in 05/2021.
Notable Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners, Costanoa Ventures, FirstMark.
🎱 The Specterball
Inspired by Michael Lewis’ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game - Specterball is a stealth engine that tracks online and social behaviour of corporate insiders and leading investors.
Polywork - Featured by Specter on: 2020-07-02.
Advantage on Latest Funding Round: 322 Days.
Description: Polywork is a professional social network that lets users create a free personal webpage. It lets users share what they’re up to both personally and professionally and sends collaboration requests to others on the network
Total Funding: $3.5M / Latest Seed in 05/2021.
Notable Investors: Kevin Lin (Twitch), Max Levchin (Affirm), Steve Chen (YouTube)
Finary.eu - Featured by Specter on: 2020-10-02.
Advantage on Latest Funding Round: 228 Days.
Description: France-based fintech that is focused on online, real-time investment monitoring across various asset classes.
Total Funding: $2.7M / Latest Seed in 05/2021.
Notable Investors: Kima Ventures, Speedinvest, Y Combinator.
🍒 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.
This week we cherry-picked bootstrapped and seed stage companies that are featured among the top 1% in Specter company ranking.
Prisma - San Francisco, US. Strong Growth in Q2 2021.
Description: Prisma is an innovative online school for 4-8th graders who want an education tailored to their interests, abilities, and goals for the future.
6 Months Growth: Team: +60%; Web: 64%; Social: +117%
MakersPlace - San Francisco, US. Strong Growth in Q2 2021.
Description: A platform creators can generate a blockchain fingerprint for each of their artworks that proves who made it and lets it be sold as part of a limited edition.
6 Months Growth: Team: +73%; Web: +650%; Social: +40000%
Sastrify - Cologne, Germany. Strong Growth in Q2 2021.
Description: Virtual Software-as-a-Service procurement service, helping digital first companies to optimize their SaaS tools.
6 Months Growth: Team: +67%; Web: +1400%; Social: +153%
CURE - Berlin, Germany. Strong Growth in Q2 2021.
Description: CURE was founded to work with doctors and dentists to develop the future of banking for health professionals.
6 Months Growth: Team: +75%; Web: +4439%; Social: +300%
Bitkub - Bangkok, Thailand. Strong Growth in Q2 2021.
Description: Thailand's Leading Digital Asset Exchange.
6 Months Growth: Team: +85%; Web: +200%; Social: +12600%
That’s all for this edition of Specter Monitor!
Stay tuned for the next update, and feel free to share with your friends 👇
