Specter Monitor #209 🛫

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. ✨

🤝 Specter x etn. is official

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💸 Revenue Signals of the Week

Specter tracks private-company revenue and profitability as it’s reported across social posts, news, podcasts, and public filings.

Vryo hit $35M ARR

Muhammad Abdullah reports $35M ARR; ARR grew from $10M to $35M over 12 months in 2025.

Chatbase hit $8M ARR

Chatbase reports bootstrapping to $8M ARR and serving over 10,000 customers while raising no external funding.

Bustem hit $2.5M ARR

Oliver Brocato reports $2.5M ARR in under a year and operating profitably; figure is self-reported as of the post date.

Papermark hit $1.5M ARR

Iuliia Shnai reports $1.5M ARR in a 2025 recap by the founder on LinkedIn.

🔮 Stealth Opportunities of the Week

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

Ivgeni Broitman

Ivgeni Broitman, 26-year career in cybersecurity, co-founder Dcoya (acq. by Gauge Capital) - now a Ninjio Cybersecurity solution, and Terus. Held roles such as Chief Architect at Sentrix (formerly Foresight), R&D Team Leader at Foresight Information Security Technologies, and Security Program Manager at Microsoft. Served as an Information Security Architect at Q.rity and an Application Security Consultant at Comsec (acq, by HUB Security). Holds a BSc in Computer Science from Afeka Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering and a Practical Software Development Engineer degree from Bosmat - Practical Engineering College. Now, again Co-Founder and CTO of a stealth startup, bringing with him a network of 1,294 LinkedIn followers. Currently in stealth 👻

Sebastián Montero

Sebastián Montero, 10 years of experience, held key roles as Lead AI Engineer at BeZero Carbon and Lead AI/ML Engineer at Beamery (also served as a Senior Machine Learning Engineer and Data Scientist). Career includes McKinsey & Company as a Research Analyst in Startup Analytics and Senior Management Consultant at Candesic. Holds a MSc in Big Data and Business Analytics from IE Business School and a BE in Industrial Engineering from ULACIT. With 1,538 LinkedIn followers, now building multi-agent systems. Currently in stealth 👻

Pavel Svitek

Pavel Svitek, serial founder with 19 years of experience, co-founded Localization Guru, (acq. in 2018), and Storie.sk, focusing on custom-built e-shops. Roles include CTO at Delta Labs AG, Maklando (acq. by Julius Baer), and Octav. Tenured as a Senior Software Engineer at Zapper and PwC Switzerland, Fullstack Developer at VNET, and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies and Smallpdf. Studied at ETH Zürich. A network of 6,108 LinkedIn followers, now CTO of a stealth startup, shipping generative AI products to production. Currently in stealth 👻

Felix Sosa

Felix Sosa, 11 years of experience, co-founded Cortex LLC and a pivotal figure at University of Central Florida. Holds a PhD in Cognitive Science from Harvard University, where he was Harvard Prize Fellow, and research roles at MIT and Google DeepMind. Sosa's career highlights include postdoctoral research at Harvard and NTT Research, and research scientist roles at IBM and MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. Contributed as a teaching assistant and instructor at MIT. With 2,259 LinkedIn followers, currently a Senior Research Scientist at Advaita Capital and Vice President at Thinking About Thinking, Inc - but most excitingly a CEO of a stealth startup. Currently in stealth 👻

Mario von Bassen

Mario von Bassen, 12 years of experience, founded Wue-Rhyme. Career includes Software Engineer and Trainee Junior AI Developer at CGI, UI/UX Evaluation at Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften Würzburg-Schweinfurt, and Software Developer at inics GmbH. Holds a MSc in Visual Computing from Technische Universität Wien and a BSc in E-Commerce. Prior VC-backed experience is complemented by internships at Universal Music Group and Marell Audio Media. With 728 LinkedIn followers, now Co-Founder of a stealth startup in online advertising. 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.

Conveo (🔥 featured 2x in 90 days)

Conveo is an AI-powered qualitative research platform that helps enterprise teams gather deep customer insights fast. It uses voice and video interviews, not avatars, to capture authentic, human responses. Conveo’s AI then analyzes these multimodal inputs to extract themes, quotes, and actionable insights. Ideal for marketing, product, CX, and innovation teams who want real qualitative data without slow, manual analysis. Conveo sets the new standard in qualitative research. Conveo is a qualitative research platform that conducts in-depth, AI-moderated interviews. By merging the depth of interviews with the speed and scalability of surveys, Conveo provides deeper insights, faster and at scale. The founders are Ben Smet (ex-McKinsey & Company), Hendrik Van Hove (ex-McKinsey & Company, Morgan Stanley), and Dieter De Mesmaeker (ex-DataCamp). Investors include 6 Degrees Capital, Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Pitchdrive, Syndicate One.

Sereact (🔥 featured 5x in 90 days)

Sereact is a robotics company developing AI-based robotics to offer intelligent software tools for warehouses. The company's Vision Language Action Models (VLAM) help robots to understand and adapt to their environments in real-time—without the need for complex programming. Founders Marc Tuscher (ex-scitlab, ISW Universität Stuttgart) and Ralf Gulde (ex-scitlab, University of Stuttgart) lead the company. Investors include Air Street Capital, Creandum, Point Nine, Alexander Diehl, and Daniel Gurdan.

Zo Computer (🔥 featured 8x in 90 days)

Zo Computer is pioneering the concept of your own autonomous computer in the cloud. zo is a personal computer that you own—just like your laptop—but it lives on the cloud and is primarily operated by AI. The company is founded by Rob Cheung (ex-Smalltalk, Substack) and Ben Guo (ex-Stripe, Venmo). It has attracted investments from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Craft Ventures, Guillermo Rauch, Immad Akhund, and Lorimer Ventures.

Bloom (YC X25) (🔥 featured 4x in 90 days)

Bloom, also known as Bloom (YC X25), is on a mission to build the fastest way to build and share mobile apps. The company is led by founders Sirian Maathuis (ex-AEGIR-Marine , Kaleo Design LLC) and David Alonso (ex-Verity, ETH Zürich). Investors in Bloom include Moonfire Ventures, Bob van Luijt, Cedric van Putten, Chris Smoak, and Clive Ayonye.

Mirelo AI (🔥 featured 3x in 90 days)

Mirelo AI GmbH specializes in AI-powered audio creation, enabling users to generate and customize music and sound effects for various media projects. Their platform utilizes advanced video analysis to suggest audio that aligns with the visuals, making it ideal for game developers, advertisers, and content creators. The company is co-founded by Carl Johann (ex-Amazon Web Services (AWS), ETH Zürich) and Florian Wenzel (ex-Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Brain). Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Arthur Mensch, Atlantic, and Burkay Gur.

🍒 Company Opportunities of the Week

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

Leadbay (🌟 Specter – Global Rank 83)

Leadbay, headquartered in Paris, France, is an AI-driven platform that aids sales teams in identifying and qualifying hard-to-find SMB customers using a domain-specific AI model trained on local market data and historical customer information. The company focuses on sectors like construction, hospitality, and insurance. Founded by Ludovic Granger (ex-Inovexus, Your Apartment Mate, LVMH Fragrances & Cosmetics) and Milan Stankovic (ex-blindnet, SEPAGE (exited), American University of Paris), and employs 22 people. Leadbay has raised $0.5M, with Rebel Fund (Jared Heyman, Jonathan Hirsch, Zubair Sobani, Prantik Mazumdar) and Y Combinator among its investors. Leadbay ranks #83 globally, with 6,702 web visits (-4.73% growth) and 2,601 LinkedIn followers.

Axe (🌟 Specter – Global Rank 203)

Axe, based in London, is an AI-powered procurement assistant that automates purchase requests, enforces spend policies, and eliminates manual data entry through a chat interface, integrated with Slack and Teams. Founded by Darragh Browne (ex-Lumos, Zip Intake-to-Procure, Intercom), James McElroy (ex-Gudog, OASIS Group - Information Secured), and Dan Quill (ex-Peblo, iwoca), Axe employs 14 people. Secured $1.68M in funding from investors like Pitchdrive (Jonas Dhaenens, Boris Bogaert), Accel (Ivan Zhou, Mukta K.), and Enterprise Ireland (Louise Harvey). Ranks #203 globally, with 2,316 web visits (+3.44% growth) and 1,000 LinkedIn followers.

Marblism (🌟 Specter – Global Rank 321)

Marblism, headquartered in London, offers AI Employees to automate business operations, featuring roles like an Executive Assistant, Customer Support agent, and SEO Blog Writer. Founded by Cyril Pluche (ex-VAUBAN, Fitnet Manager, Kaggle) and Ulric Musset (ex-Carta, Vauban from Carta), employs 11 people. Marblism has raised $0.5M, with investors including Y Combinator, Pareto Holdings (Nathan Lian, Edward Lando), and Pioneer Fund (Zach Waterfield, William Collis). Ranking at #321 globally, with 238,926 web visits (+1.38% growth) and 2,738 LinkedIn followers.

Oneleet (🌟 Specter – Global Rank 7)

Oneleet, based in Wilmington, Delaware, USA, is a cybersecurity platform offering compliance and security solutions for frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001, with products including a Compliance Platform and Penetration Testing. Founded by Bryan Onel (ex-Freelance (Self employed), Sogeti Nederland), Erik Vogelzang (ex-HopeX, VUmc), and Ora Onel (ex-London Academy), the company employs 33 people. Oneleet has raised $35.5M, backed by Dawn Capital (Haakon Overli, Dan Chaplin), FPV Ventures (Wesley Chan), and Network.VC (Vitalii Sydorenko 💪🇺🇦). Oneleet ranks #7 globally, with 12,137 web visits (-53.23% growth) and 3,759 LinkedIn followers.

Pryzm (🌟 Specter – Global Rank 50)

Pryzm, headquartered in Boston, provides a B2B SaaS operating system for defense and federal contractors, integrating AI search and CRM tools to enhance government contract acquisition. Founded by David Istrati (ex-Veridion (formerly Soleadify)), Matt Hawkins (ex-Lockheed Martin), Justin Deckert (ex-Virsec), and Nick LaRovere (ex-Palantir Technologies), the company employs 27 people. Pryzm has raised $14.3M, with investors like Amplify.LA (Jeff Lipp), Andreessen Horowitz (Zack Levine), and XYZ Venture Capital (Art Clarke). The company ranks #50 globally, with 3,485 web visits (-43.25% growth) and 3,942 LinkedIn followers.

That’s all for this edition of Specter Monitor!

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