How Venture Stars turned Specter into a sourcing pipeline: reaching deals beyond their network, with the data to know which ones to back.
Venture Stars is a Munich fund that backs founders at pre-seed and seed, hands-on, with the conviction that comes from having built companies themselves. Their deal flow was strong and relationship-led: warm introductions and co-investor referrals across DACH. What they wanted was a way to reach the founders their network couldn't, and the confidence to know which of those were worth pursuing.
The challenge for us was seeing enough deals. Warm intros only take you so far, so we built a cold outreach engine with Specter to get the right deals into the pipeline.
The pipeline that runs on Specter: Signals from Specter spot right founders early with the data to evaluate them, built into the way they already work. Inside two months it produced a deal they'd never have seen otherwise, and that deal led to a second.
Months ahead of the raise
Picking which founders to reach is hard. Picking when is harder, and it's where cold outreach usually dies: the founder isn't raising yet, or closed last quarter.
Timing is what Specter fixed. Interest signals show which companies are drawing attention from other investors. Company Database metrics show which of those are moving fastest.
Venture Stars brought nearly 30% of the founders they reached cold onto a call. More than half of those were close to raising, or already in a round.
More than half of the founders we spoke to were close to a funding round, sometimes already in one.
A feed that's never the same
Saved searches do the work. Venture Stars tuned Specter's signals to their thesis, so only the companies and founders that clear the bar get through.
Because the signals move, so does the feed. Each day it's rebuilt from what's changed, so the team is always looking at founders who've started moving since the last one.
Five hours, now five minutes
Before Specter, the team ran a monthly deal ticker to get a read on their market. Built by hand, it meant stitching public sources together for 5 hours, and even with AI helping, the quality still fell short.
On Specter it takes about 5 minutes. The rest of that time now goes into founders.
The deal ticker used to take me around 5 hours, even with AI. On Specter it takes about 5 minutes.
Getting there was quick. The filters made sense fast, and the real question was which use cases to lean on.
Two deals and a new co-investor
In the second month it worked. Specter surfaced a company beyond their existing network, and they came into the pre-seed round off a cold message.
In the second month, we reached out to a company we otherwise would not have seen, and jumped on board their pre-seed round
Through that deal they met a co-investor, and that relationship brought them their next investment. A single company from beyond their network turned into two deals and a co-investor they now work with.
Specter was more or less the trigger for us doing that deal and meeting the co-investor for the first time
In their words
Specter gives us reach into deals we would never have seen, and the data to know which are worth our time.
