Specter Talent: Backtest Results Q1 2020

Specter tracks millions of top talented individuals on a daily basis to discover newly launched companies before anyone else. The unique talent tracking engine also enables Specter to track talent flow on a global level, and spot companies that are able to attract world-class talent.

Specter Talent is almost 6 months old. Whilst still relatively early on in it’s product journey, we figured it’s a good time to review the performance to date. To do so, we compared our signals with recent funding announcements — and the results were staggering.

Since the last week of October, Specter’s talent engine has detected over 5,000 talent signals. These signals include over 2,500 newly launched companies, and 2,000 job changes:

1. 72 talents that were detected and labeled with a signal ‘New Company’ have already raised VC funding. In total they have raised $200 million, from world-leading funds including Accel Partners, Global Founders Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Y Combinator or Foundry Group.

funding per month compared to number of newly funded companies

2. On average the funding round took place 53 days after Specter detected the initial signal (!)

3. Every talent signal is labeled with a score (1 to 10, where 10 is the highest possible score). If we take into account only ‘New Company’ signals that scored 8 and higher:

• 15% of signals detected in October have already resulted in VC funding;
• 10% of signals from November;
• 6% of signals from December;
• 5% from January.

*Specter expects the overall percentage to increase over 20% in the upcoming months, as some of the newly detected companies will announce VC funding.

4. In addition, Specter has detected 48 ‘New Role’ signals (i.e. senior executive changing jobs), which have resulted in $4.3 billion subsequent transactions. On average these transactions took place 54 days after Specter detected the initial signal.

funding per month compared to number of new roles at funded companies

Finally, it’s no surprise that talent spinoffs from big corporates contribute to the overall growth of the startup ecosystem — but how much of an impact do they actually make?

(NC = New Company; NR = New Role)

For this analysis we took into consideration top talents with senior roles (i.e. Senior Manage, Head of, Director, C-Level) leaving their jobs at the 4 most valuable tech companies in the world (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon), since the last week of October. Key Takeaways:

• Specter Talent detected 67 New Companies (NC) and 88 New Roles (NR) for a total of 155 talent signals;
• 20% of talents founding a new company were marked with Signal Status = Stealth, as they’re currently working under the radar;
• 60% of talents marked as “New Role” joined startups at growth stage (i.e. Series A+). This is a strong indicator of the overall health of the company, being able to attract and hire top talents from the Top 4.
• Despite the recent COVID-19 turmoil, March has seen a rise in talents leaving steady jobs in favour of growth stage startups — mostly in product & development roles, suggesting top growth stage startups are now doubling down on R&D and new product offerings.

To learn more about Specter’s Talent Engine, you can visit the following page or contact us at team@tryspecter.com 👻