👋 Hi, I’m Andre and welcome to my newsletter Data Driven VC which is all about becoming a better investor with Data & AI. ICYMI, check out some of our most read episodes:

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Welcome to another edition of our Sunday “Resources” stream where we share our most valuable data & resources across four rotating formats:

  1. 30 Hottest Startups of the Month (this is today!)

  2. Top Downloaded Resources from The Lab (how to prompt - the definite guide for investors, founders & operators here)

  3. State of the Market (see September episode here)

  4. Top Downloaded Resources from The Lab (VC copilot for deal sourcing here)

For 1. and 3., we collaborate with best-in-class partners to ensure you get the highest quality data. For 2. and 4., we leverage our ever-growing product portfolio and share selective snapshots of the most sought-after resources from The Lab.

Access all our resources

For today’s Picks of the Month, we’re excited to partner with Specter: The Bloomberg of Private Markets serving leading VC firms like Bessemer, Index, Insight, and 300+ more.

Test Specter

Instead of ranking startups case by case via different growth signals, we unify all dimensions into a single metric: investor interest measured by the number of investors visiting the respective stealth/startup profiles on the Specter platform.

We cover the top 10 stealth founders, top 10 early-stage startups that raised less than $10M, and the top 10 growth-stage startups that raised more than $10M. Global and across industries.

This month, we find 5 key themes among trending startups:

  • Serial Founders Dominating Stealth AI Ventures: Many stealth companies are led by repeat founders with prior VC-backed exits, indicating a strong “second-time founder” wave building in AI infrastructure, security, and developer tooling

  • DeepTech and AI Infrastructure as Core Themes: A significant portion of early and growth startups focus on foundational technologies - from quantum computing, AI copilot tools, to LLM fine-tuning optimization - showing investor and founder conviction in building enabling layers rather than consumer apps

  • Capital Efficiency + Strategic Early Funding: Many early startups raise relatively small but strategic early rounds from top-tier investors, with strong headcount and traffic momentum signals - suggesting a disciplined, lean scaling model rather than hyper-growth burn

  • Security and Compliance Regaining Strategic Importance: Multiple stealth and growth companies highlight cybersecurity as a renewed frontier, particularly in automation and developer-facing solutions

  • Founders Leveraging Top Networks & Signaling Effects: Across stages, startups signal quality through elite networks (YC, Oxford, Meta, AWS), top-tier investors, and media spotlight - demonstrating how network strength and credibility are being leveraged as early differentiation in increasingly crowded AI and infra markets

Here are the 30 most sought-after founders/startups in October 2025 you don’t want to miss👇 ranked by investor interest and page visits on the Specter platform.

10 Hottest Stealth Founders 🥷🏻

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