👋 Hi, I’m Andre and welcome to my newsletter Data Driven VC which is all about becoming a better investor with data and AI.
👉Join our DDVC Builders Workshop in London Oct 7 afternoon
Welcome to another edition of our Sunday “Resources” stream where we share our most valuable data & resources across four rotating formats:
Hottest Startups of the Month (this is today!)
Top Downloaded Resources from The Lab (“The Win Game: What Happens After Everyone Has Seen the Deal?” here)
State of the Market (September’s multiples & benchmarks here)
Top Downloaded Resources from The Lab (“Building Products That Investors Actually Use” 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.
RESOURCES OVERVIEW🛠️
✅ Join our free “AI & Automation for VC” Slack group
✅ Summarize 50+ newsletters with ChatGPT
✅ Evaluating startups with ChatGPT
✅ VC Co-Pilot for deal sourcing
✅ Top 10 Prompts for startup sourcing
✅ Top 10 Prompts for startup screening & due diligence
✅ Top 10 Prompts for deal winning & closing
✅ List of 312 family offices
✅ List of 59 pension funds
✅ List of 1513 angel investors
✅ List of 997 accelerators
Access these and more resources like our Slack community, 100+ masterclasses, automation templates, Notion templates, copilots, and more via our Annual and Premium subscriptions to The Lab.
World’s Hottest Startups in October 2026
For today’s Picks of the Month, we’re excited to partner with Harmonic. Thousands of investors from firms such as General Catalyst, Earlybird, and Pear use Harmonic every day to find and evaluate investment opportunities.
These are some of the founders and startups receiving high investor interest on the platform. Visit Harmonic to catch the next batch before it’s listed.
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 Harmonic platform.
This is a unique scoring you won’t find anywhere else!
It’s about quality, not quantity: We cover the top 5 stealth founders, top 5 early-stage startups, and the top 5 growth-stage startups. Global and across industries.
This month, we find 3 key themes among trending startups:
AI you can check. 4 of 5 growth picks check or control AI's work: explainable analytics, a secure AI gateway, and expert-reviewed AI-native accounting and fund administration.
Stealth founders who stayed after selling. 2 of 5 stayed at the buyer: one sold AI Music to Apple and led its Future Music team, the other sold Little Otter to Hazel Health and became President.
Europe leads on count, the US on check size. 4 of 5 early-stage picks are European. Across early and growth stage, the 3 US picks raised $127M, nearly as much as the 7 European picks' $131.7M.
Here’s the needle in the haystack - here are the 15 most sought-after founders/startups in October 2026 you don’t want to miss👇 ranked by investor interest and page visits on the Harmonic platform.
5 Hottest Stealth Founders 🥷🏻
Sia Mahdavi 🇬🇧
Experience: Founded AI Music and sold it to Apple, where he led Future Music, the team behind the DJ-style transitions in Apple Music. Earlier founded Within Technologies, a generative design pioneer, and was a Director at Autodesk.
Education: UCL EngD and MSc. King's College London BEng.
Highlights: Prior exit, Seasoned founder, Major tech company experience, Top university
Experience: COO at FleetGrid, subscription charging for electric trucks. Previously VP of Charging & Energy at Einride, Head of Future Grid for the Nordics and Baltics at Siemens, and led charging and energy for Northern Europe at Tesla. Now building in energy.
Education: Royal Danish Academy Cand. Arch. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile M.A. (exchange)
Highlights: Seasoned executive, Major tech company experience, Deep domain expertise
Experience: Chief Product Architect at Cerebras, after six years there as Principal and then Distinguished Engineer. Previously Principal Engineer at Intel and 17 years at Altera. Now building AI accelerator hardware.
Education: University of Toronto Ph.D., MASc. and BASc.
Highlights: Deep technical background, Major tech company experience, Top university
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