Specter vs Harmonic
Over 400 VC funds use Specter as their private market data layer: 55M+ companies, 550M+ people and 1M+ transactions, with new signals landing every day.
Specter sets the pace for private markets, helping you discover deals, opportunities, and all the context you may ever need to be the first to the table. This is why over 400 of the world's most elite firms trust Specter over others as their data layer for private markets.
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Here are the main reasons VCs choose Specter over Harmonic as their private market data platform:
Data coverage
30M+ companies and 190M+ people, per its own site. A strong, well-curated slice of the private market.
55M+ companies and 550M+ people, nearly 2× the companies and close to 3× the people, plus 330K+ investors and 1M+ transactions. With the richest industry taxonomy in private markets, that coverage surfaces the next breakout, including the bootstrapped and emerging long tail no list has priced before.
Depth per record
Rich company and people profiles.
250+ data points per company and 60+ per person: firmographics, funding, hiring, web & app traffic, app downloads & reviews, social metrics, G2 and Trustpilot reviews, and news from 60,000+ sources.
Revenue Signals
Only on SpecterSurfaces funding history and traction metrics like headcount and web traffic.
Reported revenue whenever a company discloses it, plus a live Revenue Signals feed adding 500+ verified revenue and profitability signals a day from news, social, podcasts and filings. On top of that, a modeled revenue estimate for every company, not just the few that disclose.
Valuations
Only on SpecterReports a valuation when a priced round is disclosed.
Reported valuations when rounds make them public, and a live valuation estimate that tracks between rounds, modeled monthly with a confidence band and re-anchored to every priced round. The number moves with the company instead of freezing at the last raise.
Investor Signals
Only on SpecterReal-time alerts when a company becomes actionable.
Predictive Investor Interest signals: the only live feed showing who is about to back or acquire whom, with confidence scores, before it hits the headlines.
Talent Signals
Monitors people making moves; filter by background and experience.
1,000+ talent signals a day, and stealth is where the daily cadence pays. New stealth founders, unicorn and Fortune-500 spinouts, new YC founders and out-of-stealth alerts land the day they're detected, not on next week's refresh. You reach the founder while the company is still in stealth.
AI Search & Agents
Scout, a slick in-app agent that answers natural-language queries and runs find → screen → act workflows.
Agents, Specter's AI agentic chat, are native to the platform: adjustable via skills, drawing on the entire Specter database plus web search. Natural-language and semantic search across all 55M+ companies runs alongside them. And Specter MCP plugs the same data into Claude, Cursor, OpenAI, or any agent you already run. Your intelligence layer isn't locked inside one vendor's chat box.
Email Notifications
Real-time alerts for talent moves and company changes.
Saved searches work like an inbox. New results arrive by email on the schedule you pick (daily, weekly or monthly), with a single weekly digest that rounds up every search you follow. Timezone-aware, and mirrored by in-app notifications.
Delivery surface
Web console, REST/GraphQL API, Chrome extension, Slack notifications, and bulk export.
Web app, best-priced API, bulk warehouse delivery (AWS, GCP, Snowflake), Chrome extension, CRM sync (Salesforce, Affinity, Attio, Airtable), and Specter MCP. The same data, wherever your team works.
What the API exposes
A clean REST + GraphQL API. But financing and investor data is a paid add-on, full investor details are GraphQL-only, and company snapshots can lag the live record by up to 14 days (per Harmonic's docs).
Proprietary feeds are first-class resources, with dedicated endpoints for Revenue, Talent, Investor-Interest and News signals alongside companies, people, investors and transactions. The same live signals you see in-app, queryable programmatically.
Specter has data Harmonic doesn't.
Here are a few things you get on Specter that Harmonic doesn't offer. To see everything the platform does, have a look at the platform page.
A few things Harmonic doesn't have:
- Modeled revenue for every company
- Live valuations between rounds
- Predictive investor-interest signals
- 500+ revenue signals a day
- 25M more companies
- Signals as API endpoints
- Specter MCP
- And more
A best-in-class private-markets API.
REST on OpenAPI 3.0, with everything Specter holds reachable programmatically: the full company, people, investor and transaction databases, all four signal feeds, and your team's network graph. Lists and saved searches built in the app become live API feeds, and one AI-search endpoint takes plain-English queries across every product.
Signals are first-class endpoints
Dedicated endpoints for Revenue, Talent, Investor-Interest and News signals, each with confidence scoring, source attribution and date. Harmonic's API has no equivalent signal resource.
Transactions & investor data are included
Funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and full investor profiles ship inside the API, included. Harmonic sells financing and investor data as a paid add-on, with full investor details in GraphQL only.
Search the whole database in plain English
AI search covers all eight products from a single endpoint: companies, people, investors, talent signals, interest signals, funding rounds, acquisitions and IPOs. Describe what you're looking for and Specter maps it to the right filters and returns full record objects.
Saved searches become live feeds
Build a search or list in the app, pull every result programmatically, and subscribe to new results as they appear. Creating and managing searches and lists is free; credits are spent only when you pull data.
Your team's network, queryable
Network endpoints expose everyone your team knows on LinkedIn, deduplicated across teammates: who you know at a target company, their roles, and which teammate holds the warmest path in.
Misses never cost a credit
Enrichment resolves a company, person or investor from a domain, LinkedIn URL or email, charged per matched result. If Specter doesn't hold a record yet, it begins gathering it on demand, so your next call can hit.
Bigger pages, fewer round-trips
Pages return up to 5,000 records at 15 requests per second. Harmonic's endpoints cap at 50–500 entities per request. For warehouse-scale pulls, a materially faster path.
Built to be consumed by your agents
Docs published as llms.txt, llms-full.txt and Markdown-per-page, and the same data reachable through Specter MCP. Harmonic's API powers its own Scout; Specter's is built for yours.
Specter API vs Harmonic API
Specter figures come from the API docs; Harmonic figures from its published docs and pricing. "Not published" means Harmonic doesn't state the figure publicly.
The trusted private market data platform for VCs.
Teams that evaluate every tool keep choosing Specter.
“Specter will become table stakes for any fund that wants to be in the top quartile.”
Richard Dulude
Partner, Underscore VC
“In a short period of time, Specter has become an integral part of how we ensure we have 100% coverage of the markets we operate in.”
Gideon Hayden
Partner, Leaders Fund
“We've already found one of our investments through Specter. Its value extends well beyond pure sourcing.”
Pietro Invernizzi
Founder, firedrop
See why Specter is the trusted private market data layer for over 400 VCs.
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The most complete platform for private markets.
Over 400 VC funds use Specter as their private market data layer: 55M+ companies, 550M+ people and 1M+ transactions, with new signals landing every day.
The app investors live in.
Search 55M+ companies, follow the signal feeds, and see your team's warmest path into every deal.
Companies
People
Investors
Transactions
Company | Tagline | Growth Stage | HQ Location | Employee Count | 3m | Web Visits | 3m | Total Funding Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Vendra | Vendra provides AI vendor and project management for hardware teams. | Pre-seed / Seed | San Francisco, US | 9 | +80% | 12,795 | +6,670% | $500K |
 Beyond Reach Labs (YC W26) | Beyond Reach Labs develops deployable high-expansion structures. | Pre-seed / Seed | New York City, US | 11 | +450% | 7,910 | +80% | $10.5M |
 Phoebe | Phoebe schedules care providers automatically, reducing burnout. | Pre-seed / Seed | New York City, US | 27 | +145% | 16,121 | +70% | $9.5M |
 Autosana (YC S25) | Autosana automates mobile app end-to-end testing using AI. | Pre-seed / Seed | San Francisco, US | 7 | +75% | 12,077 | +101% | $3.2M |
 Vignetim | Vignetim simplifies European vignette and toll purchases. | Pre-seed / Seed | Almere Stad, NL | 11 | +57% | 5,765 | +619% | — |
 BLINQ App | BLINQ provides digital business cards for instant contact sharing. | Pre-seed / Seed | Mountain View, US | — | — | 1,340,752 | +14% | $100K |
 Amity Robotics | Amity Robotics provides AI-powered robotic platforms. | Pre-seed / Seed | Bangkok, TH | 19 | +36% | 19,273 | +4,893% | $7M |
 GojiberryAI | GojiberryAI finds high-intent leads for B2B companies. | Pre-seed / Seed | Paris, FR | 14 | +56% | 264,904 | +15% | $500K |
 Dialogue AI | Dialogue AI conducts AI-assisted customer interviews at scale. | Pre-seed / Seed | Los Angeles, US | 16 | +14% | 121,897 | +208% | $6M |
 Fort | Fort is a wearable for strength training and rehabilitation. | Pre-seed / Seed | San Francisco, US | 6 | +20% | 28,705 | +155% | $500K |
 Complir | Complir automates retail product compliance with AI. | Pre-seed / Seed | Copenhagen, DK | 19 | +19% | 10,585 | +510% | $2.6M |
 Carrot Credit | Carrot Credit offers asset-backed lines of credit. | Pre-seed / Seed | Suleja, NG | 16 | +14% | 15,250 | +336% | $4.2M |
 Ultra | Ultra builds intelligent warehouse robots for e-commerce. | Pre-seed / Seed | New York City, US | 26 | +63% | 11,605 | +211% | $500K |
 Palmier | Palmier provides autonomous AI coding agents. | Pre-seed / Seed | San Francisco, US | 2 | 0% | 202,717 | +2,209% | $500K |