Fortino Ventures’ managing partner and talent acquisition expert reveal why it is reinvesting in Spott’s $21 million Series A round.
After a successful $3.2 million seed round in 2025 – led by Base10 Partners, with participation from Y Combinator, Fortino Capital, True Equity and various angel investors – the Leuven-based AI platform for recruitment agencies is bringing these supporters together again to scale internationally. Balderton Capital is leading the $21 million Series A round, with Base10 Partners, Y Combinator and Fortino Ventures doubling down on their initial investments.
“We believed in this founding team from pre-seed,” Fortino Ventures managing partner Filip Van Innis points out. “The exceptional commercial traction we’re seeing now is simply the translation of a strong product and relentless work ethic into results.”
Founded by Lander Degrève (CEO), Manu Vanderveeren (COO) and Samuel Smeys (CTO), Spott serves as a single workspace for recruiters, with AI embedded across the entire hiring workflow, turning emails, CVs and conversation transcripts into an instantly searchable database. It also actively scans for new business opportunities and automatically matches previous candidates to newly opened roles. This frees up consultants to focus on what requires a human touch, such as conducting interviews and finding the right match.
“There is something rather satisfying about watching founders start with a strong conviction about a gap in the market and then execute so quickly that the market has little choice but to agree,” admits Filip. Since the start of 2026, Spott’s revenue has grown tenfold, with more than three-quarters of that currently coming from outside of Belgium (approximately 20% in APAC and 15% in the US), including clients such as HW Anderson – where the platform made more than 100,000 candidate profiles and years of conversations searchable, enabling recruiters to find candidates faster and achieve up to 30 percent more placements.
Samuel Smeys, Manu Vanderveeren and Lander Degrève
More than just venture capital
“When Filip told me we were looking to invest in Spott, an AI-first CRM/ATS, I was sceptical, yet intrigued,” reflects Jo Wilkinson, Fortino Capital’s talent acquisition expert across portfolio companies, who has worked with about 10 recruitment-specific CRM solutions over the years, ranging from downright clunky dinosaurs to some genuinely great solutions.
“How were they doing to disrupt the market and offer something that wasn’t already out there?”
However, instead of simply doing the usual due diligence, Fortino’s talent acquisition team went all in from the start, becoming early adopters of the platform. “Things I love? The AI Notetaker, the customer support – it rocks –, automatic call scheduling, AI candidate matching, and the fact I can ask it a question about a candidate and have the answer in seconds,” Jo shares. “They also genuinely listen to our product improvement ideas — and then actually implement them… And they ship faster than Wout in Roubaix”
She has even become a client reference and ran a live demo for one of their prospects, who then signed. “Turns out we do a bit more than just invest the VC cash,” Jo quips.
Doubling down on recruitment
The proceeds of the Series A will go toward growing the company’s employees from 40 to 60 people by the end of 2027, spread across its offices in Leuven, New York and Sydney. “A big part of this round goes into expanding our engineering team, to continue building out the global AI-native operating system for recruitment agencies,” says Samuel.
“Recruitment software is only at the beginning of a major leap with AI, the biggest change the industry has ever seen. That wave has only just begun, and we are perfectly positioned to become the leading global player in it,” concludes Lander.
