A live, interactive solar system mapping companies across European and US venture — built to visualise deal flow the way an investor actually thinks about it.
The Observatory is a Three.js visualisation that renders my deal flow tracker as a solar system. Each planet represents a sector — Vertical AI, Horizontal AI, AI Infrastructure, Deep Tech & Defence — and the companies I'm tracking orbit as moons. Benchmark-tier companies glow gold. Click a planet to zoom into a vertical. Click a moon to see the company.
The data is pulled live from a separate tracker API, so the Observatory updates automatically whenever the underlying pipeline changes. One source of truth, two interfaces — a sortable table for analysis, a solar system for pattern recognition.
Most deal flow trackers are spreadsheets. They're useful for sorting and filtering but they flatten the landscape into rows. You lose the shape of the market — which verticals are crowded, where the gaps are, how companies cluster geographically.
The Observatory exists to see the landscape rather than just read it. It's the visual layer over a thesis I've been developing on vertical AI in regulated industries — the argument that the same AI problem recurs across healthcare, legal, dental, and veterinary, and that domain expertise and regulatory complexity create moats that horizontal wrappers can't replicate.
Same Problem, Different Waiting Room — vertical AI companies win in regulated industries not through better models, but through deeper domain integration, proprietary data flywheels, and the compliance burden that keeps generalist competitors out.
→ Read the full thesis on lachlansear.com
- Frontend: Next.js, Three.js, deployed on Vercel
- Data: Fetched at runtime from a public API endpoint on the tracker
- Design system: Lora serif headings, IBM Plex Sans body, dark space aesthetic with gold (#D4A574) for Benchmark-tier companies
- lachlansear.com — Investment writing, case studies, thesis development
- tracker.lachlansear.com — Full deal flow tracker (access on request)
Built by Lachlan Sear.