Helping Spectral Energy Navigate Europe’s Fragmented Energy Markets

Spectral Energy is a fast-growing, investor-backed technology company on a mission to build smart energy systems for the real estate and energy sectors, that turns energy complexity into measurable value. Its flagship product, STELLAR, brings energy assets together in one intelligent layer to optimize performance, unlock flexibility and generate higher revenues across multiple energy markets. The result: more resilient energy infrastructure, cost-effective renewable integration, and greater value unlocked from customers’ energy assets. 

Expanding STELLAR across Europe comes with complexity. Despite moves toward regulatory harmonization, each country maintained distinct rules, competitors, and market dynamics. Success required a structured evaluation of product–market fit, competitive intensity, and long-term attractiveness to guide market entry decisions 

Navigating fragmented markets 

Spectral turned to Venture IQ as part of building its internationalization strategy. Our role was to cut through the complexity and provide a clear, evidence-based view of the most attractive markets. 

We combined deep market knowledge with our AI-enabled platform, Catalist, to deliver insights faster and more accurately than traditional consulting approaches. Catalist automates critical tasks like company identification, data gathering, and classification — allowing our consultants to focus where it matters most: translating raw data into actionable intelligence. 

Turning Data Into Direction 

For Spectral, we launched a two-phase assessment. First, a broad market scan of the energy flexibility sector across Europe, where Catalist quickly surfaced and classified relevant companies. This analysis, combined with market data, narrowed the field to six priority markets for deeper evaluation. 

Next came a competitor deep dive. Catalist’s AI-powered auto-tagging streamlined the process of filtering and categorizing competitors while capturing crucial local dynamics — work that would have otherwise taken weeks of manual effort. The result was a comparative view of how competitive landscapes differed across geographies

To tie everything together, we built a custom ranking matrix, integrating findings from both phases. Based on 20 key metrics, the framework grouped countries into three categories: early-stage opportunities, immediate opportunities, and less attractive markets. 

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Turning analysis into action 

The outcome was a clear, prioritized roadmap that allowed Spectral to focus resources on high-value markets and move forward with confidence. Today, the company has already executed on two of the recommended markets — proof that the analysis was translated directly into action.

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