Movens Capital

Movens formed around a group of Warsaw School of Economics classmates who executed the 2014 management buyout of Netsprint, Poland’s leading search engine that evolved into a European adtech group. After selling a 70 percent stake to Dirlango in 2015 and the remainder to Innova Capital in 2016, the team launched a series of Movens-branded SPVs that delivered exits in Packhelp (2019) and Fenige (2023), and invested in Salad Story. That operator-and-exit track record became the foundation for Movens Fund 1 in 2020, anchored by PFR Ventures as the institutional LP. (per firm website)

The investment committee draws from the partnership group, which includes Artur Banach, Łukasz Pawłowski, Radosław Rejman, Michał Olszewski, and Maciej Kraus. Each partner brings a distinct operational or investment-banking background — Banach from founding and exiting Netsprint, Pawłowski from M&A advisory and angel investing, Rejman from corporate finance and licensed advisory roles, Olszewski from scaling SkyCash and co-founding an angel network, and Kraus from building and selling Fern Partners to PwC. Three Investment Directors — Przemysław Jurgiel-Żyła, Bartosz Składzień, and Łukasz Lewandowski — lead sourcing and execution across AI, deep tech, and B2B software. (per firm website)

Movens writes initial checks of €250,000 to €3 million across pre-seed to Series A-plus rounds, with the capacity to follow on up to a total of €5 million per company when conviction increases. The firm explicitly reserves follow-on capital within its fund construction to double down on outperformers, which is reinforced by the €60 million Fund 2 corpus. Portfolio companies have historically attracted roughly 9x in follow-on co-investment, totaling €110 million raised from external VCs alongside Movens’ commitments. (per firm website)

Movens acts as both lead and co-investor depending on the round dynamics and syndicate composition. The firm states it is flexible and decisive, comfortable leading rounds and also partnering with angels, early-stage funds, and later-stage investors. Its post-investment support model — 300-plus VC introductions, narrative coaching, and lead-investor matchmaking — is designed to work regardless of the firm’s position in the cap table. (per firm website)

Movens passes on startups without a strong technology core, those lacking intellectual property or defensibility, and teams that do not demonstrate global ambition beyond the CEE region. It also will not invest in companies with no CEE link through revenue, team location, or founder origin, and it avoids businesses that cannot credibly chart a path to €50 million-plus in annual recurring revenue. (per firm website)

Sourcing is driven by the team’s 150-plus years of combined operator experience and a network that spans 300 international VCs across Europe and the US. The firm encourages direct founder outreach — a warm introduction is not required — and typically responds within 48 hours, moving to an investment committee decision within weeks if there is fit. Because the partners were founders themselves, much of the pipeline flows from relationships built during the Netsprint era, the Warsaw School of Economics alumni network, and angel-investing circles. (per firm website)

Movens is a direct descendant of the Netsprint management buyout in 2014, which was led by Partner Artur Banach and involved several members of the current partnership. The experience of taking a Polish search engine and transforming it into an adtech group sold to financial buyers gave the team firsthand conviction in CEE-born tech scaling into larger European markets. That history also created the initial capital base for the Movens SPVs and shaped the firm’s operator-centric culture — nearly every senior investment professional at Movens previously built, managed, or sold a technology business before becoming an investor. (per firm website)