Artur Banach

Artur Banach is the former CEO and founder of NetSpring. Since 2019, he has been using experience gained in building and international scaling of technology companies as a Partner in the Movens Capital fund. He is one of the masterminds behind the recent spectacular growth of venture capital investments in Poland – in 2022, they have increased twentyfold compared to 2018.

Before launching the fund, he invested in 9 technology companies, of which 5 brought a very high (10 x CoC) return from the invested capital. He is also a graduate of the VC Executive Program at Berkeley University.

In recent years, Artur Banach has been focusing on developing Movens VC which had been launched in mid-2020 (in addition to its twin fund, Movens Growth Equity). This is a Warsaw-based early-stage fund investing in technology start-ups with a global potential, and focusing on companies that revolutionise traditionally large industries, mostly by using AI/ML in process automation, companies supplying e-commerce solutions, and start-ups operating in the marketplace or SaaS model.

He supports the most ambitious founders from Poland and Central and Eastern Europe in the first stages of building European and global technological diamonds. The fund has previously invested in, among others, Vue Storefront, Packhelp, StethoMe, Woltair, Doctor.one, The Village Network, SKY ENGINE AI, Talkie.ai, Demoboost or Epinote.

Thanks to Movens VC investments, more than EUR 9 million ended up with 16 start-ups from Poland, Lithuania, Czechia and Germany. In spite of the global crisis and the war in Ukraine, Movens VC portfolio companies have successfully obtained successive rounds of financing, almost EUR 65 million in total, with the company value growing 4.5 times on average in each round.

Movens VC co-investors include the best European and American VC funds, such as: Y Combinator, Creandum (the first investor of Spotify), Early Bird (the first investor of UIPath), Westly (one of the first investors of Tesla), 500 Startups, Speedinvest and dozens of others which contribute their experience in supporting the exponential growth of portfolio companies at subsequent stages of development. In addition to the great performances of start-ups, of key importance for this success was the fact that the fund managed to build relationships with more than 300 Western VCs.

Both the fund itself and the portfolio companies garnered many accolades or were placed high in various categories: in the Dealroom Prominence Rank (among the top 5 funds in Poland in 2022) and the industry MamStartup list (Brave Sowing category dedicated to early start-ups).

In its investment policy, Movens Capital is guided by the potential growth of the investment. It does not, however, forget to support companies who have an opportunity to solve key challenges faced by contemporary society.

The mission of the fund is also to lay the foundations for long-term growth of the start-up ecosystem in Poland and CEE. Key initiatives include the Movens Academy (a Q4 2022 example) which is an educational project for founders, and Movens Talent Pool, a platform for people interested in joining the leading Polish start-ups.