Marc Moens

Marc Moens is a Partner at Pentech, an Edinburgh-based venture capital firm backing seed and early-stage UK software companies. He joined Pentech as a partner in 2008 and has been with the firm for more than 16 years, focusing on companies that make heavy use of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence, that build marketing-optimisation solutions, or that grow through network effects.

Before becoming an investor, Moens was an operator and academic. He earned a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where he led a research group working in natural language processing (NLP). He left the university to co-found Rhetorical Systems, a text-to-speech company, serving as its CEO; Pentech was one of Rhetorical's investors from 2001, and the company was sold to a US speech-technology firm (ScanSoft/Nuance) in December 2004 — Moens subsequently held a VP role at ScanSoft. This combination of deep NLP/speech expertise and startup-founder experience underpins his investment focus on AI- and data-driven businesses.

At Pentech, Moens is a hands-on partner who takes board seats and works closely with founders on strategy and on introductions to later-stage growth investors. He has served on the boards of portfolio companies including Digital Fineprint and Hubdub.

• Invests at seed and early stage in UK-based software companies, with typical cheques around £1M; Pentech can lead rounds or join syndicates.
• Personal areas of interest: data science, machine learning and AI; marketing-optimisation software; and businesses that grow through network effects.
• Looks for "an ambitious and capable leadership team, looking to build the next category-defining company."
• Firm-level thesis: "We focus on seed and early stage funding for UK based software companies to help them start and grow" — offering hands-on help with strategy and warm introductions to growth-stage investors.
• Track record skews toward technical, defensible products (NLP, ML, data) that can scale to acquisition by large strategics.