Victoria Sienczewski's path from Head of Strategic Initiatives at Moonfare to AI entrepreneur wasn't accidental.

"Working directly with Steffen, how we explored the potential of AI, directly inspired the business I eventually launched," she says.

Today, she's the Founder of AuumAI, a company that automates part of the labour intensive due-diligence process for institutional investors.

We caught up with Victoria to discuss how Moonfare became instrumental for her next professional challenge.

Your Stanford Economics and Harvard MBA degrees are impressive. How did they lead to a job at Moonfare?

After Harvard, I worked as an outsourced Chief Investment Officer, advising endowments on asset allocation, manager selection and performance oversight. Later, I helped launch a fund-of-funds from the ground up.

These experiences led me to Moonfare. I was fascinated by the company’s mission to democratise access to private equity. Moonfare's fund selection process, their bread and butter, was something I was very interested in.

Is that what convinced you to take the job?

Partly. I was also impressed by the calibre of the team during the interview process. And the role meant reporting directly to Steffen, the Founder, and I knew I could learn a lot from him.

You were our Head of Strategic Initiatives. What did that involve?

It was a broad role focused on strategy development. At one point, I led initiatives exploring how AI and blockchain could support Moonfare's growth.

For a while I worked with teams to answer questions like: How might AI impact our business model? Where can we adopt it internally? Should we build the tools ourselves or use external providers? I thought it was fascinating.

What was a highlight of your time at Moonfare?

One thing I would call out was working externally with the World Economic Forum. They were doing a study on democratising private markets, and I was asked to contribute as an expert. That was a really incredible experience.

Beyond specific projects, Moonfare has a strong entrepreneurial culture. There's a willingness to push boundaries and that echoes across the organisation. I enjoyed running those types of initiatives.

You mentioned learning from Steffen. Can you tell us more?

Yes, I would describe him as a visionary leader with deep industry experience and a wonderful mentor.

Any time there was a new development in disruptive technology, like AI or blockchain, he wanted to be on the cutting edge. He supported me in directing a significant amount of internal time to discover how we could adopt it. That was a huge learning experience for me.

Were the learning opportunities what you enjoyed most?

Yes. I would also say that working with high-calibre people was the reason I really enjoyed my time at Moonfare. I got to work with great colleagues.

Marine is an incredible and inspirational leader, I learned so much from her. Also, Philip and Pavel on the investment team and many others.

How did Moonfare lead to starting your own company?

I spent a significant amount of my time at Moonfare exploring nascent, emerging technologies, in particular, artificial intelligence. That work inspired my thinking in terms of how AI can be applied to manager selection due diligence and monitoring.

I'd always had that entrepreneurial bug, and I loved the entrepreneurial spirit at Moonfare. This allowed me to gain the experience I needed. Then came the right idea, my personal readiness and the right moment from an industry perspective. All of those elements came together for me.

Tell us more about your startup, AuumAI.

We're bringing what I call 'cognitive automation' to sophisticated LPs — large-scale endowments, foundations, family offices and GP seeding and staking firms.

Through AI, we're automating document-heavy, analysis-intensive tasks that these LP teams handle, in areas like due diligence and monitoring of alternative fund managers.

AuumAI helps these LPs operate more efficiently, make better-informed decisions and achieve stronger investment outcomes.

It sounds like the business is progressing well.

Really well. We have just closed a pre-seed round: a fundraise of over $750,000 from institutional investors. It's very exciting.

Congrats! What advice would you give someone joining Moonfare with similar ambitions?

Take time initially to understand the full picture, speak with colleagues across all departments, especially the investment, tech and fund ops teams. That end-to-end perspective will make you far more effective in your job right away, and help you spot opportunities.

Thank you for your time, Victoria. We'll be cheering you on as AuumAI continues to grow.