Main Capital Partners grows and opens office in Antwerp

Main Capital Partners (”Main”) announces the opening of its office in Antwerp. Besides the opening of the Boston office, this will be the fifth office in its network. Main strengthens its position as a strategic software investor in the Benelux region with a local presence in Belgium. Main sees many investment opportunities in the Belgian software market and expects to realize its first Belgian investment through this expansion in the short term.

As a strategic investor, Main Capital Partners has an exclusive focus on enterprise software since its foundation in 2003. The investor has experienced strong growth in recent years. In Q4 2021 EUR 1.2 billion was raised. The total capital under management of Main today is more than EUR 2.2 billion. In addition, considerable investments were made in recent years to further expand the team as Main grew to more than 60 employees. After starting with the office in The Hague, the opening of an office in the DACH region (Düsseldorf) followed in 2016, Scandinavia (Stockholm) in 2019 and the United States (Boston), which will be operational from Q4 2022. An office in Antwerp will now be added from September 2022. A team of 5 investment professionals is currently working in the office, and it is expected that the team will continue to grow in the coming years.

Pieter van Bodegraven, Managing Partner Benelux: “Main has grown strongly over the last years. Since the foundation of Main we have invested in more than 100 software companies and we are one of the most active Tech Investors of Europe*. However, the Belgian market remained underexposed for us, but also in this market we see beautiful and innovative software companies that fit well with our investment criteria. By opening an office in Antwerp, we now want to change this through local presence and targeted focus. We are already in contact with various parties and expect to realize our first investment in Belgium in the short term.”

Besides investing in new software companies, the Main team will also support current portfolio companies in executing international buy-and-build strategies. The ultimate goal is to create larger and more visible software groups, in addition to strengthening the local presence. Main has a strong presence in the healthcare, public sector, security and human resources software market and is actively looking at acquisitions in the Belgian market with several of these companies.

Sjoerd Aarts, Senior Investment Manager at Main, and co-responsible for the Belgian team: “It is our goal to help Belgian software companies grow, also internationally, just as we have done and still do for the other software companies in our portfolio. We support these companies by sharing our experience with business models, smart partner strategies and selective acquisitions. Our specialized knowledge and expertise, as well as our broad network within the software market that we have built up over the past 20 years, will also be easier to offer to new Belgian software companies through the local team in Antwerp.”

One of the ways in which Main aims to share its knowledge and expertise is by organizing successful events for the software industry such as the annual Main Software 50, a ranking of the 50 most promising (unlisted) software companies. This year the Main Software 50 will be organized for the 11th time, whereby the ranking is now also open to Belgian software companies for the first time. More information about the event can be found here.

*Q2 2022 Pitchbook statistics.