WHY WE STARTED
The gap nobody was closing.
Founded by a cognitive scientist and a data scientist — here's how it started.
A surprising number of solid, profitable businesses are still run on software that hasn't really changed in twenty years. An Access database one person maintains. Spreadsheets emailed around. PDFs stitched together by hand. It works — right up until the day it doesn't.
We kept meeting these businesses and seeing the same thing: the distance between where they were and where modern software could take them was enormous, and almost entirely bridgeable. Going from "one Access file on one PC" to "a cloud platform that forecasts next month's demand" is a real, concrete path. Someone just had to walk it with them.
So we did. Between the two of us we cover the two halves of the problem — how the people using the software think and work, and how the data behind it can be turned into something useful. Most teams have one half. We think you need both.
THE FOUNDERS
Two people, two disciplines.
Iheb Marouani
Co-founder · Cognitive Scientist
Based in Germany, Iheb started out in electrical engineering at TU Kaiserslautern before pivoting to cognitive science at the University of Osnabrück. He works in AI and machine learning and founded Morefficiency LLC. That mix — engineering rigour paired with a cognitive-science read on how people actually work — is what shapes the way PredOpt's software gets designed.
Ahmed Ben Hadj Yahia
Co-founder · Data Scientist
Based in Switzerland, Ahmed holds a master's in data science from EPFL. He has spent years in AI and machine learning, is at home working with data, and has managed a wide range of projects. At PredOpt he leads the data and modelling side of the product.
WHY THE PAIR MATTERS
A great model nobody uses is worth nothing.
You can build a forecasting model that's statistically excellent and watch it gather dust, because the screen around it was designed by an engineer who never asked how a dispatcher reads a number at 6am. You can also build software people love that quietly records its data in a shape no one can ever analyze. Both happen constantly. Having both disciplines under one roof is how we keep them from happening to you — it's the whole point, not a line on a pitch deck.
Want to talk it through?
If your operation deserves software built with a bit more care than usual, we'd like to hear about it.
Get in touch