The Ledger
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Point Nine broke its rules to invest in Revolut's seed round
“When I was with .9 and reinvested in Revolut, it was both outside of the focus, right? It's a mobile consumer app. It was actually had just closed the seat round with Balderton. So there was no actionable opportunity and the only way to get in was actually for…”
Christoph Janz: Point Nine's best investments were in unfamiliar sectors
“Some of the best investments that we've made at .9 or that I personally made as an angel investor were probably in spaces where I didn't know too much about it.”
Point Nine issued Loom a seed term sheet after one 45-minute call
“Our seed round that was co-led by .9 Capital, Christoph and the .9 team, Had a ton of conviction around Loom after only meeting one of the co-founders, Shahid, and after 1:45 minute conversation, they put a term sheet on the table, and we ended up working toge…”
Massive user engagement allows early startups to figure out monetization later
“If you can show that this is something people really love, and there's just huge traction in terms of usage or growth, then we think that monetization can often, often follow that.”
Janz: Founders Are Better Off Running a Structured Fundraising Process
“And I think in most cases, founders are better off if they run a process, so they control the timeline, they talk to several investors in parallel, so they have more options.”
Janz: Point Nine does not expect market size clarity at seed stage
“It doesn't mean that we want or expect to have clarity on the market size by the time we invest. I think we've learned like many other investors that it's really, really hard to predict a market size”
Christoph Janz: Right SaaS pricing unlocks new customer acquisition channels
“If you have got your pricing wrong or right, because the right price doesn't only mean that you charge more. It opens up totally new ways to acquire customers. If you have much higher customer lifetime values”
Point Nine Capital avoids rigid MRR thresholds for seed investments
“So as some I mentioned right now, it's for us, because we're at such an early stage, hard to set kind of absolute barriers or criteria, because it depends so much on how, how far the company is, right? So we don't like to give out a number of total MRR or some…”
Point Nine's initial exit target for Contentful was a few hundred million
“I think we didn't dream beyond an outcome of a couple of hundred millions in exit valuation. Our ambition started to get bigger over time, but, like, we had a tiny fund, like, we, I guess the term unicorn wasn't even coined yet, like, we were not really expect…”
Contentful's seed pitch to Point Nine was a cold email in 2012
“He sent me that email in March, 20 12. It was an cold email with a subject SaaS seed funding storage room.”
Contentful's original seed pitch deck targeted a $12M total addressable market
“I had a look at the original deck in preparation for this meeting with you, Harry, and it's unbelievable if you look at this from the perspective of today, that Sasha is the original market at twelve million dollar As the addressable market, he did mention tha…”
Point Nine invested under $250K in Contentful's $500K seed round
“Contentful's First round, we call the seed round, was 500 K. And we didn't even do it alone because we thought this was way too much for our tiny little fund. So we did less than half of it and helped Sasha fill up the round with others or help him get Balders…”
Point Nine invested in smoothie subscription startup Green Blender
“But this is actually one, this is which is a little unusual, I guess, for us, but I still really like it's a New York based company called Green Blender. And what they do actually is a smoothie as a service subscription play. Where, which sounds maybe a little…”
Point Nine Capital requires 6 to 12 months of usage data
“In, in, in most cases, this means that we invest when there's some six to 12 months of first data of actually usage of the product or maybe customers paying for this.”
Point Nine Capital targets seed investments that can return the fund
“And for us, what we aim for when we do an investment is trying to get to an outcome that at least returns the fund once, right?”
Point Nine Capital closed a €55M seed fund in May 2015
“For us at .9, we have a seed fund, right? The most recent fund that we closed in May this year is fifty five million euros.”
Point Nine Capital focuses heavily on SaaS and marketplaces
“So at .9, for instance, we're very focused on, on SaaS and marketplaces, right?”
Point Nine Capital invested in Typeform before the company began monetizing
“We looked at it quite early in the company's lifetime. They had the product pretty far, but they didn't charge users yet, right? They were kind of in an extended beta version, and we saw the product, and we just really loved it, and so we took a leap there, an…”
Point Nine Capital is named after software version 0.9
“The name .nine actually comes from the product version.nine, so we want to invest when it's not Product version one point zero yet, right? But it's almost there in a way.”
Point Nine took three to four months to close Contentful deal in 2012
“It took us, I think, two months to do our work and come to a decision, and then probably another one or two months to actually do”
Tak Lo: Christoph Janz of Point Nine Capital is a top must-read VC blogger
“Chris, Christopher Jans from .9 Capital out in Berlin, I think. Awesome, really great early stage founder, understands the B to B space, but just a really good, again, very insightful investor. Those are the four that I read a lot.”