The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 17 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Janz: Founder quality matters more than market size at seed stage
“I think if you have a great team in a really, really bad market, there is a good chance that they will still turn it into like some decent level of success, or maybe they can pivot into a better market. So I think the team is the more important factor of the t…”
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.”
European enterprise software investors universally passed on Zendesk's early rounds
“Everybody in Europe, Who knew anything about enterprise software looked at Zendesk and passed because there were plenty of reasons why this would never work.”
Christoph Janz: Early-stage venture deals in 2021 close within a week
“Totally unbelievable today with the current pace in this environment where everything gets done in a week, right?”
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”
Janz: Professional Services Revenue Does Not Harm Enterprise Valuations
“Obviously, it means that when you present this data to investors in your next round, you, like, need to show it clearly. You have probably two different line items, and it's clear that those different types of revenue have different margins. Maybe one is recur…”
Janz: $500k is now smaller than average VC pre-seed rounds
“And today, as you know, like 500 K is less than the average pre-seed round, right? And seed rounds are often in the millions.”
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: Founders raising at high valuations must maintain disciplined burn rates
“So I think one of the best things you can do as a founder in this environment is raise a lot of money at a very high valuation, but don't use it, or at least don't spend it faster than you would if the money had been much harder to raise.”
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…”
Janz: Contentful took years of slow growth and delays before succeeding
“It was not an overnight success, though. It's not like this company has taken off right away. Like, it took a couple of years of relatively slow growth and ups and downs, and re-architecturing the product takes a year longer than expected.”
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'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…”