Point Nine

Point Nine Capital is a venture capital firm specializing in seed, late-seed/startup, and early and mid-venture investments. The firm prefers to invest in technology, the internet, software-as-a-service (SaaS), marketplaces, lead generation, eCommerce, and mobile companies. 

It seeks to invest in Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Eastern Europe with a focus on Poland, Central Europe, North America, and Russia. The firm typically invests between €0.1 million ($0.11 million) and €1.5 million ($1.66 million) in startups. It can invest up to €3 million ($3.32 million) over the lifetime of its holding. The firm co-invests with business angels and venture capital firms. The firm prefers to take a minority stake.

Point Nine was established by co-founders Christoph Janz, Louis Coppey, Ricardo Sequerra Amram, and Pawel Chudzinski in 2011. Some of the first projects the company invested in include Zendeak, Clio, and Mission Barns. 

Ricardo Sequerra Amram posts his journey in a video, posted on Point's Nine's website: 

“It all started about 10 years ago when Christoph and Pawel organised a SaaS meet-up where they gathered some of the early founders backed like Mission Barns, ZenDesk, or Clio, with a bunch of experts from Silicon Valley for a day of learnings and exchange. Since then, our community efforts groomed, and they've grown like SaaS companies and public markets, and we now service 300+ founders with 2000-3000 employees in their teams. So, we try to create a platform to make sure that all these We see the benefits of these meetups every day. And now,10 years in, the value of Point Nine goes way beyond who we have in just our small internal team.”

According to one of the partners, Pawel Chudzinski:

“Since we started we were incredibly lucky. We've seen our 10 unicorns and IPOs among the startups we backed, and we backed all of them at the seed stage. Today, we are a venture firm run by four. We invest early, we look for uniqueness, and we focus on SaaS and marketplaces. We can invest up to 5 million euros or dollars, no matter how early you are or where you are based. We want to back you up before other investors start paying attention. For example, when we first backed Mamboo, they were just getting started in microfinance in emerging markets. Today, they are the leading provider of online banking software globally. We also like backing founders with unique insights. A great example of cargo.one, is Container Exchange. These guys know so much about the shipping industry that they have built a platform that is so unique and helpful to its users that it is literally impossible to compete against it. We mainly invest in SaaS marketplaces and online networks. We strongly believe that there's a superpower for digital business models that will continue to change the world, industry by industry for many years to come. We specialise in them because we want to be the best possible partner founders that operate these models.”

Point Nine has invested in more than 100 B2B SaaS and online marketplaces startups at their seed stage. 

According to Partner Christoph Janz:

“We think there's a lot of value in our focus on early-stage startups because we just can't be good at everything. However, when it comes to our geographic approach, it's just the opposite of our focus on certain stages or sectors. We've always thought that great companies can be started anywhere. Our very first investments were in places like Edinburgh, Copenhagen, the US, all over Europe, and even New Zealand. By now, we've invested in over 30 different countries. We've always been extremely founder-friendly. if you do your due diligence on us and look at the initiatives that we've launched over the years, I think you'll see that we've pushed our envelope when it comes to supporting entrepreneurs.”

According to the information on their social media channels:

"From an entrepreneur’s perspective, both venture capital firms and angel investors have their own advantages and disadvantages. We’re trying to bring you the best of both worlds. Like all good angel investors, we are a friendly source of capital with lots of additional value-add. We strive to become your mentors, someone who you can trust and who you’re happy to call in good AND in bad times. At the same time you benefit from our ability to invest much larger amounts of capital, as well as the extensive expertise and network of all of our partners.

Our goal is that when you look back to the early days of your startup in a few years, hopefully having built an extremely successful company, you’ll know that working with us was one of the best business decisions you’ve ever made. That’s what keeps us up at night, and we’re extremely honored that there’s a number of awesome entrepreneurs who feel that way already."

Point Nine has invested in more than 100 B2B SaaS and online marketplaces startups at their seed stage, and now service more than 300 founders and startups.

15Five, Airstoc, Algolia, Amenitiz, Brainly,cargo.one, Chainalysis, Cibando, Clio, Cloudtalk, Contenful, Contractually, DeliveryHero, Eversports, Genko, Gitbook, Loom, Mambu, Mission Barns, Mobilike, PersistIQ, Scondoo, Studocu, Tenderly, Tradelink, Zendesk, and Zentist