Europe’s Point Nine outs new ~€100M fund to back early-stage SaaS and digital marketplaces – TechCrunch

Point Nine, the pan-European early-stage VC focused on SaaS and digital marketplaces, has raised its fifth fund, totalling just short of €100 million (in fact, “P9 V” is a €99,999,999 fund — get it?).

Despite its Berlin, Germany roots, the VC has always operated fairly remotely and invests globally. In total, it has invested in more than 140 companies in 28 countries over the last 10 years.

Historically, Point Nine has been an early backer of well-known and up and coming companies such as Algolia, Brainly, Chainalysis, Contentful, Delivery Hero, DocPlanner, Loom, Mambu, Revolut, and Typeform.

To that end, armed with new capital to deploy, it is largely business as usual for Point Nine. The VC invests between €0.5 to €2.5 million per company initially and says it is committed to participating in the Series As of all portfolio companies. As noted, its investment remit is B2B SaaS and B2B marketplace startups, primarily across Europe and North America.

An equal partnership: ‘a feature, not a bug’

Along with the new fund, Point Nine is announcing the addition of two new partners, Louis Coppey and Ricardo Sequerra Amram. Notably, the firm is moving to an “equal partnership” model (à la Benchmark, meaning that Coppey and Amram will share equal carry (profits) with the firm’s founding partners Pawel Chudzinski and Christoph Janz.

Coppey joined Point Nine as an associate four years ago and led the firm’s investments in PlayPlay, cargo.one, and Qwilr. Sequerra Amram joined Point Nine from Cherry Ventures, where he is said to have sourced and worked with Rekki and Infarm, amongst other companies. Prior to Cherry, he worked in various operational and investment roles at Faber Ventures, Seedrs, and Seedcamp.

“Almost ten years after starting Point Nine, we are thrilled to announce that two up-and-coming stars in the tech industry have joined us as equal Partners,” says Point Nine’s Christoph Janz, in a statement. “Both Louis and Ricardo have demonstrated an extraordinary ability to spot new companies, develop strong bonds with entrepreneurs, contribute to the tech community, and help early-stage startups beat the odds. At ages 29 and 30, they are significantly earlier in their careers than the two of us. That’s a feature of our equal partnership, not a bug,” says Christoph Janz”.