Christoph Janz and Pawel Chudzinski, General Partners of Point Nine, have brought their early stage startups focused on Software-as-a-Service to San Francisco, VentureBeat reported.
Janz and Chudzinski started Point Nine about five years ago in Berlin but saw the challenge of encountered by European early-stage startups trying to get funding. Janz told VentureBeat that backers in Europe don't really cough out more than $1 million in funding. Instead, they are more comfortable forking out sums from $200,000 to $300,000 which is hardly sufficient. In contrast, seed rounds in the US reach more than $1 million, the report said.
Janz told VentureBeat, "Angel investors are much scarcer in Berlin and Europe than they are here. There, it's much harder for startups to raise funding, and its harder there to raise capital at any stage."
An entrepreneur himself, Janz founded comparison shopping site Dealpilot in 1997 which he sold to Bertelsmann, the German-based media firm, two years ago in a $30 million deal. In 2008, he started and also sold homepage building platform Pageflakes. He then became an angel investor in Zendesk, the Danish cloud software startup, the report said.
Point Nine has two early stage funds. The first fund is worth $10 million while the second fund is close to $80 million. There are seven employees in the startup which invests $1 million on the average. According to Chudzinski, Point Nine was a spin out of incubator Team Europe which is based in Berlin, the report said.
Except for Canada-based software-as-a-service firm Cleo, Point Nine has persuaded nearly all its portfolio firms to open bases in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The companies who will be opening offices in the Valley are Zendesk, Algolia and ShiftPlanning which will also be San Francisco-bound. New Zealand-based Vend will be opening a base in San Francisco, the report said.
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