SaaStr 187: Point Nine's Christoph Janz on Making Venture Capital More Human, WTF Really Is Product Market Fit & The Leading Indicators of Scaling and Repeatable Customer Acquisition Channels

Christoph Janz is the Managing Partner @ Point Nine Capital, one of Europe’s leading early stage funds with a portfolio that includes the likes of ZenDesk, Algolia, Delivery Hero, Revolut, Contentful and many more incredible companies. Before that, he co-founded two Internet startups (DealPilot.com in 1997 and Pageflakes in 2005). In 2008 he became an angel investor and discovered Zendesk, Clio, FreeAgent – and his love for SaaS. Christoph is also the writer of the phenomenal blog, The Angel VC, a must read for me.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Christoph made his way from serial founder to angel in ZenDesk to today, founding one of Europe’s most successful early stage funds in the form of Point Nine Capital?
• Product market fit is one of the most used words in the industry, so wtf really is product market fit? What does product market fit look like in terms of metrics across the core disciplines: MRR, churn and conversion from free to paid?  
• What is the hailed question that all Series A and B investors want to know? What does it take to make the graduation from Seed to Series A today? In terms of scaling, why does pouring fuel on the marketing fire not always equal more leads? How does Christoph view the role of outbound? Why is it such high hanging fruit? What is core to executing outbound successfully?
• Point Nine did a comprehensive assessment of how founders view the fundraising process, what were the biggest elements founders dislike about the process? From now on, what is the thinking behind the strategy that Point Nine will always do their pro-rata in the Series A? How does this affect reserve allocation?  

Christoph’s 60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Christoph know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
2. What does it take for European founders to make it big in the US?
3. Most common mistakes CEOs make in the scaling process?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Christoph Janz