As outlined in a previous post, we at Point Nine are a little unusual for European VC standards, because we very actively invest internationally. We sometimes go a log way (literally) to invest in a startup we fall in love with - we made investments in New Zealand or Canada, for example. Sometimes this can cast the impression that we are not very active in Berlin itself, but this is far from true. We are big fans of the Berlin ecosystem, which is full of great companies, and a are a very active investor here. I thought about this recently and decided to have a look at our fund stats to see what they say about our activity in Berlin vs. elsewhere.
During the last 12 months we made 8 initial investments into new amazing Berlin-based startups (logos can be found in the graphic above), which should make us one of the more active investors in Berlin. These 8 investments also represented the majority of new investments that we made during this period, which totalled 14. The 6 remaining investments were all made outside of Germany. Thus, in the last 12 months, Berlin represented 100% of our German investments and 57% of all the investments that we made (by the number of investments). This does not include follow-on investment rounds, a few of which happened in Berlin too.
The investments we made varied in terms of market segment and setup (we backed first time founders, experienced founders, as well as 'incubator-affiliated' startups). What they all had in common was that they were all fairly early stage - 4 of them were pre-launch investments and 4 were post-launch, with some traction, and we participated in the first 'institutional' round or an extension of it. I would put most of these investments into 'digital marketplaces' category, which is, together with SaaS, a focus area for us at Point Nine. Our average investment amount was close to 500k Euro.
So while being active outside of Berlin and Germany, we are still very focused on Berlin, are very actively investing here and plan to continue doing so in the future.