Berlin-based VC firm Point Nine, backer of Delivery Hero, Revolut and Typeform, has raised a new seed fund of €180m.

The firm’s sixth fund will be used to continue to back B2B marketplaces and B2B SaaS startups. Its strategy is the same as it has been for years: it invests €500k-5m into seed-stage startups. Europe is its home market, though 20-30% of its investments are in the US, Canada, and Turkey, among other countries.

If it backs a startup at seed, it commits to participating in its Series A round. 

Point Nine’s current portfolio includes unicorns such as French search platform Algolia, content management platform Contentful and digital healthcare unicorn Docplanner. 

When Sifted caught up with Point Nine in June last year, its founding partner Christoph Janz, told us that the firm looks for companies that are less in the spotlight and are perhaps a bit more obscure. For example, it invested in a company called Laserhub, a marketplace and a software solution for companies that need laser-cut parts. “This is not an industry I spent much time thinking about before we heard about the company — but it’s gigantic,” Janz said at the time.

So what kind of startups is it looking to back with its fresh fund?

Who’s Point Nine interested to back?

Point Nine likes to keep things simple, hence why its funding strategy hasn’t changed — even amid the current market downturn and the competitive dynamics around seed investments. 

“Seed got very competitive in the last few years, with many new seed funds being raised, and many later-stage funds doing a lot of seed investments,” says Janz on Monday, a day after the fund was announced on Linkedin. “This year, things have slowed down a bit but it continues to be a competitive market, which is great for founders!”

Janz says that Point Nine will not be investing any more cautiously than usual given the current market conditions and is looking to back companies in the following verticals:

• Vertical SaaS (like its portfolio company Amenitiz, an operating system for independent hotels) 
• B2B marketplaces 
• Developer tools, APIs, data infrastructure
• Crypto infrastructure
• Creative software
• B2B SaaS leveraging AI and computer vision
• Climate software

The B2B slowdown

The B2B market has been on fire in recent years. In 2021, funding for European SaaS hit a peak of €41.5bn, according to Dealroom data, and startups in the sector raised 39 $100m+ rounds.

Now, valuations for late-stage deals are beginning to slide amid the downturn, with Klarna’s 85% drop in valuation being among the most notable examples. 

“So far, mostly B2B SaaS companies that sell to other startups or tech companies are affected. However, I think it’s very likely that we haven’t seen all of the effects yet,” says Janz. 

“I expect 2022, and maybe 2023 too, to be a somewhat slower year for many B2B companies.”

Miriam Partington is Sifted’s DACH correspondent. She also covers future of work, coauthors Sifted’s Startup Life newsletter and tweets from @mparts_