Targeting Early-Stage Startups In Europe And Beyond, Point Nine Capital Closes New €40M Fund

Point Nine Capital, the Berlin-based VC that originally spun out of the investment arm of German incubator Team Europe, has announced that it has closed Point Nine Capital II, a €40 million (~$53.7m) fund focused on early-stage Internet investments of approximately €1m upwards in Europe and beyond.

It’s being billed as “new”, succeeding Point Nine’s original and significantly smaller fund, although it’s already made a number of investments, including Brainly, ePetWorld, Kreditech, Positionly, and Vend. Our understanding is that this leaves over three quarters of the new II fund left for future investments.

Meanwhile, Team Europe’s Lukasz Gadowski and Kolja Hebenstreit are stepping down from their role as Venture Partners in Point Nine, although they will act as advisors, with Pawel Chudzinski and Christoph Janz continuing to manage the fund. TechCrunch understands that this is due to a simple conflict of interest that their running of Team Europe represents, with their departure from Point Nine’s investment committee smoothing the way for it to invest more freely in companies that haven’t been incubated by Team Europe, and may even compete with those that have.

(In related news, I’m hearing that Team Europe is currently working on a co-investment fund of its own that will exclusively provide follow-on funding for the startups it incubates.)

Investors in Point Nine Capital II include institutional investors such as Horsley Bridge Partners, RTA Ventures, and SAP Ventures, along with seasoned Internet entrepreneurs Arend Lars Iven and Ron Hillman from Berlin Venture Partners, Michael Ambros and Gunther Schmidt who founded eKomi, the teams behind Cube Investments from Spain, and Xevin Investments from Poland. In addition, Point Nine Capital’s management, and (unsurprisingly) partners from Team Europe, have also invested.

That’s a pretty extensive list of LPs and with €30m+ left to invest, it would seem that this new kid on the European VC block is growing up fast, giving a timely boost to the Berlin scene and Europe’s startup ecosystem as a whole.