Funding

Christoph Janz on SaaS fundraising in 2018 and how startups should use data

This week’s episode of SaaS Open Mic features a live discussion from the Berlin edition of Mogul I/O, our event series bringing industry leaders together around the topic of sustainable growth.

“I think the table stakes have gone up in the sense that if in 2018 you’re not on top of these metrics, I’m less patient — there’s no excuse for not knowing this.”

Christoph Janz (@chrija) is managing partner at Point Nine Capital — a venture capital firm that’s highly prevalent in the world of SaaS.

After founding several internet businesses in the 90s and early 2000s, Christoph converted to a career in venture capital and made several early investments in companies such as Zendesk, FreeAgent and Geckoboard.

Today, Point Nine invests in early stage companies with a focus on SaaS and marketplaces. If you’re not a regular reader, make sure you check out the team’s excellent thought leadership content!

Topics covered in this episode

  • What it takes for SaaS startups today to raise venture capital
  • Whether you should aim to create a moat of defensibility
  • How startups should be using data today
  • Whether startups should aim to dominate a niche before expanding to wider market segments
  • How Point Nine Capital is making fundraising suck less for founders
  • Whether it’s possible for startups to shift from linear to exponential growth

ChartMogul CEO Nick Franklin talking to Christoph at the Mogul I/O Berlin event.

Listen to the episode

As always, you can find this episode — along with all previous episodes — in your podcast player of choice. Just search for “SaaS Open Mic”. If you enjoy it, please take a moment to leave us a review, it’d really help us reach a wider audience. Thank you!

Ed Shelley

Former Director of Content

@Mr_Ed