Meet Ricardo, Point Nine’s New Partner
It’s been a year since we tweet-announced that Ricardo Sequerra had joined Point Nine. Today we announced our new fund, P9 V, and this is a good time to share some more background on Ricardo and why we are so excited to have him on board.
It was around two years ago that we were discussing all the things we could do to take Point Nine to the next level and arrived at the conclusion that nothing would have a bigger impact than adding an awesome new partner. One of the folks that caught our eye was Ricardo. He was a valued co-investor with us in EnjoyHQ (formerly NomNom), we were impressed with how he hustled his way into Rekki and heard awesome things about how he identified Infarm and the opportunity around it before anyone else in venture. He also happened to be the flat mate of Louis (true story!). Louis kept on mentioning that Ricardo is the best person in the ecosystem he knew, so at some point we started meeting and getting to know each other better. Very quickly we realised that we might have found the perfect candidate!
While just 30, Ricardo is not a novice to the European early stage scene. He joined Seedcamp right after uni in 2012, then helped Seedrs build their reputation and network in London and worked on some of their early investments. He also led the London expansion for the Portuguese company builder and VC firm Faber Ventures. Most recently, he was a Principal at Cherry. He spent most of his time at Faber working with software startups and worked mainly with marketplace founders at Cherry. He also had complementary geographical and industry experience to Point Nine’s. For example, Ricardo dug deeply into understanding the food industry supply chains and spent most of his time building networks and looking for startup truffles in London and Iberia.
As we’ve said here, the fact that Ricardo has less experience than Christoph and I is a feature of our equal partnership, not a bug. We were not looking for 10s of years of experience but for the steepest trajectory. Someone with an excellent nose for new startups and technologies and an obsession to help early-stage founders win.
While spending more time together and talking to people he worked with, we became impressed with Ricardo’s impeccable reputation in the European startup ecosystem. Ask any founder who worked closely with Ricardo and you will get a AAA reference, highlighting how he helped them think through their go-to-market strategy, hire and structure their teams (“recruiting machine” is a term we heard a few times!), raise their Series A or navigate the emotional ups and downs of the early days of a startup. Above all, we thoroughly enjoyed the process of getting to know Ricardo better, and with every interaction our confidence was increasing further. We could totally see the passion and life-long commitment Ricardo has to early stage investing and company building.
When Ricardo joined Point Nine almost a year ago he hit the ground running right away. In one short year he already sourced and led three exciting investments (none of them announced), helped several of our portfolio companies hire a number of great people, and led various internal Point Nine initiatives. He loves the craft, brings a unique angle of looking at startup opportunities and builds deep relationships with founders.
Ricardo is the first external Partner we have ever hired. At Point Nine, we focus entirely on early stage investing and helping founders build companies. Ricardo’s experience, ambition to become one of the world’s great venture investors and his passion to support early stage startups make him an ideal addition to the Point Nine team. We have the highest conviction Ricardo will excel at this role and are thrilled to welcome him to the team!
