Six Approaches for Valuing a Startup Business

• The Berkus approach

is a quick and easy way to figure out how much your startup is worth. The starting point is this: do you think the startup will generate $20 million in sales by the fifth year of operation? If you answered yes, you would evaluate your startup using the five main five critical success factors for constructing your startup, including primary value, technology, and execution, strategic partnerships in its core market, production, and subsequent sales.
A thorough analysis is carried out to determine how much value the five main performance factors contribute to the enterprise’s overall value in quantitative terms. The startup is priced based on these figures.

• Market Multiple approach

One of the most widely used techniques for valuing startups. The Market multiple approach functions in the same way as other multiples do. Recent business acquisitions of a similar nature to the startup in question are considered, and a base multiple is calculated using the valuation of the recent acquisitions. The startup is then priced using the business multiple as a starting point.

• The Cost-to-Duplicate approach

requires you to factor in all costs and expenditures related to the startup and product creation. This includes the purchasing of physical properties. These costs are considered when determining the startup’s fair market value depending on all of the expenses.

• The Future Valuation Multiple approach

focuses on predicting the return on investment that investors can expect in the immediate future, say in the next five to ten years. For this reason, several forecasts are made, including five-year revenue projections, growth projections, cost, and expense projections, not to mention and the startup is priced based on these future projections.

• Risk Factor Summation

An approximate initial value for the startup is determined using the effect of various types of business risks, whether positive or negative, is factored into this initial value. A calculation is deducted or added to the initial value depending on the risk’s effect. Some of the risks you may include Management, political, manufacturing, market competition, investment, and capital accumulation, technical and legal risks.

• The Discounted Cash Flow method:

focuses on forecasting potential cash flow movements for a startup. The “discount rate,” or rate of return on investment, is then calculated and used to calculate the value of the expected cash flow. Since companies are still in their early stages and investing in them carries a high risk, a high discount rate is usually applied.