Both Sides of the Table
JULY 22, 2010
Other founders, “as a privately held company we don’t disclose our valuation.&# Me, “dude, I’m not a journalist. I just want to figure out what a fair valuation is.&# I figured all the VC’s talked so we should. This starts with understanding how VCs and entrepreneurs often see valuation differently.
SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 27, 2011
For your first key hires, three, five, maybe as much as ten, you will probably not be able to use any kind of formula. For example, suppose you're just two founders and you want to hire an additional hacker who's so good you feel he'll increase the average outcome of the whole company by 20%. n = (1.2 - 1)/1.2 =.167. and we have 11.1%
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Rob Go
JUNE 17, 2014
In my last post about raising seed vs. jumping straight to A, I received a good comment from Chris Woods that my analysis neglected to include the impact of option pools that are created at each financing round. There have been others in the past that have detailed the math behind option pools and their impact on venture deals.
Both Sides of the Table
JUNE 5, 2015
In the old days VCs funded off of a “pre-money” valuation. If you add the pre-money valuation (let’s say $8 million) to the amount of money you’re raising (let’s say $2 million) you get the post-money valuation. How much is in the option pool? Why do investors care about this?
Hunter Walker
AUGUST 7, 2017
But employee option pool is important enough that I wanted to briefly expand upon my comment above. While you should expect these sorts of hires to take below market cash comp versus what Google is paying them, this tradeoff needs to be replaced with equity upside.
www.mattbartus.com
DECEMBER 9, 2012
How to pump up your VC valuation. Let’s say you receive a term sheet for a $1 million investment at a $3 million fully diluted pre-money valuation, and you’re kind of disappointed. You have a 20% option pool, so you know this will take your ownership down from 80% to 60%, and the VC will get 25%. Option Pool.
Austin Startup
JANUARY 25, 2020
This was my time at a Wall Street firm that had hired me after I applied for their Junior Stockbroker position, a little while after I graduated from college. But before we got back to work, we had to hire a lawyer to help out with both the SAFE docs and to file our FORM D with the SEC so we can register our raise.
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