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Praying to the God of Valuation

Both Sides of the Table

Something happened in the past 7 years in the startup and venture capital world that I hadn’t experienced since the late 90’s — we all began praying to the God of Valuation. And then in the late 90’s money crept in, swept in to town by public markets, instant wealth and an absurd sky-rocketing of valuations based on no reasonable metrics.

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Want to Know How VC’s Calculate Valuation Differently from Founders?

Both Sides of the Table

Things like “ participating preferred stock &# in legalese unsurprisingly never actually call out, “hey, this is the participating preferred language.&# We got a3x participating liquidation preference with interest (not participating with a 3x cap, but 3x participating. I turned them down.

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In defence of liquidation preferences

The Equity Kicker

It turns out that ‘time bomb’ is the much maligned and, I suspect, little understood, liquidation preference. To be clear, liquidation preferences are sometimes used badly and founders should generally turn away from investors who ask for multiple liquidation preferences.

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More on Liquidation Preferences

Altgate

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Pre-Money Valuation vs Number of Founders Where Do Tech VCs Invest? One of the least understood of these key terms is the liquidation preference. For example, rounds with a preference between 1.1X

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Equity for Early Employees in Early Stage Startups

SoCal CTO

If the company's valuation is $2 million, $90k is 4.5%. Of course, to be able to use this kind of formula, you will need to be able to determine how much impact the person will have and figure out a valuation. I've talked about this topic before in How Investors Think About Valuation of Pre-Revenue Startups. million.

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Cliff Notes S-1: Kayak ? AGILEVC

Agile VC

liquidation preference, 6% accumulated dividend (1). Post-money valuation probably no higher than $12M (2). Series A-1 Preferred. liquidation preference, 6% accumulated dividend. Pre-money valuation was initially set higher but was adjusted to match the Ser B valuation. Series B Preferred.

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Avoid Offensive Liquidation Preferences

The Startup Lawyer

In most equity financing rounds, an investor will ask for (and get) a term called a liquidation preference. A liquidation preference is the amount that must be paid to a preferred stock holder before any sale proceeds may be paid to the holders of common stock (i.e., founders, option holders, etc.).