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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. How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? What happened? It was 1991.

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7 Goodwill Factors Will Raise Your Business Valuation

Startup Professionals Musings

When it’s time to sell your company, or get new investors, valuation is the key parameter to success or disappointment. In my experience as an angel investor to startups, goodwill disagreements are perhaps the most common reason that you will fail to close interested investors as an entrepreneur.

Valuation 368
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10 Goodwill Elements To Raise Your Business Valuation

Startup Professionals Musings

For early-stage startups, the goodwill component can easily exceed the size of all the financial elements together, or can just as easily mark a company with good financials as not investable. For startups, the entrepreneur and founder is almost always the face of the company.

Valuation 311
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5 Stages Of The Market Lifecycle Gate Startup Success

Startup Professionals Musings

As a frequent advisor to new entrepreneurs and startups, I often hear your frustration with being treated differently from other startups by investors, on expectations for valuation , traction, and market size. Valuations here are always low, and funding generally depends on friends and family, or a few forward-thinking angels.

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5 Keys To Negotiating Your Fair Share Of Any Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

I always tell entrepreneurs that two heads are better than one, so the first task in many startups is finding a co-founder or two. The default answer, to keep peace in the family, is to split everything equally, but that’s a terrible answer, since now no one is in control, and startups need a clear leader. Now comes the reality check.

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What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

Both Sides of the Table

At our mid-year offsite our partnership at Upfront Ventures was discussing what the future of venture capital and the startup ecosystem looked like. We drew this conclusion after a meeting we had with Morgan Stanley where they showed us historical 15 & 20 year valuation trends and we all discussed what we thought this meant.

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10 Keys To Raising Your New Venture Funding Potential

Startup Professionals Musings

For early-stage startups, the goodwill component can easily exceed the size of all the financial elements together, or can just as easily mark a company with good financials as not investable. For startups, the entrepreneur and founder is almost always the face of the company.