HOW TO CALCULATE YOUR STARTUP’S EXIT VALUE

In order to value a company that is an acquisition target, or that can be potentially sold in the near future, we use the market approach, which involves analysing comparable transactions and comparable stock-listed companies. In the case of early-stage startups, this market approach cannot be used as the company is too young to be sold. However, the exit value is fundamental to apply early-stage valuation methods: we need to calculate the future exit value of the company to apply the venture capital or similar methods.

The first step is to analyse comparable transactions or companies. This exercise is different from the standard market approach, as the type of transactions and companies that we take into consideration are very different. I recommend using Crunchbase for the analysis. It is not easy to find valuation figures as these are often private, so in some cases the analysis may have to rely on related but not closely comparable companies. When researching comparables, I recommend prioritising the following:

• Transactions or values not older than 5 years, preferably even as recent as 2-3 years
• Companies in the same sectors with a similar revenue generation model, business model and risk profile, a common target region and without a large debt
• Preferably do not include Unicorns, unless your company follows a similar growth strategy
• Focus on Exit Multiples rather than Early-stage Funding Multiples or Multiples of stock-listed companies
• When sufficient Exit Multiples are not present, it’s also appropriate to use Late Stage Funding multiples or values of Recently Stock-listed Companies
• When there is a choice, deals mostly paid in cash and in full are preferable to deals paid in stock or with an earn-out.

What can aid you in the analysis is also knowing what types of companies would be interested in acquiring the startups and what will be the main acquisition motives.

In startup valuation, the multiples that we calculate also differ, as profit multiples are often not available, or not comparable to our startup.

For startups we prioritise Revenue or User multiples, or alternatively other sector-specific growth measures:

• EV/ Sales outlets
• EV/ Number of products
• EV/ Years of operation
• Other sector-specific figure

The result of the research and analysis would be a table like this template below, illustrating the minimum amount of information to include: