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What Really Matters

The most important thing is to define your goals

Here are eight things investors analyze when making a valuation: [...]

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Charlie Lin, CPA, CMA, a senior director of SageGroup Strategies, Inc. is well experienced at start-ups, joint ventures and , SEC regulation compliance, M&A valuation & due diligence, capital structure, equity and start-up investment or loan, private offering process, originating and closing private equity, fund raising, IPO process, etc. Since 1992, after Big-4 CPA experience with Arthur Andersen, he has held key roles as CFO or controller of both public (Acorn Energy, Deyu Agriculture, Wabtec, etc.) and private heavy manufacturing or high-tech (MicroFabrica, Foxconn, ProAction, etc.) muti-billion or VC-owned companies. He has helped raise $22.5M for Microfabrica (miniature non-invasive medical device), Wabtec (NYSE: WAB) acquiring Ricon Corporation for $73.5M and Deyu’s IPO for $16.6M of preferred shares and warrants. His education and professional background include: a MS in Accounting from the University of Wisconsin, a BS in Accounting from Fu-Jen Catholic University in Taiwan, CPA since November 1998, CMA since April 2000, member of AICPA since April 1999, member of ICPAS (Illinois CPA Society) since March 1999, and member of IMA (Institute of Management Accountants) since July 1998.

Before you take money from a venture capital firm, you'll agree to a valuation — how much your startup is worth. That valuation will also affect how much of your company you own. Optimizing for a higher valuation can sometimes mean owning less of your company, so strategies for each founder can vary widely.

How a valuation is determined, investors say, is more an art than a science. There are standard factors that will be considered before putting a price tag on a startup, but the biggest factor turns out to be demand — how many other investors are vying to put money into your company. That said, there's a lot an entrepreneur can do to influence valuation (aside from, you know, building something that's valuable). The more investors you pitch to and the better you are at telling your story, the more interest you'll generate, which will drive up your price. As a rule of thumb, the valuation will generally be set in line with the return the investor wants — if the seed round is $1 million and your investors want a 10x return, the valuation will likely be set at $10 million.

But investors are far from arbitrary with valuations. "You're buying part of the company as an investor," says Caitlin Strandberg of Flybridge Capital Partners. "The investor wants it to be as accurate as possible." That said, the seemingly "over the top" valuations on the market are a result of investors believing they've found an outlier. These big, fast-growing opportunities are few and far between, so when a someone thinks they've found one, the valuation can jump.