What is your startup's valuation?

Any entrepreneur who is thinking about fundraising has to be prepared for the unavoidable investor question “What is your startup's valuation?” This question becomes increasingly difficult when posed to early-stage entrepreneurs who are usually asked another equally difficult follow-up investor question which is “How did you come up with your valuation?”

Experienced entrepreneurs know that the answer to such a daunting question does not lie in a particular magical number, but instead the answer that investors would like to hear from founders relates to the method/s that the founder has employed to reach the claimed valuation.

The ideal answer to such a question would actually be to relate that several structured valuation methods were used to establish the startup’s target valuation. .. more