How we value your startup

Our whole case is transparency. An early-stage valuation is a negotiation, and the founder who can explain exactly how a number was built negotiates from strength. So we publish the method in full — nothing here is a black box, and no AI touches the calculation.

Why five methods, not one

No single method values an early-stage company well. Qualitative methods capture the team and market when there is little financial history; exit- and cash-flow-based methods take over as revenue and forecasts become meaningful. We run all five and blend them, so no one method's blind spot dominates. Every figure traces to a stated assumption or a cited benchmark, and the engine is deterministic — the same inputs always produce the same result.

The two families of method

The five methods fall into two groups by what drives the number — not by whether the market is involved. Every method leans on market data somewhere; the difference is whether YOUR forecast or a STAGE BENCHMARK is the engine of the calculation.

This is why the two can diverge. When the projection-driven range sits far below the benchmark-anchored one, the blend is averaging two different stories about the same company. Usually it means your projections were entered in the wrong units (thousands instead of whole pounds), or your forecast is genuinely modest next to what investors typically pay at your stage. Your report calls this out when the two families don't overlap.

The five methods

Each method is described in plain English first. Open “Explain in detail” for the full technical treatment.

How the methods are weighted

Each stage has a default weight per method, disclosed below. The weights shift from qualitative methods early to the financial methods later; if a method doesn't apply to your company, its weight is dropped and the rest are renormalised.

When a method is left out

A method is dropped from your blend whenever it cannot produce a positive number — for instance when the round you are raising is larger than the whole company value the VC method derives from your projected exit, or when a discounted cash flow is worth less than nothing because the plan burns more early than it earns later. In those cases the method has failed, not answered: zero is a floor, not an estimate. Averaging it in would quietly pull your headline down by that method's full weight and pin it there no matter what the other assumptions did. So we exclude it, renormalise the remaining weights, and print the reason in full on your report and in your PDF.

The range and the sensitivity check

We report a low–mid–high range, not a single number, because that is honest about the uncertainty. The mid is the weighted average of the methods' mid-points; the low and high are the weighted averages of each method's own band. We then re-run the whole blend moving one lever at a time — the discount rate by ±3 points, projected revenue by ±20%, and the comparable-company anchor by ±20% — so you can see which assumptions your valuation is most exposed to.

A lever can only move your valuation through the methods it feeds — the discount rate through the two DCFs, projected revenue through the DCFs and the VC method, the anchor through the two qualitative methods. So if the methods a lever feeds carry little of your blend, that row's three figures come out almost identical. That is a finding, not a fault: it tells you which single assumption your number actually rests on. Each row on your report says which case it is.

Pushed far enough, a lever can also carry a method past the point where it leaves the blend (or lets a previously excluded one back in) — the round becomes bigger than the value the method reaches, or a discounted cash flow crosses zero. The remaining weights renormalise over a different set of methods, so that row's figure can move the oppositeway to the lever: a smaller revenue forecast can show a higher blended mid-point. That is the method mix changing, not the company gaining value — and when it happens, the row's read-out on your report names the methods that changed.

The benchmark data

The market reference points — comparable valuations, exit multiples, discount and survival rates — come from a hand-curated, versioned dataset (currently 2026-07 (2026-07-05)), refreshed on a regular cadence. There are no paid data feeds and no scraping; every figure is an indicative central tendency drawn from public sources:

• •British Business Bank — Small Business Equity Tracker 2025 (UK deal sizes & pre-money)
• •Beauhurst — UK startup valuations & stage benchmarks (Research & Publications)
• •Equidam — valuation methodology
• •PitchBook — VC valuation trends & the quarterly US VC Valuations and Returns reports
• •Prof. A. Damodaran (NYU Stern) — sector EV/Revenue & EV/EBITDA multiples, cost of capital
• •CB Insights — The Venture Capital Funnel (startup survival by stage)
• •D. Berkus — "The Berkus Method: Valuing an Early-Stage Investment"
• •B. Payne (Angel Capital Association) — "Scorecard Valuation Methodology", rev. 2019

Limitations

This report is an indicative valuation analysis to help a founder prepare for and negotiate a fundraising round. It is NOT investment advice, NOT a recommendation to invest or to accept an investment, NOT a formal or independent valuation, NOT an audit, and NOT an FCA-regulated activity. It does not account for every company-specific fact, and it relies entirely on the information you provided and on general market benchmarks that can go out of date. A valuation is ultimately negotiated between a founder and an investor — it is not awarded by a tool. Figures are indicative ranges, not a promise of any price or outcome. Before you rely on any number here, take professional advice appropriate to your situation.