Estimate your startup's valuation with three common frameworks — Revenue Multiple, Berkus Scorecard, and Risk Factor Summation — blended into a range.
Valuing an early-stage company feels like inventing a number, which is why so many founders walk into fundraising conversations without one. That is the worse position — whoever names a figure first anchors the negotiation, and if it is not you, it is the investor.
This calculator applies three established frameworks and blends them into a range you can defend.
Revenue Multiple applies a multiple to your ARR. Straightforward, and the standard approach once you have meaningful revenue — but useless pre-revenue, since anything times zero is zero.
Berkus Scorecard values qualitative factors instead: the idea, the team, the prototype, relationships, and rollout. Built specifically for pre-revenue companies where the traditional maths does not apply.
Risk Factor Summation starts from a baseline and adjusts for risks — management, stage, legislation, manufacturing, competition, technology, and others. It rewards de-risking, which is what early-stage investment largely pays for.
Blending all three matters because each is wrong in a different direction. A pre-revenue company looks worthless on revenue multiple and reasonable on Berkus. The blended range sits where the methods overlap.
Stage — pre-revenue, pre-seed, seed, Series A, or growth.
ARR and a revenue multiple, plus growth rate and gross margin.
TAM in millions, team strength and traction on 1–5 scales, and your investor type — angel, VC, or strategic, since each values differently. A strategic acquirer may pay for fit rather than financials.
Finally, tick which risk factors are in good shape.
You get a blended range and a downloadable PDF.
Stated plainly because it matters more here than on any other calculator: actual valuations are negotiated. They depend on market conditions, deal terms, investor appetite, and how many other investors are interested that week.
Two identical companies raising six months apart can be valued very differently because the market moved. A company with three interested investors is worth more than the same company with one.
Use this to walk in informed rather than blind. Do not treat it as a number to defend to the decimal, and do not confuse it with a formal valuation — that requires a professional, and it is a different exercise with different standards.
The trap founders fall into is optimising for headline valuation alone.
A high valuation with aggressive liquidation preferences, participation rights, or a large option pool carved out pre-money can leave you worse off than a lower valuation on clean terms. The number everyone quotes at dinner is not the number that determines what you receive at exit.
Get a lawyer to read the term sheet. The valuation is one line in it.
A founder with modest ARR and strong growth has an angel asking what valuation she is seeking. Her instinct is to say "we're flexible," which is the weakest available answer.
She runs the calculator: stage at seed, her actual ARR, a multiple appropriate for her growth and margin, honest scores on team and traction, and the risk factors genuinely in good shape.
The blended range gives her something specific to open with, and — more useful — the reasoning behind it. She can explain which factors support the number, which is what turns an assertion into a negotiation position.
Founders preparing to raise. Angels sanity-checking an asking price. Advisors helping clients scope a round. Anyone about to be asked "what valuation are you looking for?" Get your revenue figures right with the MRR / ARR Calculator, check efficiency with the Rule of 40 Calculator, and scope the build with the SaaS MVP Scope & Cost Estimator. Our SaaS product development team builds the products behind these numbers — see the Seotly case study.
"We're flexible" is the weakest answer to a valuation question. Enter your figures above, get a defensible range and the reasoning behind it, and let the investor respond to your number instead of the reverse.
Valuation sets the price, but a new funding round changes who owns what. Our free Equity Dilution Calculator shows exactly how much of the company you are giving up before you sign anything.
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