The Startup Journey

Jeff Cornwall quoting The Christman Group LLC (a firm that specializes in exit planning for entrepreneurs) has a list of items which a buyer woult look at when determining what multiple of your EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation and Amortization) to pay for your company. Number 9: Depth of Management and of the Sales Team If an owner wears all of the hats, including generating most of the sales, the price will go down. A strong and experienced management team to operate the business is key value driver. Number 8: Customer Base If a company has limited customer concentration with no single customer representing more that 5-10% of revenues the price goes up. If the customer base is made up of “blue chip” companies, the price goes up too. Number 7: A Good Story to Tell Telling a company's story is critical in helping the buyer recognize the full value of a business. An extensive confidential offering memorandum that describes the business operation, the marketing an...

Will Price provides a VC's perspective: On Founders: A typical Series A sees the following equity ownership distribution: VC syndicate 50%, option pool 20%, founders 30%. Each subsequent financing will see founders diluted by roughly 20% per financing, such that after three rounds the founder shares represent 30%*.8^2, or 19.2% of the company. The per founder math is very simple - founder shares/# of founders. It almost seems redundant to state that too many founders can greatly impact the downstream economics of the founders, however, I have seen very smart, experienced founding teams launch with 5-6 founders and come to realize later that the per founder ownership in the entity creates real incentive problems. The VCs will rarely take less than 40-50% of a Series A and the pool is almost always 20%. Therefore it is important to think through the distribution of the remaining shares to ensure that each member of the team is truly required to get the company off the ground. Teams ...