Ask HN: How would you value a team?

2 points

11 years ago

I've been kicking around some ideas on how to model a pre-revenue, pre-product company that might be trying to raise money just on team. So in real life they probably have a product idea or something, but lets say they don't, or no one cares yet because they're just a great team with great pedigree. This team is going to start a company but can't unless they have salary. Think ex-googlers or something who want to branch out. This is also the calculation you would do to value an acqui-hire.

Doesn't it make sense to value the company as the future value of an annuity that pays our their profits doing consulting work? The biggest problem with this is that they're hopefully not going to be doing consulting work if they're building a company, but at the same time, this is a common occurrence.

How far off base is this in estimating the value of a company in an acqui-hire or pre-product stage?

Wolfram has a good calculator if you want to play with this. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=future+value+of+annuity

According to this, a $1-1.5M valuation per employee is typical.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-typical-deal-structure-of-an-acquihire

How would that play into a future value annuity model?