The project deals with the valuation of growth-oriented enterprises (ventures) in an early stage, ranging from pre-seed companies to later funding rounds. The project will extract the main valuation factors out of existing studies on the rating and investment behavior in venture enterprises. The benchmarks – at first valid irrespective of regional, industry or company-stage differences – will be extracted from all the relevant studies. The goal of the project is to develop a model that possesses universal validity for ventures and therefore makes the calculation of a fair company value by simple adjustment of model parameters and by taking into account factors such as company-stage, region and industry of a given venture.
The research on regional, company-stage and industry differences will be stressed by professional Venture Capital analysts. The input of experienced analysts will reveal how the impact of relatively theoretical risk factors on risk assessment and company valuation needs to be adjusted for market contingencies. This will provide substantially more insight into the nature of risk factors and their inner interaction.
The specific challenge in evaluating ventures consists in the wide range of uncertain and qualitative factors such as planning, innovation level, team quality, growth and market potential etc.. Moreover, the ambiguity of said factors is further compounded by individual assessment of analysts and investment managers. An additional problem is the lack of available benchmarks. The project on hand will collect the market data and statistics on defined analysis patterns of professional venture analysts and business angels collaborating with external software partners (pitchscoring.com/dealscreening.com). In order to take account of the existing market practice, market participants (entrepreneurs and investors) will actively partake in the project.