The Berkus Method: Valuing an Early Stage Investment.

The Berkus Method was updated in November, 2016, and is available here

For those of us who’ve invested in early stage companies, especially technology startups, we have confronted a universal problem.  There are many ways to project the value of a company for purposes of pricing an investment, but all rely upon the revenue and profit projections of the entrepreneur as a starting point.  Many formulas then discount those projections according to some set percentage or by assigning weight to elements of the enterprise.

And in my opinion, all fail to take into account the universal truth – that fewer than one in a thousand startups meet or exceed their projected revenues in the periods planned.

Years ago, confronted with the same conundrum, in the middle 1990’s I came up with a method of assessing the value of critical elements of a startup without having to analyze the projected financials, except to the extent that the investor believes in the potential of a company to reach over $20 million in revenues by the fifth year of business.

[Email readers, continue here…] First published widely in the book, Winning Angels by Harvard’s Amis and Stevenson with my permission in 2001, the method has undergone a number of refinements over the years, particularly in the maximum assigned to each element of enterprise value, reducing those amounts as the investment market adjusted from the craziness of the bubble to more logical values in the years that followed.  Because the Internet has such a long memory and documents from the distant past can be found with ease, a search the “The Berkus Method” today will yield a number of conflicting valuations culled from the many subsequent publications of the method over the ensuing years.

Here is the latest fine-tuning of the method. You should be able to adopt it to most any kind of business enterprise, if your aim is to establish an early, most often pre-revenue valuation to a start-up that has potential of reaching over $20 million in revenues within five years:

If Exists:                                                 Add to Company Value up to:

1. Sound Idea (basic value, product risk)            $1/2 million

2. Prototype (reducing  technology risk)             $1/2 million

3. Quality Management Team (reducing execution risk)    $1/2 million

4. Strategic relationships (reducing market risk and competitive risk)   $1/2 million

5. Product Rollout or Sales (reducing financial or production risk)         $1/2 million

Note that these numbers are maximums that can be “earned” to form a valuation, allowing for a pre-revenue valuation of up to $2 million (or a post rollout value of up to $2.5 million), but certainly also allowing the investor to put much lower values into each test, resulting in valuations well below that amount.

There is no question that startup valuations must be kept at a low enough amount to allow for the extreme risk taken by the investor and to provide some opportunity for the investment to achieve a ten times increase in value over its life.

Once a company is making revenues for any period of time, this method is no longer applicable, as most everyone will use actual revenues to project value over time.

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17 Responses to The Berkus Method: Valuing an Early Stage Investment.

  1. Bob Chalfant says:

    Dave,
    How very timely, I am discussing startup financing today and Thursday and this is valuable info for my entrepreneur students. And everyone else involved in startups and small ventures, now that I think about it.
    Bob

  2. Jordan Green says:

    Hey Dave, good to see you in LAX and Austin 🙂

    Very timely as we are just negotiating the valuation for a new deal. Having another approach (yours) that emphasises both the absolute value and the ‘art’ of assembling a valuation is useful for both my newer members (Angels-in-training) and for the entrepreneur.

    Cheers,
    Jordan

  3. Michelle says:

    I stumbled on this post by the most circuitous route including Gust and Bill’s Blog. Like so many entrepreneurs I have had to calculate the value of my company for potential investors. Being smart I asked advisers what they recommend; one adviser had suggested using IRR and another had suggested a methodology similar to yours. The challenge is the assumptions seemed to have few facts to back them up and can leave young entrepreneurs and potential investors at a crossroads.

    Valuation is subjective, agreed, but I much prefer Bill Payne’s Scorecard Method. I have used his methodology and simplified the valuation calculation . It may not be perfect but I do believe it removes some ambiguity out of the assumptions and is a good base to start a reasonable conversation. I would love to hear your comments and feedback.

  4. Alireza says:

    I have read a few pages about this method and I’m having trouble what to do in my own case. I’m pitching to an investor and I have no idea what my valuation should be. I have two questions: (1) what should i do if I have to use another currency? do i have to convert 0.5 million dollars to my own currency? what if that number turns out to be very huge? (2) what’s the logic behind choosing the 0.5 million dollars? can we change that number?

  5. Dave Berkus says:

    The half million number is a suggestion from experience. You can raise or lower it if warranted by revenues or other measure. Yes, convert your currency. All currencies are relative and this should work in any country. Some countries, where labor rates are lower, would warrant a lower number than half million.
    -Dave

  6. Shadab Mobin says:

    Dave Hi,

    We have used your model to evaluate proposals applying for seed fund and incubation at our Business Incubator here in New Delhi, India. Thanks for making our lives easier.

    My question is this: often we get proposals where the rev projections are not reaching 20 million, in such case we have scaled down the model proportionately and arrived at appropriate valuation, so far both the applicants and our investment committee have been quite happy with it.
    How have you dealt with such situations?
    Thanks and regards
    Shadab Mobin
    Chief Executive Officer
    ANDC inStart Foundation – Business Incubator
    New Delhi 110 019
    +91-9999597782

  7. Dave Berkus says:

    Shadab,

    Thanks for your comment and use. The $20MM five year revenue test is one I use for my own investments. You can make any limitations on projected growth you wish, and even change them to fit the situation. A company with a pharma product and a five year FDA approval window would never fit, for example. Yet the $20M rule would not prevent an investment if the technology seemed important enough for a possible acquisition by a big pharma company for a large price during the phases of testing and approval, prior to revenues. Hope this helps.

    Dave

  8. Shadab Mobin says:

    Thanks Dave !! Really appreciate your response.

    Regards
    Shadab

  9. ahmad says:

    Hi Mr Berkus,
    We design a international startup, which currency should we use? The currency of origin country or dollars?
    Regards,
    Ahmad

  10. John Campbell says:

    Great topic.I want to referece this great resource https://www.cloudways.com/blog/startup-funding-stages.

  11. mostafa says:

    Hello Mr Berkus
    Thank you for text. I have question?
    If one of five case was very good. Do I have to consider the same amount of 1.2 million?

  12. Dave Berkus says:

    Mostafa,
    Not enough information. But from what I can guess of your question: No one element can exceed the maximum allowed for each element. Even a great team with no product or validation from the market would score lower. Hope this helps.

    Dave

  13. Robert says:

    Hi Dave,

    Thanks for this!

    I am trying to value a pre-revenue service oriented recruitment business. Do you think this model still loosely fits, would you lower / increase the numbers?

    Just baring in mind it is an inherently low barrier to entry market where we own no proprietary functions.

    Thanks in advance!

  14. Dave Berkus says:

    Robert,

    Service businesses are rarely valued as high as those with recurring or predictable (contracted) revenue. I would use the formula as presented and be conservative as to the individual valuations.

    Dave

  15. James G. says:

    Hi Mr Berkus
    Really appreciate your work in developing this method.
    I am a boot strap tech start up preparing to launch proprietary app based process, shortly. Considering the other valuation methods, is there a litmus that would advise one method vs another.

    Thanks James G.
    info@medshiftxchange.com

  16. Dave Berkus says:

    Key metrics are simplicity and pre-revenue for this method. There are several other methods, each requiring much more information and effort.
    -Dave

  17. englishdon says:

    thank you so much it was indeed useful

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