Diana,
Yes the $2.5M maximum is a suggestion as mentioned in the post. You can certainly inctrease or dcrease that number acdcording to factors sunch as international countries with lower maximum valuations. And you can also add if you see something like “AI” driving prices higher. Hope this helps.
Dave

I meant, would multiply the 2.5M maximum by a factor that takes into account if the company is doing cutting-edge AI? I see that preseed valuations of AI companies tend to be higher, in large part due to the promise and computational expense needed, so wanting your opinion on whether there should be a multiple applied to the maximum 2.5M?

Also, if a company is international and raising funds in different countries, where the average pre-seed valuation is vastly different (US is a factor of ~2.7 greater than in France, for example), how would you suggest rescaling the 2.5M maximum to cater to both investors in US and France?
Thank you

Diana, great question. Each of the four principle areas of the Berkus Method are subjective, an area AI cannot help. Of course, with more information, that opinion will change. Since the information feeding the Method is only from the user, AI would only hlp if used before making the subjective score or valuation of that element. Hope this helps.
-Dave

Love your tidbits – they’re just amazing. I was a consultant for many years and I understand exactly what you are saying. I was working for a $700 million a year men’s apparel giant, and they acquired a women’s brand company, and hired me to do research on merchandising and marketing positioning. I spent three months studying who the customer was and how she wanted to dress. But the merchandiser and designers decided they wanted to go contemporary styling and marketing with this 75 year old man’s brand with the new product and it totally bombed out. They ended up selling the women’s business which had eight brands to the former president of the women’s apparel company.

I just don’t understand why they act like they want change and then listen to people inside their business. It’s like today apparel companies say they want to be consumer centric but they’re really not interested in the ideas that would make them consumer centric because they ask the advice of their managers.

More testament to the fact, that change and innovation rarely comes from inside of an industry, or a corporation, because of the risk adversity and the reliance on underling opinions.