How an investment readiness program gave its founders a valuation they could defend.
The challenge
Founders in Open Startup’s investment readiness program sometimes arrived with a valuation already, from their last investment round or from one they had worked out themselves. The program did not want to take that number as given. It needed its own valuation to challenge the assumptions behind it, and to give a founder heading into a live investor conversation a number they could be sure of. Information on comparable companies was not always easy to find.
How Equidam helped
The program team ran the valuations themselves rather than giving founders access to the platform. They took a founder’s numbers through Equidam’s input template, generated the report, sent it to the founder, and changed the mix of valuation methods, DCF and VC-based among them, to suit how each founder wanted to approach it. Every report came with comparable companies and the sources behind them. Once the numbers were in, the report followed quickly, and the work was easiest with someone with a finance background at the controls.
In their words
“Overall, it was a very good experience using the platform. It was very straightforward … in terms of UI, UX, it’s very friendly. I really appreciate the different valuation methods that we can play with when generating the reports.”
Rana Soltani, Senior Program Officer, Investment Readiness, Open Startup
| Client | Open Startup, a pan-African non-profit that started in Tunis in 2016 |
| Industry | Startup acceleration and investment readiness |
| Location | Tunis, Tunisia, active across Africa |
| Result | A method-transparent valuation founders could take into investor conversations |
| Lead individual | Rana Soltani, Senior Program Officer, Investment Readiness |
For programs like Open Startup
Equidam gives program staff one place to value every company in a cohort. The methods are weighted by stage, and every report carries its benchmarks and sources. To talk about it, contact the Equidam team.
About Equidam. Since 2013, Equidam’s valuation technology has been used in more than 90 countries by startups, investors and service providers, with over 160,000 companies valued. Equidam combines five valuation methods with live market benchmarks to produce transparent, defensible valuations for early-stage companies.