How do you figure out what a business is actually worth?
When a company's asking price doesn't match its financial records or it has limited data like a single paying customer, standard valuation methods break down. This leaves founders guessing how to build realistic projections and investor-ready documents that make sense.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Asking ChatGPT to evaluate the financials
- 2Having an accountant look at their records
- 3Looking up rules of thumb in the business reference guide at the library
- 4Getting a formal professional valuation done
- 5Researching similar companies to find their customer acquisition cost and lifetime value
- 6Extracting available data from existing signups and paying customers to build estimates
- 7Projecting future customer lifetime value based on assumed retention periods
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I need help putting together investor-ready financial documents, particularly around customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and the assumptions behind those numbers.”source ↗
“The app currently has 50 signups and one paying customer, so I consider it effectively pre-revenue. With such limited data, I want to make sure my projections are realistic and clearly distinguish estimates from actual results.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 3How to price a business with no revenue
- 4How should a new shop owner pay themselves?
- 2How do you value a restaurant without clean add-backs?
- 3How much does it actually cost to start a forestry mulching business?
- 3How to value a small retail business with declining profits and rent hikes
- 2How do you stop researching forever and actually start a business?