What could your startup be worth?
Your valuation playground
Move a number. See what changes. Explore the business value, then connect it to the round and the pitch you want to make.
- USD throughout
- Your assumptions, clearly shown
- No valuation or funding guarantee
Changes are remembered in this browser. Take your chosen scenario into the pitch upload. Each scenario keeps its own inputs.
Worked example: value, raise and investor return
This is a hypothetical teaching example. Assume $500,000 annual recurring revenue and a selected 5× revenue multiple, with no growth projection. The company-value scenario is $2.5 million. Changing the multiple to 3× or 7× gives $1.5 million or $3.5 million. These inputs are assumptions, rather than current market comparables or a predicted offer.
For a separate hypothetical priced round, assume $2 million pre-money and a $500,000 investment. Post-money is $2.5 million, so the new investor receives 20% and existing holders retain 80%. This excludes option-pool changes, SAFEs, notes and other securities. The calculator lets you change these ownership assumptions where supported.
In the same hypothetical round, a $10 million exit with unchanged 20% investor ownership returns $2 million to that investor, or 4× the $500,000 investment before preferences, fees and taxes. Over five years, that is approximately 32% gross annualized return. If a later round reduces the holding by 25%, ownership falls to 15%, proceeds to $1.5 million and the gross multiple to 3×.
Try the revenue and funding-round modes above, then compare the ownership and return assumptions. Your own saved scenarios remain separate from this teaching example. A pre-revenue company needs a funding and milestone discussion because a revenue multiple cannot establish its value.
Sources and scope
- Y Combinator: Dilution
Sam Altman's 2017 explanation of ownership tradeoffs. Its round examples are historical, not current valuation benchmarks.
Content reviewed . Numerical scenarios in this section are illustrative.