Every founder hits this question eventually: what's this thing worth? You plug your numbers into a calculator, get a confident-looking figure, and quietly suspect it's nonsense. It usually is — not because the calculator is broken, but because there is no single way to price a project. The method changes completely depending on how far along you are.
So I went looking at how the places that actually broker these deals — YC, Acquire.com, Flippa — tell you to think about value. Here's the map, stage by stage. (No magic multiples in this post; those move constantly. This is about which method even applies to you.)
You're still raising: Y Combinator's answer
If you're pre-seed with a demo and a story, there's usually nothing to plug into a formula — no profit, often no revenue. YC's advice reflects that: at this stage valuation isn't a calculation, it's a negotiation about potential. The thing to optimise isn't a big headline number, it's how little of the company you give away and how good the investors are.
Source: YC's A Guide to Seed Fundraising.
Applies when: you're funding the future, not selling the present.
You have recurring revenue: Acquire.com's answer
Once there's an MRR line, you finally have something to multiply. Acquire.com frames SaaS value around the revenue multiple plus a toolbox of named methods — Berkus, scorecard, the VC method, comparable transactions. Even they're upfront that old profit-and-assets models "miss how subscription businesses actually create value": what you're really pricing is predictable, recurring cash flow and its growth.
Source: Acquire.com on startup valuation methods.
Applies when: there's recurring revenue to multiply.
You have profit and a track record: Flippa's answer
For a content site, a store, or an established micro-SaaS with real profit history, Flippa's approach is a multiple of profit (SDE/EBITDA), calibrated against a decade-plus of actual marketplace sales and a stack of quality signals — traffic mix, diversification, site age, how many hours a week it takes you to run it. The formula works precisely because there's profit to multiply and a mountain of comparable sales to anchor to.
Source: Flippa's guide to valuing a website.
Applies when: there's profit and comparable sales.
No revenue, no comps: the floor where formulas quit
Here's the tier a lot of us actually live in: a vibe-coded MVP, a launched-but-pre-revenue app, a side project with a handful of users and no clean financials. Look at what happens to every method above. YC's "negotiate the round" doesn't fit — you're selling, not raising. Acquire's revenue multiple has no revenue. Flippa's profit multiple has no profit. Every formula needs an input this stage doesn't have.
So you flip the problem. Instead of estimating a price from data that doesn't exist, you discover it — put the thing in front of real buyers on a deadline and watch what they actually commit. That committed number, set by competing demand rather than a spreadsheet, is a market exit bid. It's the approach ExitBid runs for exactly this segment — small, micro, and pre-revenue projects — and it publishes the method.
Applies when: there's nothing to plug into a formula, so demand is the only honest signal.
The through-line
It's one continuous line, not four rival camps:
- Negotiate the future (pre-seed).
- Multiply the recurring revenue (revenue-stage SaaS).
- Multiply the profit against comps (profitable sites).
- Test the demand (pre-revenue / micro).
Formulas get sharper as revenue and history stack up, and blurrier as they thin out. Figure out which rung you're actually on — and if you're at the bottom, stop trying to compute a number that isn't there, and go find out what someone will really pay.
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