

What's your startup's reserve price? - dmk23
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/12/whats-your-startups-reserve-price.html

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mindcrime
I basically feel the same way as @AaronKlein, per his comment at the parent
blog:

 _I have a few reserve prices in my mind, and they're based on getting to
specific milestones. So if somebody wanted to buy the company at this stage
(primarily for its technology), that's a lower price than I'd accept when we
get to a certain level of user traction._

I mean, if somebody wanted to buy Fogbeam Labs today, I think we might sell
for, say, ~$1 million. All a buyer would be getting at this point would be the
founders, for some reasonable lock-up period, a product that's maybe 3/4's of
the way to being a shipping (albeit beta) product, and some customer
development research.

But by, say, a year from now, I hope (and expect) to be able to say "we
wouldn't sell for less than ~$50 million." If we have a shipping product and
some traction to prove our hypotheses by then, that would change a lot.

And given the market we're in, and the valuations of other firms that do
related types of products, and some of the projects I've seen from Gartner and
their ilk, I believe that - if we are successful - we're building a company
that will be worth hundreds of millions (or more) eventually. I mean, we're
thinking IPO here, not "let's get acquired by $WHOEVER in a talent
acquisition." In fact, because that is the goal, and because we're brash and
self-confident, I don't _know_ that we would actually sell for $1 million
today, even though there's no objective criteria on which to base such a
valuation. It's more a question of our own belief in where we're going, and
what heights we can ultimately hit. But that's counterbalanced by the fact
that none of us are rich currently, and the idea of walking away with even a
few hundred thousand to deposit in the bank, would be awfully, awfully
tempting.

So yeah, timing and what we can prove to ourselves in terms of feedback and
traction, will have a huge impact on the actual number *at any specific point
in time." But, at least we know where we're aiming, so we have some basis to
ground our decision making.

