This post originally ran on StartupJuncture. Check out the lively discussion there, too.
How foolish are the friends, family and fools?
In the first post on crowdfunding valuations, I found that the average project on the Dutch crowdfunding platform Symbid raises €104k for a total company value of €1.4M, which represents an average equity stake of 7.5%. Moreover I described that it seems that the valuation is not a critical success criterion for raising crowdfunding money, concluding that maybe crowd investors don’t look at the valuation or don’t bother about it. The personal connection to a project might be a better reason to invest than investing to actually make money.
So, the average post-money valuation of all projects on Symbid is €1.4M (pre-money: €1.3M). How does this number compare to other valuations? Angellist, a website where ‘angels investors’ and startups can meet, says that in the Netherlands the average pre-money valuation is $2.9M (~€2.3M). This valuation is based on done deals but includes companies that raised second, third or even fourth rounds. In that sense, the sample of Angellist is not really comparable to the one of Symbid, as most projects on Symbid raise their first round.
Within the Symbid sample, I made a distinction between pre-revenue companies (N = 39) and companies that generate revenues already (N = 19). This ‘monetization status’ was not always explicitly provided by the company, so I made a rough estimate based on the description of the project and, if available, financial statements. The result is presented in the figure below.
As expected, the companies that generate revenue have a higher valuation than pre-revenue companies (€2.0M and €1.3M respectively). Interestingly, the investment amount is approximately the same for pre-revenue and revenue companies (around €100k).
Nota bene: the average valuation of pre-revenue companies that raise money via Symbid is €1.3M. €1.3 million! These companies barely made any money yet and still think they’re worth more than a million euros. Wow, that sounds almost like a bubble, doesn’t it?