Startup Valuation School was founded in 2019 answering the need for in-depth fund raising and valuation advice for founders.
Startup related blogs and learning offerings typically focus on product development, networking and pitch decks. They miss the technical side of business and financial planning, which is essential to raising and managing money.
Financial models are often ridiculed as too complicated, just because many founders and even investors don’t understand them. The truth however is without a sound financial plan it is impossible to attract investment for any sizable organisation, let alone managing budgets on a daily basis.
In addition, the available resources on financial modelling and company valuation focus predominantly on teaching you how to “enter Investment Banking”. The problem is Investment Banks don’t deal with Startups, only large enterprises. Financial Modeling and Valuation in Startups has to deal with much larger uncertainty. This renders a lot of the traditional valuation methods and modelling techniques useless.
Over-simplistic percentage-based growth functions barely make sense in large established companies. In startups we rarely have meaningful historicals, let alone knowing market sizes or price levels for new products or services.
At Startup Valuation School, we teach founders how to base their predictions on sound Unit Economics. This means they will know how many customers they can acquire with their fund raise. As revenues are the main driver for Startup Valuation, such information is critical to budget runway and plan for growth. In addition we teach methods to value loss-making startups and de-clutter pitching materials to make them relevant for each stage of company development.
Founder Profile
Wolfgang Ettlich
MBA, CPAWolfgang has gained extensive experience as an entrepreneur and educator in Hong Kong and internationally. He has raised millions of US dollars and has got in-depth, practical experience regarding all stages of a fund raise and exit. This includes startup financial modelling, pitching, deal structuring, negotiations, due diligence and of course closing of multiple convertible notes and preferred equity rounds.
He has earned his MBA from HKUST Business School and is a CPA with CPA Australia. In his professional career he was an Auditor and M&A advisor with KPMG and has taught hundreds of lectures in Accounting and Finance as an Adjunct Professor. Prior to founding Startup Valuation School, he was CFO of Hong Kong based beauty booking market place and B2B SaaS company BloomMe.
Contact Us
Startup Valuation School and all its intellectual property is owned by ED.PRES Limited. If you have questions, would like to contribute to the site or inquire about speaking engagements, please reach out.