Get a valuation range you can defend

There is no single formula, which is why this tool runs seven and shows you the spread. For a company with no revenue, the established methods are qualitative: Berkus scores five value drivers at up to $500,000 each, the Scorecard method compares you against the median funded company in your region, and Risk Factor Summation adjusts that median across twelve named risks. Once revenue exists, comparables take over — a sector revenue multiple adjusted for growth, margin and retention, and an EBITDA multiple once you are profitable. The VC method works backwards from a plausible exit and the return an investor needs. A discounted cash flow is included for completeness but weighted lightly, because at early stage the terminal value dominates the answer and the terminal value is an assumption.

Because a single number is the defining dishonesty of free valuation calculators. Founders quote it in rooms where it then has to survive contact with a real investor. The methods here frequently disagree by a factor of two or more on the same company, and that disagreement is information about how little the evidence constrains the answer. The published range widens as confidence falls, so a thinly-evidenced valuation physically looks less precise rather than merely carrying a caveat underneath.

Not the one you see quoted for listed companies. Damodaran's January 2026 dataset puts listed system and application software at 11.4 times revenue, but applying that to a private startup overstates its value badly, because a listed multiple prices liquidity, continuous disclosure and scale a startup does not have. Where somebody publishes a private-company figure it is better evidence: SaaS Capital predicts 4.8 times ARR bootstrapped and 5.3 times equity-backed, fitted across more than 1,500 private B2B SaaS companies. That is a model calibrated to private companies rather than a record of private transactions, and it predates a reported fall in public multiples, so treat it as generous rather than mean. This tool uses it where it exists, and applies an explicit 30% listed-to-private discount where it has to work from a public comparable.

More than any other single input. SaaS Capital publishes a regression whose coefficients imply that each additional 10 percentage points of ARR growth is worth roughly 0.83 turns of revenue multiple, and each 10 points of net revenue retention roughly 0.26 turns. Two companies at identical revenue can therefore be worth several times apart on growth alone. That is why this tool refuses to apply a growth adjustment at all when you have not supplied a growth rate — it widens the range instead and tells you what supplying it would be worth.

The PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor puts the US median seed pre-money at $18.4 million as of 31 March 2026, Series A at $64.0 million and Series B at $188.3 million as of 30 June 2026. Two caveats matter more than the numbers. These are medians of companies that successfully raised, so the median company that tried and failed is in no dataset. And no primary source publishes a pre-seed median at all, so any figure you see for that stage is somebody's estimate.

Not credibly, and pretending otherwise would be the easiest way for this tool to be wrong. No public source publishes median pre-money valuations by stage for the UAE, the GCC or MENA. The two datasets that cover regional funding at all report totals and deal counts rather than valuations, and they disagree with each other by roughly a quarter on the same half-year. This tool therefore discounts a sourced US anchor for the region and says explicitly that the regional adjustment is its own assumption rather than a published figure.

Equity is permanent and debt is not, and founders routinely underestimate what equity costs because the two costs arrive in different currencies at different moments. Debt costs interest, visibly, this year. Equity costs a percentage, invisibly, at exit — selling 20% of a company that later sells for ten times more did not cost you the raise amount, it cost you ten times the raise amount. This tool computes the all-in borrowing rate at which debt would cost exactly what the equity does, so you can hold it against a real quote rather than against a guess.

Mostly they do not say. Of nine major UAE lenders checked, the majority publish facility ceilings and adjectives but no turnover floor, no trading-history requirement and no rate. Dubai Islamic Bank is the clearest exception, publishing two years incorporated, AED 1 million minimum turnover, facilities up to AED 2 million over six to thirty-six months, and profit rates of 15% to 22% — an Islamic profit rate, not conventional interest. RAKBANK advertises up to AED 5 million collateral-free over sixty months but publishes neither criteria nor a rate. All figures were read from the banks' own pages on 7 September 2026 and change without notice, so confirm anything you plan to rely on. The detailed criteria circulating on comparison sites trace to no bank and no regulator, so this tool does not use them.

A term loan is repaid out of profit, so with no profit there is no earnings-based capacity — but that does not close every door. Receivables finance is secured on invoices rather than earnings. Beehive, a DIFC platform regulated by the DFSA rather than a bank, publishes advances of up to 80% of outstanding receivables on invoices due within 120 days, from 1.17% per month. That distinction between earnings-based and asset-based lending is why this tool assesses each facility separately rather than producing a single borrowing number.

More than the headline dilution, usually. If you raise AED 5 million at a AED 20 million pre-money, the post-money is AED 25 million and the investor takes 20%. What often goes unmentioned in the room is the option pool top-up: investors commonly require the pool to be topped up before the round, and that top-up comes out of the existing holders rather than the new money. It is founder dilution under a different name, and this tool models it explicitly.

No, and that is unusually convenient for UAE founders. The dirham is pegged to the US dollar at 3.6725 by the Central Bank of the UAE, not floated, so a valuation quoted in dollars converts to dirhams exactly with no FX assumption hiding inside it. Every comparable multiple and stage benchmark in this tool is dollar-denominated, so the conversion is applied once and is exact. UAE interest rates track US Federal Reserve policy for the same reason.

It is a defensible opening position with the reasoning attached, which is more than most founders bring, and it is not a valuation opinion. Every figure carries its source and the report states plainly what it could not verify. What it cannot see is your pipeline quality, your team's actual execution, what your competitors are raising at this month, and how badly the investor across the table wants the deal. A real valuation is negotiated, and the number you agree depends on evidence, timing and leverage no calculator can model.