Uber angel investor JF (you call him Jeff) Clavier raised some eyebrows last year when he was quoted as telling startups that their income is “noise”, even if said income is approximating $300,000 in monthly revenues. A $300K monthly revenue implies an annual run-rate of $3.6M.
Maybe he’s right: Ning just raised $60M on a $500M pre-money valuation despite making $1.7M in revenues. That’s also the valuation Slide got, and it too probably commands an eye-popping revenue multiple. Any way you dice it, Clavier’s $300K per month revenue would be for a company with twice as much revenue as Ning. In a linear world, that would be a $1B company (if Ning is indeed wirth $500M at $1.7M in revenue). Obviously, we’re playing with numbers, because a company with $1.7M in revenues should not be worth half a billion… but who cares, obviously investors don’t, argues Macromedia founder Marc Canter, who sold his firm to Adobe for a cool $3.4B a few years ago. continue reading...
