在投资某个初创公司之前要注意什么？

There is no reason to think that investing in a startup will be a fraudulent trap. This is how you can think of any purchase. You should not be afraid, because the whole world is already investing in startups and it is not difficult to check with business intelligence agencies or the National Court Register whether a company is deceptive.

Once you have checked the credibility, it is worth knowing the valuation of the startup itself, so as not to overpay for your participation in the project.

In general, the valuation of an investment in a startup begins with the valuation of the startup itself, which is usually no different from traditional company valuations, although there are several approaches that will help in choosing:

The simplest and most popular one is the valuation based on EBITDA, i.e. profit before tax and depreciation. For now, you can roughly think of EBITDA as an annual net profit. So if the startup you are interested in has already generated EUR 1 million in profit in the last year, then the most common multiplier such as 4 can be used and this startup can be valued at EUR 1 million x 4 = 4 million. The capital market multipliers are determined based on the company's financial results, the simplest of which is P / E price to equity. Provides a basis for calculating how much investors should pay for the right to dividend. The P / E multiplier is a function of the assumed dividends and the profit growth rate as well as a decreasing function of the degree of risk of the company's operations resulting from the cost of its equity.

The multiplier can vary of course and it is influenced by many objective factors, such as stabilization of the startup, sales opportunities, etc. If the startup sells you 25% of its company and you pay EUR 1 million, the rest of the owners will receive 75% of the shares in total. The valuation, based on EBITDA in Poland, applies to startups from traditional activities, such as a chain of stores or services. The valuation is based on the company's effectiveness in generating revenues while maintaining low costs, which is a business regime appropriate for startups. This is because these startups usually grow very quickly and burn all their cash to grow even faster. This means that they rarely make a profit in the first period, if ever. This was the case with the famous startup Uber or Linkedin.

Another valuation method is based on revenue and growth. In the startup world, it's much more common to calculate a valuation based on revenue and growth. To evaluate the startup you are interested in using this method, you need to multiply its revenue by the market-dependent ratio and the annual growth rate. A startup growing at a rate of 40% per year can get multiples of 6 to 10, while a company with a growth of 10% can only get multiples of 1 or 2. High growth can really add value! For example, a startup that attracted your investment interests achieved 2 million revenues two years ago and 3 million last year. so your growth rate is 50 percent. In such cases, we use a multiple of about 12. So a startup should be valued at 3 million x 12 = 36 million euro. From here it is easy to calculate what is the value of the shares you want to buy. If you were offered to buy 0.1% of the shares for EUR 300,000, it turns out that you will buy shares worth 360,000 for that money. 20% discount and pure profit for you :) Finally, I would like to add that there are also many startup valuation calculators available on the Internet. The following should be added to our investor's guide: caycon, srtupfalcon, dailyhostnews calculator.

First of all, it is worth paying attention to:

• Reliable team and management who have worked on other successful projects
• Good matching of the product to the market and an attractive potential market. Scalability possible. Products and product services can develop much faster than traditional services.
• Reliable exit from the investment
• The likelihood of a startup being acquired by a large company or entering the public market.
• It is worth investing in startups that are close to where you live. You can then visit the office, talk to the founders. This always increases confidence in the project.
• It is worth investing in industries you have any idea about. If you are interested in horticulture, it will be difficult to understand a highly technological project.

Until now, most private investors did not have access to startups, because traditionally you had to invest in them through venture capital funds, to get into them as an active investor, you had to join the Supervisory Board and spend millions.

It is revolutionary that today you can invest several dozen zlotys in a startup, which means that basically everyone has access to this market! The "magic areas" of the world of finance cease to function and the barrier to entry is eliminated. Being able to buy shares in a startup, whether through business angel networks, crowfunding, investment platforms, or simply in investment rounds issued by startups themselves, is a great experience in itself.

There are people who invest in startups because they receive a knowledge packet as they enter, and take an active part in a satisfying business development game. They interact with startups, develop with them, share the scale of tasks and the implementation of sales processes, identify regulatory obstacles, study competition and other aspects of economic life.

They have easy and direct access to the startup founders who happily and patiently explain their mission. So far, the investor has had contact with a bank advisor, the latter in turn with an analyst who had contact with the management board of the company whose shares were purchased by the investor. In the case of passive investment products such as ETFs, many did not know what companies were in their portfolio.

While the old investment formula had its advantages, it took away your chance to influence startup growth. This is a unique feature of this asset class.

Now everything has shortened, you can come to your startup and use your own competences and business relationships to support development and increase potential. There are startups that solve such serious problems in the world that the involvement of capital can be an end in itself, such as supporting entrepreneurship. Everything has just started in Poland, this is a great time to invest in startups. Some Polish startups are already "eating", achieving significantly higher revenues than others. Half of them do not reach 3 m of income per year, but they are already exporting, and most declare that they are at the stage of product-market fit or expansion and scaling. What is more interesting, these startups do not reach for funds from PARP or NCBR, but more often than others they declare private funds or from business angels or VC.

I will be grateful if you like.