Assigning a value to your company is a serious "must-do" for any startup, especially if you're on the hunt for investors. But determining your company's valuation isn’t as straightforward as looking at your bottom line (probably a good thing if you're pre-revenue). It's a blend of science and some art, and there are dozens of valuation methodologies to consider. A quick tip: don't limit yourself to one approach. There's no such thing as the perfect method for your company and utilizing multiple methods allows for an average to be taken, which can help in the negotiation process with investors.

With that in mind, where should you start? Well, there are four valuation methods we think standout among the rest. These should give you exactly what you need the next time you step into the shark tank:

Like many others long before and after me, I had the pleasure of learning Income, Corporate Tax, Estate and Fiduciary Tax, Tax Procedure, and State and Local Tax from Lawrence A. Jegen III. And also like many others, he was my favorite professor during my three years at IU McKinney Law School. But what made him my favorite professor wasn't necessarily the topics he taught inside the classroom.

Professor Larry Jegen taught me countless principles that I still carry with me today – a lot of which I attribute to my enjoyment and success in the legal industry. So in honor of Mr. Jegen, I wanted to highlight five of those principles, all of which I believe are important to everyone in life:

I’m sure you’re saying, “Wait, another alphabet soup of regulation?” Yep. GDPR stands for The General Data Protection Regulation. Heard of it? The topic's been floating around the news over the past couple years, and today it finally becomes enforceable. But how many of you have been paying attention? Hopefully you all raised your hand as this new regulation could have an impact on your business. For the sake of this blog post, let's say you haven't done your homework on GDPR. If that's the case (which I'm sure it's not), we'll start by defining it.

As much as we hate to admit it, sexual harassment is a hot topic right now. From celebrities to large corporations and even startups, it’s everywhere. And regardless of whether you want to discuss it, sexual harassment needs to be talked about with your employees because, let's face it, it's not going anywhere unless we do something about it.

We have all come across this concept (or is it a term?) before, but now, let’s take the time to really understand this. Over the next few posts in this series, we’ll take a dive into the indemnification pool (pun intended) and break down the useful definitions and considerations to give you enough to have a conversation and lead you into more in-depth research.

In fact, Indemnification Caps (“Caps”) are essential to both buyers and sellers and draw on expertise from litigators and deal lawyers. Are they worth it? You bet, a botched indemnification negotiation could negate the entire value of the deal you just closed. Is it tricky? As you’ll see, the negotiators have their own language.

Let’s start with a broad definition that we can refer back to throughout the series: What is an Indemnification Cap?