In a NY Times article, “Failure Isn’t Always a Bad Thing”, an interesting formula on determining a start-up’s potential for success is presented which was extracted from venture capitalist David Sliver’s book “Smart Start-ups”:
V = P x S x E
Valuation = Problem solved x Solution’s elegance x Experience of management
Businessweek.com put out an article today under its Small Biz section titled “How to sell your business”. We want to draw your attention to the section discussing business appraisal. In summary, the author of this article suggests that the business owner conduct an analysis of their financial statements and an exercise known as “recasting”. Bottom line, this is an adjustment of owner’s salary, discretionary expenses, one-time fees, interest, depreciation and other expenditures. Then, the writer suggests the owner adjust fixed assets to fair market value. Once complete, THEN hire a business appraiser. Huh?
An interesting alert came across our desks this morning, from Forbes.com: The Most Valuable College Basketball Teams. I somewhat choked on my coffee and had to read again. The value of a collegiate basketball team? FMV is a proud supporter of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and it was no surprise to see the Tar Heels top the list. The metrics used in this assessment were unique and certainly different from the world of small business valuation, but it was an interesting read. While the methods used by Forbes are based on ticket sales, tournament earnings and a teams impact on its school and athletic deparment, one major factor was completely ignored: team apparel sales! While it could be difficult to extract basketball apparel sales from football, one could quickly assess official basketball jersey, shorts, and other official merchandise sales directly associated with a collegiate basketball team. The valuations would skyrocket, especially for UNC as they are the #1 in licensed collegiate apparel sold world wide! Hmmmm, do you think that is because of basketball or football? In addition, with the limited data collected, Forbes used a conservative multiple of profit ranging from 1.5-1.75 to determine a teams valuation. Forbes ”valued” the top 20 NCAA basketball teams and the valuation gap from 1st to 20th (UNC vs Xavier) was not even 2x! How can UNC men’s basketball only be 2x more valuable than Xavier men’s basketball — that is way off.
