"Meritt, ignore DCF's - they are utterly useless in the tech / venture world, especially at the stage you're at." I wouldn't say they're utterly useless. The t

"Meritt, ignore DCF's - they are utterly useless in the tech / venture world, especially at the stage you're at." I wouldn't say they're utterly useless. The thing is, they're starting points. DCF isn't the beginning and end of a valuation process; it's a guessy data point. But it's more educated than a lot of other guessy methods. At the very least, it serves to ground the acquiring company's expectations. I wouldn't rely on a single, straight-line DCF for a startup. Ever. But model out a few scenarios, and play around with a few factors, and you arrive at a sort of distribution of outcomes. That distribution requires an an asterisk, but it isn't useless. Also, in the event you're being bought by a publicly traded company, somebody there needs to present some sort of NPV-based analysis to someone. If you're a small acquisition, that may be a mid-level manager to the VP level. If you're a big acquisition, that'll be the C-level to the Board (and indirectly, to Wall Street).