149. Valuation Matters To Your Team feat. Abby Mercado @ Rescripted

When it comes to taking care of your team, this is something that I face personally during the last round. We were essentially evaluating a certain valuation range with our lead investor and it was challenging because, at that point in the history of Rescripted, we had raised a few rounds, we had pivoted two times, and that costs more money. We have a goal of of being profitable, which is not every startup goal. But it was our goal. And so, In negotiating with our lead investor the valuation was really important to me and really important to my co-founders and to some of our early employees. Why is that important? Higher the valuation the less you get diluted. Most startups, especially if you're raising from venture investors and from angels that are sophisticated, you are eyeing an exit somewhere down the road. Goes without saying that you want this business to succeed, you know it's gonna succeed, you have a lot of conviction that it will succeed. You want as much of a piece of the pie as possible. I really found myself fighting from a valuation perspective, but that was after having a bit of comfort knowing that the investor wouldn't walk away. It was a smaller negotiation. This was an existing investor, they came in in a big way in the subsequent round, that was really exciting. It was just a matter of making sure that my team felt really good about this deal. And that the investor felt really good about the deal, and really kind of laying out the bounds before the term sheet was finalized.