I just discovered a great resource. I’m trying to value a company I’d like to purchase so it’s helpful to have market data to compare your target against. This company is doing pretty poorly but is also obviously mismanaged. Understanding the market give me both the information to make a strong offer (in terms of defensible, rationally constructed, etc) as well as a platform to understand what the real opportunity is.

So a great resource is the Inc. Valuation Guide, but unfortunately this doesn’t include a category for the type of business I’m looking at. And the closest analogs don’t really seem to track. So I wen’t where they got their data – BVR Market Data – and after spending a couple of hundred buck I got close to 2000 ‘deal reports’ from the entire category that includes not just my specialty, but anything and everything tangentially related of similar (and a lot more actually).  I downloaded 30 reports of sales of similar companies, plus another 30 of custom and packaged software company sales to help understand my other venture. Very cool. Not cheap, but worth it.