Sorry for the challenges you are dealing with. I’ve built a small (20 person) biz over the last 5 years and this past year had to fire my two co-founders and fiance (though she still married me last weekend!). Interestingly, she and one of my co-founders started their own business together when they were let go from my company. They were “like sisters”, but unfortunately due to similar challenges you are facing now, have folded the company (with $100K in inventory still to sell to get their investment back) and I’m not sure how they will ever be friends again. And if they do, there will always be a scar on the relationship.
If it isn’t too late to go separate ways without doing damage, I’d highly recommend it. There is no way (in my experience) to have a business relationship not affect (for better or worse) the personal relationship.
Happy to fill in details or provide more insight. Best of luck with your challenging decision!
I closed a SAFE and subsequent Series A round last year. I founded a consumer product brand with both Wholesale and DTC revenue. At the time, the going rate for a company of our size was 2.25X TTM (trailing twelve months). My understanding is that money has gotten considerably more expensive and multipliers aren’t nearly as high right now.
We got comfortable with the calculations and multiplier by networking and talking to as many other founders who had recently raised and to VC and Limited Partners (who invest in VCs) to understand where other deals they knew about had closed.
I’m not sure if you will find a good source for this type of information in one place, since so much of it is private. Other than my investors, no one knows how much we raised or what our calculations where. So I think you need to keep turning over rocks to find as many fundraisers and funders as you can to create your own data set.
Best of luck, it’s an exciting (and stressful) time in your business!