BizSugar.com › Raising Capital › The Valuation of Early Stage Companies has Risen Sharply

The valuation of early stage venture capital-backed startups jumped dramatically in 2013 and 2014, after modest increases over the previous nine years, data from law firm Cooley LLP reveals.
Cooley reports the typical valuation of companies in transactions in which the firm served as issuing counsel either to the investors or to the company raising money. These figures are for the Series A financing round, which is the first round of financing after the seed stage. Companies at this point in development have started to generate revenues but are generally still losing money.
To account for the effect of inflation on the valuation, I used the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) inflation calculator to convert all of the figures to 2015 dollars. I also took the five-quarter moving average of the median valuations reported by Cooley to smooth out the quarterly variation and report that average as of September of each year (except for 2015 when I report the June figure).