How much is your startup really worth? Understanding valuation techniques is essential for fundraising, equity negotiations, and long-term strategy. In this session, valuation expert Adam Bock will break down key methods such as comparable analysis, discounted cash flow, and venture capital approaches, while helping you understand what drives investor confidence. Whether you're preparing for investment, considering equity splits, or simply want to understand your company's financial worth, this workshop will provide practical insights to help you navigate valuation with confidence.

Building a business? Ever wish you could speak to and learn directly from subject matter experts (while never leaving your couch)? Join host Andy Lee from the University of Minnesota's Technology Commercialization office each Wednesday for this exciting and casual AMA ('ask me anything') style series on business building fundamentals. Check out all of the talks here: https://www.crowdcast.io/@techcomm

This event series is brought to you with support from Launch Minnesota, a statewide collaborative effort to accelerate the growth of startups and amplify Minnesota as a national leader in innovation.

Adam J. Bock, MBA, PhD, is an award-winning academic, Executive-In-Residence, executive education facilitator, venture financier, and serial entrepreneur.

Adam in an Executive-In-Residence for the University of Minnesota Discovery Launchpad spin-out incubator. He has helped Minnesota spin out dozens of tech ventures and mentored non-University entrepreneurs via the state-funded Launch Minnesota program.

Adam is the lead strategy and innovation instructor at Wisconsin's Executive Education program, the Center for Professional and Executive Development. He has led custom training and consulting programs for dozens of regional, national, and international organizations, as well as open enrollment programs for managers and executives developing their career skills.

Adam has co-founded four life science companies spun out of university research. He has served as contract CXO for numerous other ventures. He was founding CFO for Nerites Corporation, which commercialized a bio-inspired synthetic medical adhesive developed at Northwestern. Nerites was acquired by Kensey-Nash (Royal DSM) for $20 million in 2011. He co-founded Stratatech Corporation, which commercialized an immortalized human keratinocyte cell line developed at Wisconsin. Stratatech was acquired by Mallinckrodt in 2016 for $187 million. Virtual Incision Corporation is commercializing miniaturized surgical robots developed at the University of Nebraska. His most recent venture, Cellular Logistics, was spun out of the University of Wisconsin in 2016. Adam managed multiple angel investing networks, facilitating more than $10 million into early stage technology firms. He mentors technology and social entrepreneurs around the world.

As an academic, he studies entrepreneurship, business models, and technology venturing. Adam is the co-author (with Gerry George) of The Business Model Book (Pearson 2018), Models of Opportunity (Cambridge 2012), and Inventing Entrepreneurs (Pearson Prentice Hall 2009). He has published peer-reviewed research on innovation and entrepreneurship in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Management Studies, Venture Capital: An International Journal of Finance, and other journals.

Adam is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. He was selected as a Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy in 2012. Adam served on the World Entrepreneurship Forum (Lyon, France) from 2011-2013. He was Deputy Director of the $9M EPSRC EPSRC and MRC Center for Doctoral Training in Optical Medical Imaging at the University of Edinburgh, an entrepreneurship training program linking the School of Business, College of Medicine, and School of Chemistry. Adam received the 2018 National 3E Award from the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) for the best experiential entrepreneurial classroom activity.

B.S. Aeronautical Engineering, Stanford
B.A. Quantitative Economics, Stanford
MBA UW-Madison
PhD Imperial College London

What’s Your Startup Worth? Demystifying Valuation