How Potentiacta is valued

Potentiacta today: the seed price, US$35M post-money

Where Potentiacta stands. The plan starts from 21 users with a prepaid basket; Δf of $619,665.69 had produced Δx of $1,123,304.25, at the plan’s multiplier ×1.81 package-level · min 1.63 · max 2.51 (the dashboard’s figures of 20 October 2026; the Project Overview shows the live ones). The plan’s revenue is still ahead, and a revenue multiple needs revenue sold: today’s price comes from how the market prices a seed company raising this sum.

The point. US$35M post-money: the median valuation cap of seed SAFEs, $35M on AngelList (Q3 2026, all industries) and $35M on Carta for SAFEs above $2.5M (Q2 2026). A cap is a price for a share of the company, not an appraisal of it: it “is in general not a reliable measure of the value of the company at the time the security is issued” (Strebulaev et al., 14 Jan 2025). At US$35M the full ask, $6,731,327, buys 19.2% of Potentiacta, close to Carta’s median seed dilution of 19.4% (Q2 2026) and inside Y Combinator’s guidance for a large first round: “aim to sell only about 20% of the company in your seed round (though 25% is ok if you’re raising a ‘large’–say more than $2.5 million–seed round)” (Altman, 23 Feb 2016). In 2017 Altman recommended 10–15% for a seed round and, when seed and Series A “combine into one large initial round”, “no more than 30% of the company in total” (1 Mar 2017). Before the ask, the cap implies a pre-money value of $28,268,673.

The range. About $22.7M–$40.0M post-money across these medians. The ask is a large seed round, 1.7 times AngelList’s median seed SAFE round of $4.0M, so its comparables are the seed medians rather than the pre-seed ones (AngelList’s pre-seed median cap: $12.5M at a $1.0M round, Q3 2026). A cap is “typically set at a relatively small premium to what investors and company management believe to be the company’s current value” (Carta), so the median cap sits at the top of what the parties believe the company is worth today rather than in its middle.

How Silicon Valley prices a seed company. In a survey of 885 institutional venture investors, 86% named the anticipated exit as important to the valuation they offer, 80% comparable companies and 63% their desired ownership (Gompers, Gornall, Kaplan and Strebulaev, NBER Working Paper 22587). The practice of the accelerators and funds Potentiacta is compared with:

• Y Combinator. The post-money SAFE has been YC’s standard since 2018: “The ownership you sell equals the investment amount divided by the valuation cap”, the cap being “The highest valuation at which a SAFE converts into shares”. YC’s own deal is ownership first: “$125,000 of our investment converts into a fixed 7%, and the other $375,000 is invested on an uncapped MFN SAFE.” On pricing a young company: “It should be obvious that no formula will give you an answer” (Ralston, 2016).
• a16z. speedrun’s standard deal is “$500K for 10% upfront on a SAFE, and up to an additional $500K in your next qualifying round ($2M+) within 18 months.” For growth companies: “What investors are really trying to understand are possible exit values” (Immerman and George, 2020).
• Plug and Play. “We typically invest $50K-250K in Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A startups. … typically we get between 1% and 5%”: a range of ownership, not a price.
• Two of Silicon Valley’s seed rounds. Airbnb raised “$615,000 at a $2.4 million pre-money valuation (selling ~20% of the company to investors, which is what Airbnb did)” (Altman, 2017) and “went public in 2020 at an over $100B valuation”; Dropbox, also from Y Combinator, “had the biggest tech IPO of 2018 at a $9B valuation” (Y Combinator). The potential showed in the investors’ multiple, not in the seed price.

The check: the venture capital method. A seed price must leave room for the return venture investors require. The venture capital method forecasts the company’s value at the exit and brings it back to today at a high required rate, for example 50% a year (Sahlman and Scherlis, Harvard Business School, 1987); the usual target rates are 50–70% a year at the start-up stage and 40–60% at the first stage (Damodaran, NYU Stern, May 2009), and above 60% for seed and start-up investments in the European Investment Bank’s table (2001). On the plan, the highest post-money value today that still gives 50% to 70% a year at the end-2030 exit, after Carta’s median dilution (you keep 70.4%), is $73.1B × 0.704 ÷ (1.5 to 1.7)^4.2 = $9.39B to $5.55B: US$35M is 0.4% to 0.6% of it. Payne’s single multiple, 30× for a first professional seed round (Kauffman Foundation, 1 Jul 2007), is the target of a simplified calculation that counts no later rounds; on the exit value alone it gives $73.1B ÷ 30 = $2.44B, and US$35M is 1.4% of it. The market’s seed price leaves the plan’s potential to the investor. These targets hold if the company succeeds: early-stage funds “may calculate IRRs from ‘if successful’ scenarios”, and the median required multiple is 5× (Gompers et al.).

Valuation with potential: 2.21 × the next twelve months’ planned revenue

The rule. Potentiacta’s value on a date, if its plan is met, = 2.21 × the Δx the plan targets for the twelve months after that date, shown at no less than US$35M, the seed price. It is a value on that date, not today’s: it is not brought back to today and not weighted for the chance that the plan is missed. For a row of The numbers the date is 1 January of the next year, so the 2027 row is 2.21 × 2028’s Δx; for a month of the month table, the month’s end. 2.21 × Δx is an enterprise value (EV/Sales = (equity + debt − cash) ÷ revenue: Damodaran); the value of the shares is that plus cash and less debt (IPEV, December 2025). The page adds neither, which matters only near today, where US$35M is a post-money value that includes the SAFE’s cash. The US$35M floor is for display and assumes Potentiacta survives: early-stage investments “may have limited outcomes: success, liquidation, or failure” (IPEV), and about a third of investments in angel and early-stage portfolios end in total loss (NVCA 2026 Yearbook).

The page’s convention. A multiple of forecast revenue is the usual basis for valuing a high-growth technology company before it has earnings: “valuation is usually based on a multiple of forecast sales” (European Investment Bank, 22 Feb 2001); “multiples of actual or projected revenue may be used” (IPEV, December 2025). 2.21 is the EV/Sales of the 15 US companies that Damodaran groups as “Information Services” (January 2026; enterprise value over the trailing twelve months’ revenue to Q3 2025). The group includes outsourcing and customer-experience companies such as Concentrix, Conduent, TaskUs and TTEC, and four companies quoted over the counter; data, ratings and index providers sit in other groups of the same dataset (MSCI, S&P Global and Moody’s in “Financial Svcs. (Non-bank & Insurance)”, 18.91; Verisk, Equifax and TransUnion in “Business & Consumer Services”, 2.53; Gartner in “Computer Services”, 1.48). It is a stand-in chosen by this page, not a set of data-business peers; IPEV asks for a multiple that is “appropriate and reasonable (given the size, risk profile and earnings growth prospects of the underlying company)”. The page applies it to the revenue Potentiacta plans for the next twelve months, in a plan whose Δx still at least doubles every year to 2036. The sources apply a mature company’s multiple later, once growth has slowed — “The multiple that we apply to revenues or earnings in year 5 should reflect an expected growth rate of 10% (and not 50%)” (Damodaran, May 2009); a standard revenue multiple is a shortcut “when a company is growing ~50% or less” (a16z, 17 Aug 2020) — and they allow for failure, by “adjusting the value for the probability that the firm would not make it” (Damodaran) or through the required rate of the venture capital method. This page does neither. It is this page’s convention, not a market rule: no source pairs the multiple with a plan growing as fast as Potentiacta’s. The table below gives, beside each value, the value on the year’s own Δx, the revenue of the year just ended, so the reader sees how much of it is the plan’s next year.

A revenue multiple carries the margin of the firms it comes from: “the key determinants of revenue multiples are profit margins – net profit margin for equity multiples and operating margins for firm value multiples” (Damodaran, “Revenue Multiples”). The peers’ 2.21 is their EV/EBIT, 17.77, times their pre-tax operating margin, 12.45% (Damodaran, January 2026). Potentiacta’s documents set its own value added, which includes its team, taxes and margin, at a norm of 30% of RIL (Package Disclosure v2); they do not state an operating margin, so the page does not claim that Potentiacta’s margin is the peers’.

The low end follows Berkus: a buyer “will deduct about 20% of the value of a comparable public entity”; the whole range sits inside his usual sales multiples, “from .5 to 4 times gross revenues for similar businesses” (Berkus, 14 Nov 2024).

What potential means here. The revenue of the next twelve months, not of the last twelve: a buyer at a date pays for what comes next. The peers’ multiple prices the growth expected after it at the level of the sector; today’s seed price is itself a price for potential; and the investor’s share of the plan’s later years shows in the exit and the plan running behind, below. The plan’s growth beyond twelve months is not added at face value: venture investors report that fewer than 30% of their companies meet their projections, 26% at early stage (Gompers et al.).

† Plan arithmetic. Every value in the table is arithmetic on Potentiacta’s targets: 2.21 × the Δx planned for the next twelve months, if the plan is met, not brought back to today and not weighted for the chance that the plan is missed (venture investors report that fewer than 30% of their companies meet their projections, 26% at early stage: Gompers et al.). The 2027 row already exceeds the median pre-money valuation of a US Series B round, $187.0M, and the 2028 row that of a Series D+ round, $1,723.7M; from the 2029 row each value is more than ten times the Series D+ median (2026 to 30 September; PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, Q3 2026, where Series A is $60.3M and Series C $500.0M), so the market cannot check it.

The month table. A month’s end is valued the same way, on the Δx the plan targets for the twelve months after it. The page’s monthly plan runs to December 2027; for the months after, the method takes 2028 month by month by the target’s own rules — users growing evenly, in percentage terms, from 1,000 to 10,000; a $10,000 basket; Δf_operations by the rule; Δx = Δf × 1.81, which is how Potentiacta calculates its plan (Verified Outcome Units Target), not the methodology’s Δx = (I − A)⁻¹Δf = LΔf — held to the target’s 2028 totals. That 2028 path is derived: the target gives 2028 as a year.

Your SAFE, its conversion and your return

The SAFE. A post-money SAFE, Y Combinator’s standard form, with a US$35M valuation cap. Your share of Potentiacta is your funds ÷ US$35M: 19.2% for the full ask, $6,731,327. It converts at the next priced round, in Q3 2027 (taken as 15 August), at the lower of the cap and the round’s price: a round priced below the cap gives you more shares.

The round of Q3 2027 on the plan. 2.21 × the $51.7M of Δx planned for 15 August 2027 to 14 August 2028 = $114M (range $91.5M–$179M), above the cap: your SAFE converts at the cap. The median Series A post-money was $76.3M in Q2 2026 (Carta); the plan’s round is about 1.5 times it, on revenue still to be earned. With the cap your share does not depend on when the round comes or at what price, as long as it values Potentiacta above US$35M.

Dilution after the conversion. Each later priced round sells new shares. The page’s base case takes Carta’s median dilution in Q2 2026: 18.7% at a Series A, the round where your SAFE converts, and 13.4% at a Series B before the exit, at the median 1.8 years between rounds for non-AI companies (PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, Q1 2026): you keep 70.4% of your share. This counts only the new money of the two rounds, as Carta reports it (“investors buy 10%–30% of the company” in a Series A); it leaves out option-pool increases, which dilute a SAFE holder as well (Y Combinator’s own Series A example: “29.41% investments + 10% option pool = 39.41%”). It is the mild case: the median founding team holds about 56% of its equity by the seed round and 36% by the Series A (Carta, Founder Ownership Report 2026, 12 Mar 2026). With more rounds — a Series C too, at about 30% a round with option pools, NVCA’s illustrative path from 70% at seed to 25% after a Series C (NVCA 2026 Yearbook) — you keep 35.7%. On that path the full ask returns 746× and an IRR of 384% a year, against 1,471× and 468%.

Your return, as venture investors measure it. MOIC = your proceeds ÷ your money: “MOIC is always a gross metric” (Carta). IRR is “the break-even rate of return” at which the net present value of all the cash flows is zero (Carta); with two cash flows, your money on 21 October 2026, the plan’s start, assumed to be the day it comes in, and the proceeds on 31 December 2030, 1,532 days or 4.2 years later, IRR = MOIC^(1 ÷ years) − 1, with years = days ÷ 365. Both are gross, before taxes, fees and carry, and the same for every amount, since your share grows with your money. Until the exit nothing is paid out: the position is a value on paper.

The company’s return is not yours. The page’s return on Δf = RIL ÷ Δf, 81% at ×1.81, is what each dollar of Δf brings in above itself, before Potentiacta’s own team, taxes and margin, which come out of RIL (Package Disclosure v2): it is not an operating margin or a return on capital, and it has no time, no price paid for a share and no dilution in it. The page names it “Return on Δf (company)” wherever it appears; an investor’s return is MOIC and IRR.

What venture investors require. The median required multiple is 5× and the median required IRR 30% (Gompers et al., Table 12); “many early-stage VC investors target a 30% net IRR” (Carta). Payne’s target for a first professional seed round is 30×, with the winners “home runs yielding 10x to 50x invested capital” (Kauffman Foundation, 2007).

The recommended exit: a sale at the end of 2030

Why the end of 2030. Each point can be checked against its source:

• A hold at the short end of venture’s. It comes 4.2 years after the money (from 21 October 2026, the plan’s start, assumed to be the day of the money, to 31 December 2030), shorter than the median time from a company’s first VC round to its acquisition: 5.08 years in 2025, and between 4.78 and 5.31 years in every year since 2017 (NVCA 2026 Yearbook, data by PitchBook). A year’s slip lands near that median.
• Inside a standard fund. A standard fund runs “[10] years from the Initial Closing Date, subject to two one-year extensions” (ILPA, Model LPA term sheet, July 2020) and makes its investments in its first five years (Metrick and Yasuda, Yale, 2009), so a deal has about five to ten years to exit, plus any extensions. An exit at the end of 2030, 4.2 years after the money, fits a fund anywhere in its investment period. An IPO at the median 7.85 years from the first VC round (NVCA 2026 Yearbook), about August 2034, fits a fund that closed after about August 2024, or one that uses both extensions (closed after about August 2022); NVCA notes that “ten-year fund lives collide with 7.85-year median time to first IPO”.
• The usual route. “M&A accounted for 1,396 of 1,463 total exits in 2025” (NVCA 2026 Yearbook), and “M&A has become the preferred, or at least primary, route for liquidity” (PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, Q3 2026); a16z put the mix at “closer to 80-90% M&A and 10-20% IPOs” (Kupor, 2019). That is by count: by value, the 49 IPOs of 2025 ($105.2B) weighed about as much as the disclosed acquisitions ($109.0B), so at Potentiacta’s planned size the route may be an IPO.
• The valuation against the market. The valuation at the end of 2030 rests on 2031’s planned Δx, $33.1B, 23% of the social bonds issued in 2025 ($141.2B, Climate Bonds Initiative, Mar 2026, as of 21 Oct 2026; section 4 shows the latest); each later year-end’s rests on more than half of a year’s issuance.

Honest about size. On the plan a $73.1B sale would be larger than SpaceX’s $60 billion purchase of Cursor in Q3 2026, “the second-largest M&A deal involving a venture-backed company on record” (PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, Q3 2026). At that size an IPO is the likelier route, and its median hold (7.85 years from the first VC round, NVCA 2026 Yearbook) would put the exit around August 2034, inside a ten-year fund only if the fund closed after about August 2024 or uses its extensions; the end of 2030 is the date of the plan’s case, and the plan running behind (next section) shows what a later or smaller exit returns.

Why not 2028 or 2036. An exit at the end of 2028 comes 2.2 years after the money and about 1.4 years after the conversion, shorter than the median 1.8 years between rounds for non-AI companies (PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, Q1 2026, as of 31 Mar 2026): there is usually no new round to sell into; secondary sales are a third channel ($106.3B in 2025) but concentrated, the top 20 startups being 86.4% of trading value (NVCA 2026 Yearbook); and the plan’s steepest years would be given up. An exit at the end of 2036 comes 10.2 years after the money, beyond the ten-year term of a fund even if it closed on the day of the investment, on a valuation resting on Δx of $1.45T, about ten times 2025’s social bond issuance, which no market data can check.

If the plan runs behind

The same exit at the end of 2030, with Potentiacta 1, 2 or 3 years behind its targets: valued at 2.21 × the Δx of an earlier year of the plan. The conversion is taken as planned; a company behind its plan would raise below the cap, and the SAFE would then convert at the lower price into more shares, so these rungs are cautious.

One year behind is also the exit valued on 2030’s own Δx, the revenue earned by then. The values are as converted.

What your SAFE needs. The exit at the end of 2030 that gives a multiple, at Carta’s median dilution: the same for every amount.

For comparison, the plan targets Δx of $121M for 2028 and $1.17B for 2029: ten times the money needs Potentiacta, at the end of 2030, to plan $225M of revenue for 2031.

How The numbers are calculated

• Users grow evenly, in percentage terms, during each year and reach the stated number on 1 January of the next year: 21 users with a $3,600 basket to 30 November 2026, then 100 users with a $10K basket from 1 December; 100 users to mid-May 2027, then growth to 1,000 by 1 January 2028.
• Δf_basket = users × Δf_basket per user a year.
• Δf_operations a month = $500 · N + R&D(N) + RTV(N) for N users. $200 a month per user: verification. $300 a month per user: licenses and services. R&D, including data: $1,000 a month per user up to 100 users; above 100 users, $100,000 × (N ÷ 100)^0.3 a month for the platform. Real-time data verification (RTV): $700 a day up to 100 users; above 100 users, $21,300 × (N ÷ 100)^0.3 a month. R&D and real-time verification serve the whole platform: they grow with data and load, but far slower than users, doubling with every tenfold increase in users. This is an assumption, checked each quarter against the actual Δf_operations verified by the Oracle.
• A month of the plan counts RTV’s $700 a day as 365/12 days in 2026 and as its calendar days in 2027; each year’s months are held to the target’s totals for that year.
• Δf = Δf_basket + Δf_operations; Δx = Δf × 1.81, the plan’s multiplier (23 Oct 2026): this is how Potentiacta calculates its plan (Verified Outcome Units Target), not the methodology’s Δx, which is Δx = (I − A)⁻¹Δf = LΔf.
• 2026 is shown in two parts, and each row adds up: today’s row, the figures to date (the platform’s live figures, with their date), and the 2026 row, the rest of the year after the figures’ date (plan), with Δf = Δf_basket + Δf_operations and Δx the target’s 2026 Δx less the $1,123,304.25 the plan counted to 20 October 2026 (the snapshot, with Δf $619,665.69). On the snapshot the two make the target’s 2026.
• Potentiacta value added = 30% of RIL, where RIL = Δx − Δf; the other 70% is invested in growing Δf.
• Return on Δf (company) = RIL ÷ Δf, before Potentiacta’s own team, taxes and margin: the company’s return, not the investor’s.
• Potentiacta valuation today US$35M post-money, the seed price; on 1 January of each later year, if the plan is met, 2.21 × the Δx planned for that year, shown at no less than US$35M; at a month’s end 2.21 × the Δx planned for the next twelve months.
• Your share in a month: your funds ÷ US$35M, after the Q3 2027 round’s new money from August 2027; its value is your share × the month’s valuation.
• Today the dashboard’s current figures, with their date; “via API” where a figure comes with the platform API and the platform does not give it yet.

Sources

The plan. Potentiacta · Verified Outcome Units Target · 23 Oct 2026: the plan’s figures. The dashboard’s figures of 20 Oct 2026: the plan’s start (users, Δf and Δx). Today’s figures, with their date, are as the Project Overview shows them. Section 4’s market set as of 21 Oct 2026: a year’s social bond issuance (section 4 of the page shows the latest).

Valuation and venture practice. The pages were read on 23 and 24 October 2026.

• Gompers, Gornall, Kaplan and Strebulaev, “How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?”, NBER Working Paper 22587.
• Damodaran, “Price to Sales Ratios: Revenue Multiples by Sector (US)”, Enterprise Value Multiples by Sector (US) and the industry classification of companies, NYU Stern, data as of January 2026.
• Damodaran, “Valuing Young, Start-up and Growth Companies: Estimation Issues and Valuation Challenges”, NYU Stern, May 2009, and “Revenue Multiples”, chapter 10.
• Berkus, “How will a buyer value your business?”, 14 Nov 2024.
• Payne, “Valuation of Pre-revenue Companies: The Venture Capital Method”, Kauffman Foundation, 1 Jul 2007.
• Y Combinator, Documents: the SAFE, The Y Combinator Deal and the homepage; the post-money SAFE (valuation cap only), v1.2, and its User Guide.
• Altman, “Fundraising advice for YC companies”, 23 Feb 2016, and “Dilution”, 1 Mar 2017. Ralston, “A Guide to Seed Fundraising”, 7 Jan 2016.
• a16z: speedrun FAQ; Immerman and George, “When Entry Multiples Don’t Matter”, 17 Aug 2020; Kupor, “On Startups, Platforms, and Innovation”, 11 Mar 2019.
• Plug and Play, FAQ.
• IPEV Board, International Private Equity and Venture Capital Valuation Guidelines, December 2025.
• Sahlman and Scherlis, “A Method for Valuing High-Risk, Long-Term Investments: The ‘Venture Capital Method’”, Harvard Business School case 9-288-006, 24 Jul 1987 (the publisher’s description).
• Christofidis and Debande, “Financing innovative firms through venture capital”, EIB Sector Papers, European Investment Bank, 22 Feb 2001.
• Strebulaev, Collina, Delalay and Vasconcelos, “Valuation of early-stage firms implied by SAFEs and convertible notes”, Westlaw Today, 14 Jan 2025.
• Metrick and Yasuda, “The Economics of Private Equity Funds”, Yale International Center for Finance, 1 Jul 2009 (Review of Financial Studies, 2010).
• CFA Institute, Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) for Firms, 2020: the money-weighted return and the investment multiple.

Market data. Carta’s pages were read through the Internet Archive’s captures, since carta.com refuses automated reading.

• AngelList Venture, SAFE Market Data, Q3 2026: seed and pre-seed, all industries, Finance and Cleantech.
• Carta, “In the pre-seed market, valuation caps on new SAFEs keep getting bigger”, 25 Aug 2026; “Series A Funding: How to Raise Your First Priced Round”, Round Benchmarking, Q2 2026; MOIC and IRR; Founder Ownership Report 2026, 12 Mar 2026.
• PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, Q3 2026, as of 30 Sep 2026, and Q1 2026, as of 31 Mar 2026.
• NVCA 2026 Yearbook, data by PitchBook as of 31 Dec 2025.
• ILPA, Model LPA term sheet, July 2020; Performance Template Guidance: Granular Methodology, January 2025 (v1.1).
• Climate Bonds Initiative, press release, 17 Mar 2026: social bonds issued in 2025, US$141.2B.