Seed stage businesses are sold based on the dream of growing into VC-backable rocket ships; these businesses are sold on being reliable cash machines.  If you&#x27;re growing at e.g. 20% month-over-month and have $25k MRR, you quite reasonably will get offered valuations in the high single-digit or low double-digit millions for the company.  (When you attempt to sell 10~20% of it in a seed round.)  The valuation methodology is, essentially, &quot;whatever we can convince 1+ VCs to accept because they&#x27;re scared that if they don&#x27;t say yes a competitor will.&quot;  It&#x27;s far more sensitive to prevailing sentiment in the VC community and broader tech market than it is sensitive to the exact particulars of the business being partially sold.<p>If you&#x27;re growing at 20% year-over-year, you&#x27;re basically not investable.  You&#x27;re totally salable if the business generates a profit; if one were to throw out $100k per year for that profit (on an SDC basis as discussed in this post), expect the valuation to be $300k to $400k.  This is much, much less sensitive to the current headlines on Wall Street.<p>There&#x27;s a lot of daylight between $400k and $10 million, right?  That&#x27;s the premium the market places on growth.  This is one of the reasons the G word comes up so much in pg&#x27;s writing about startups. (See <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;growth.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;growth.html</a> among many other examples.)