Raising at the right valuation

Every raise is a negotiation, and the investors across the table have a view of the market. They have seen what companies like yours were priced at before, and they will price you against it whether or not you have seen the same thing. That gap is worth closing, because the number you agree on outlives the round. Price too high and you spend the next eighteen months growing into a figure you have already been paid for, with a flat round waiting the next time you want to raise funds. Price too low and you have handed over more of the company than the raise was worth. Getting it right is not about winning the negotiation. It is about landing somewhere the next round can build on. The valuation matrices below are the market you are raising into: what Danish software companies raised, and at what price.

The number of rounds reflects the current market

The number under each band is how many Danish software companies raised that amount in the quarter. It is a read on how busy the market has been at the size you are planning to raise. Find the band you are heading for, and you have already found the companies worth comparing yourself with.

The rows sort on cash raised, not company size

The rows sort on cash raised, not on how big the company is. A company in the 1–2.5m band is not necessarily a smaller business than one in the 10–50m band. It raised a smaller round. Companies raise what they need for the next stretch, and that amount says less about their size than you would think. Pick your row by the raise you are planning, then look at what companies are in it.

When a multiple has nothing to stand on

The matrix works whether or not you have a multiple. If you have one, put your number next to the row and see whether the market agrees. If you don’t, the row still tells you what similar companies were priced at: a multiple gives you a number, but it never tells you what was actually paid for companies like yours. One is a calculation. The other is what was paid.

Recent rounds are the evidence

The best evidence of what a company is worth now is what comparable companies were just priced at, which is what a recent round is. But a row is only evidence once you know who is standing in it: compare your company with the ones that raised inside that band, on stage, on growth and on the kind of revenue they carry. Where you are not their match, the price will not be either.

What decides your price

Find the row above that matches what you plan to raise and read its median: is the valuation you have in mind above that number or below it? The middle half of 2Q26’s 5–10m band runs from 30m to 151m, 5.0x on the same money. What separates two prices inside one band is what a company can prove. The four steps below are what an investor asks to see, in order: work out which one you are on, then look up what the similar companies in that band look like on Crispa’s Valuation Insights platform and compare.

1. A story. A team, a market, and a plan for getting from the one to the other.
2. A product in use. Pilots, design partners, or the first handful of people paying for it.
3. Revenue. Signed, recurring, and growing at a rate you are willing to name out loud.
4. Revenue that holds. Retention and payback measured over long enough that a buyer stops taking the growth rate on trust.

How the matrix is built

• The universe is Danish software companies, on Crispa’s own industry classification.
• The rows band the capital raised, DKK 0.5m to 50m; a round outside that range is not in the matrix.
• The columns are interpolated percentiles of pre-money valuation inside each band.

Related reading: The three types of valuation multiples, and model your valuation; don’t discover it.

Originally published in Pre-Money, Issue 01 (Crispa, 2026), p. 8. Figures are as reported at the date given with each chart; medians describe a market, not any one company, and nothing here is advice on the price of yours.