Before you can plan an exit, a growth move, or a partner buyout, you need a number you can defend. Archveo gives established New York metro owners a confidential business valuation grounded in real market data, from an advisor who sells businesses for a living, not an instant online estimate.
Most small and lower-middle-market businesses are valued on a multiple of earnings, whether that is SDE for a smaller company or EBITDA once you are larger. The multiple depends on your size, your sector, and how much risk a buyer sees in the cash flow.
A credible valuation starts by normalizing your earnings, applies a multiple supported by comparable sales, and then adjusts for the things that make your business specifically easier or harder to buy.
Two businesses with the same earnings rarely sell for the same price. What separates them is how much a buyer has to take on faith. Clean financials and documentation that survives scrutiny remove the first reason to discount. Low owner-dependence removes the largest one: a business that runs without you is a business a buyer can actually own.
Recurring or predictable revenue, a real management layer rather than a single indispensable person, and a growth story a buyer can believe are the rest of it. None of these are tricks to raise a number. They are the things that give more than one buyer a reason to compete, and competition is what moves a price.
Higher revenue does not automatically mean a higher price. A larger business carrying more risk can be worth less than a smaller one a buyer can step into cleanly.
An online tool applies an average multiple to a number you typed in. It does not see your add-backs, your customer concentration, your lease, or what buyers in your sector are actually paying right now. It cannot, because you never told it and it has no way to know.
A valuation from someone who takes businesses to market reflects the real buyer pool: who is actively looking, what they are willing to underwrite, and where they walk away. That is the difference between a number that sounds plausible and a number that survives a negotiation.
Backed by more than two decades across finance, real estate, and business brokerage, and more than 25 completed transactions.
A listing publishes a business and waits. A managed process prepares it, decides which buyers should see it, and controls what they learn and when. Most of what determines the outcome of a New York sale happens before a buyer is ever contacted.
Most small and lower-middle-market businesses are valued on a multiple of earnings. For a smaller company that earnings figure is usually seller's discretionary earnings, and for a larger one it is usually EBITDA. The multiple is not a fixed number. It reflects the size of the business, the sector it operates in, and how much risk a buyer sees in the cash flow continuing after the owner leaves.
The work is in the inputs rather than the arithmetic. Earnings have to be normalized first, and the multiple has to be supported by what comparable businesses have actually sold for, not by a rule of thumb.
Add-backs are the expenses that run through the business but are not the cost of running it: an owner's above-market salary, a personal vehicle, one-time legal fees. Adding them back shows what the business genuinely earns for its next owner, which is what a buyer is pricing.
They move the number more than most owners expect, because the earnings figure is multiplied. A defensible add-back has documentation behind it. One that does not gets removed in diligence, and by then it has already set an expectation.
That is usually the better time for one. A valuation tells you what the business is worth today and, more usefully, which parts of it a buyer is discounting. Those are the things you still have time to change.
An owner who learns two years out that their customer concentration or their owner-dependence is the binding constraint can do something about it. The same owner learning it during diligence is negotiating rather than improving.
In practice the useful distinction is not the label but the evidence behind it. A number is only as good as the earnings it is built on, the comparable sales supporting the multiple, and whether the person giving it has taken businesses like yours to market recently.
A formal appraisal for a court, an estate or an SBA lender is a separate exercise with its own standards, and when you need one we will say so rather than substitute for it.
Usually three years of financial statements or tax returns, a current profit and loss, and a conversation about how the business actually runs: who the customers are, who depends on you, what is under contract.
It is confidential. Nothing is shared, listed or shown to anyone without your say-so, and there is no obligation to sell at the end of it. Owners come to us years before a sale and that is a normal way to start.
We will talk about the business, why you are considering a sale, your timing, financial performance, and what a realistic next step looks like. If you are early in the process, that is fine. You do not need to have decided to sell.
It is a working conversation, not a pitch. Nothing about it commits you to selling, to an engagement, or to a timeline, and it is held in confidence.
You do not need to have decided to sell before speaking with us. Whether you are considering a sale now or a few years out, we can have a confidential conversation about what your business may be worth, how prepared it is for a sale, what the likely buyer universe looks like, and whether now is the right time to go to market.
A no-obligation conversation, held in confidence and at your pace.
Schedule a Confidential Consultation →Or call (646) 603-0594