Why are you trying to establish a valuation? If it is because you are trying to raise money, your valuation is the market clearing price. Things are worth what people pay for them. That’s it.

Decide how much money you want to raise in this round.

Once you have the $ amount established, your angels will probably ask for 10%-20% of the company in return for that amount.

Alternatively, do a debt round. More on debt here: http://www.venturehacks.com/term-sheet-hacks#convertible-debt

Decide how much $ you want to raise by figuring out how much it is going to take to do your next round at a 2x-3x increase in valuation.}

Are you sure? Revenue projections is the one sure way to assess a company’s potential.
I’d recommend you break it into two steps – (a) Revenue projections tell you big the market is – and how much your business could be worth and (b) “Assets, patented technology, user base” are just means of assessing if your business model is defensible? Is there a substinable advantage that you can build that will allow you to eat a large fraction of the total market?

If both (a) and (b) are in your favor, its all yours. Otherwise, good luck getting funded!}

IP is a way to defend your projected revenue stream. You definitely need something to build a wall with to keep competition out.

And you can always get information on your competitors if not directly then indirectly – what have they bought? How big is their office? Go there during the day and count the cars. Do a scan of their servers, how many different aliases are they using for their inband applications? That gives you an idea of their scale and you can extrapolate.

Amit: he’s a stab for you: Build a smart phone simulator. Search around, you can probably find the software (it might not be legal, but hey, look at Apple back in the 80s)}

Let me ask you this – why are you approaching angels if you have no technology, no users, and no assets? Is your business plan predicated on heavy initial investment into unproven technology? If so, you’re going to face a tough sell – in my experience, those businesses usually come out of college research labs and corp think tanks where a prototype can be built before the team goes looking for production money.}

Let me rephrase the question, when you are approaching angels and have none of things I mentioned above as yet, how do you justify 10% equity with X dollars? Just base it on revenue projections?}

Since you’ve got ‘no direct competitors’ you are either a genius/visionary or your idea simply doesn’t have a business model that can support it.

:-) Bogus Jones}