Two numbers every funded SaaS founder needs to know: how much engineering velocity you're losing right now, and how much it's discounting your eventual exit valuation. Move the sliders below to find out.
Adjust the sliders to match your situation. Your numbers update on the right as you go.
Industry benchmarks from 2024 surveys of 1,000+ funded SaaS engineering teams.
V2STech has been on the seller side of three completed SaaS acquisitions. Every formula in this calculator reflects what we saw acquirers actually do with our numbers — not theory, not frameworks, lived experience.
If you want the full breakdown emailed with sources for each number, hit “Email My Report” on the calculator above.
Bain & Company's 2024 SaaS Industry Report cites a median revenue multiple of 5-7× for SaaS companies in the $1M–$50M ARR range. Below $1M ARR, multiples drop sharply. Above $20M, growth-rate matters more than ARR. We use 6× as a conservative middle estimate. Your actual multiple will depend on growth rate, retention, and category.
When acquirers do due diligence and find material tech debt, they price the integration risk into the deal. The 5-25% range comes from interviews with M&A advisors and confirmed acquisition data. A “30% time on tech debt” team typically sees ~15% discount. A “50%+ time on tech debt” team sees 20-25% discount or walk-away.
Yes — and that's the right framing for a calculator like this. You won't know your exact valuation discount until a buyer's team does due diligence. But the magnitude is real. Most founders we work with are surprised the number is this big, not surprised it exists.
Most founders systematically underestimate this. The honest test: in the last 30 days, how many days did your senior engineers ship a feature that hit production cleanly versus how many days were spent on bugs, incidents, or “fixing X first”? The ratio is usually worse than founders think.
Most of it, no. The point of a 90-day plan isn't to eliminate tech debt — it's to fix the specific items acquirers care about most. Architecture documentation, IP cleanliness, key-person risk, test coverage on critical paths. That's 90 days of focused work and it's the difference between a 5% and a 20% valuation hit.
30-minute conversation with a senior V2STech architect. We'll review your specific gaps, give you a 90-day plan, and tell you which of our productized sprints actually fits.
See V2STech's Productized SprintsOther free tools in this series — pair them for a complete picture of where your SaaS stands.