Enterprise value

Enterprise value is what a business is worth as a whole, independent of how it's financed. In practice it's the price an acquirer would pay to own the entire operation: equity value plus debt, minus cash on hand. For a founder, it's the number that actually matters at exit, and it's usually a multiple of profit or recurring revenue rather than a multiple of revenue alone.

Why it matters when you're lean: nearly every decision either builds enterprise value or just buys you a busier week. Recurring revenue, low churn, clean books, documented processes and reduced founder-dependence all push the multiple up. A pile of one-off project income that walks out the door when you stop working does not.

A few concrete moves that lift the number:

• Say you're running your bookkeeping through Moneybird and you keep it reconciled monthly rather than scrambling at year-end. Clean, current books mean a buyer can trust the figures during due diligence instead of discounting the price for the risk that they're wrong.
• Say you write up how every recurring task gets done in Trainual, so the work lives in a documented process rather than in your head. A business that runs on systems sells for more than one that runs on the founder.
• Say you record the handful of things only you know how to do as short Loom walkthroughs. Each one chips away at founder-dependence, which is the single biggest thing that drags an exit multiple down.

If you're building to sell, or to eventually buy your own time back, treat enterprise value as the scoreboard and work backwards from the multiple a buyer would pay.