[staunch]

Others are saying you can't place a value. I don't buy that at all. People do it every day. The people that are truly capable of building a successful business are few and far between. An investor is lucky to find someone worth betting on.

From your perspective taking investment is a serious commitment. You're promising to to spend the next N years dedicating yourself to making the company successful. That's worth quite a bit if you're at all likely to succeed.

Just ask yourself how much equity would you sell and for what price?

I think a sane ballpark is something like 10-15% for $100-200k, 20-25% for $500k, or 30-35% for $1M. But again, that's just a ballpark.

[jerf]

"People" aren't saying you can't place a value on it. "People" are saying you can't place a value on it based on 121 characters of text, less than half of which even describes the startup in question. If you rephrase the question as "What is this thing in my hand worth?" you haven't changed all that much....

[staunch]

You can make some common assumptions:

1) There are (or will be) 2 founders that are prepared to dedicate years to the venture

2) They're able to convince an investor to put money in (otherwise valuation won't matter).

To me that's enough to justify the ballpark valuations I gave. You don't need to know their specific market, product, or anything else.

[jacquesm]

You can't put a value on a company that is based on an unknown idea with research by an unknown individual with unknown skills.

Sorry but no. I don't care if the founders are prepared to dedicate the rest of their lives to it (assuming it is founders and not founder), after all you could dedicate your life to making a better mousetrap but for me that would be worth $0.

The guy is basically asking how much his time is worth without giving his qualifications for all you know he's flipping burgers at McD's.

My brother in law came up with an idea for a better garbage can, not immediately obvious and not in production anywhere, after some 'research'.

What is it worth?

For me it's worth $0. He has no background in manufacturing, sales, marketing or design, he does not have anybody that would dedicate his life to it, and he's not prepared to mortgage his house and let go of his day-job to pursue it. So it won't be going anywhere.

I don't see this guy making any statements about what he will bring to the table either other than the idea, not even implicit ones, no statements about commitment or anything.

So, more info is needed. Both about the idea and the OP (track record would help but likely none or he wouldn't be asking the question).

No realistic valuation ever rested on this little info.

Sure 'angel' investments fall in to a certain range, say 0 to 10% of the stock for 0 to $1M. But that's like saying the sun will be shining tomorrow, that's not an answer to the question.

[staunch]

It seems like you're being intentionally obtuse. He asked a general question about startup valuations. A general answer is perfectly possible. Whatever...