[borism]

> That said, a company is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.

This implies transaction takes place in an efficient market - i.e. bidders have full information about the thing they're buying. Tech start-ups market is quite far from being an efficient market, as we see proven time and time again.

[anamax]

Actually, it doesn't. The efficient market hypothesis gets us to some price agreement and some notion that said price reflects "available" information. (Insert reference to Paul Newman's phone number problem.)

Absent that, it's still true that company X is worth Y to person Z if Y is willing to buy Z at valuation Y. The fact that someone would do the transaction at a different valuation doesn't change that fact.

"worth" is actually complicated and it's somewhat silly to think that it can be collapsed into a single number.