On last Sunday’s BusinessBooya! show, Echo co-founder and CEO Mark Montgomery (http://www.hellomark.com) talked candidly about making his way through the world of ”vulture capital” and finding a true ”angel” investor, one willing to give cash and expertise with just two slight conditions (basically, use the money and grow the company). During our conversation, I asked Mark how they had valued Echo–knowing that he wasn’t an MBA and didn’t seem to keen on in-depth numerical analyses.  He described a back-of-the-envelope process based, I believe, on earnings multiples. As an entrepreneur, I appreciate the fact that it was so easy and comfortable and, more importantly, that it worked well for him.  As an MBA who stumbled through and repeatedly applied the Black-Scholes Method in my Corporate Valuation course at Vandy, I had to wonder if maybe he missed something, if maybe his numbers were a little bit off. Did it matter? Does it matter? Not really. Mark and his investor both seem to be happy. But if they were to ask my help valuing Echo–or if you, dear reader, were to ask me for help valuing your business–I would recommend first that you consider the tools that Inc. Magazine has made available online as part of their annual “Business Valuation” issue (April 2008) at http://www.inc.com/valuation.