Did PG have any advice on this in any of his articles?
Those of you who have gone through this, how did you come up with your very first valuation?
How much do you think your company will be worth in 2 to 5 years? Do you have any data to back that up? What are the valuations of similar companies? Are you able to grow to their size? What does your overhead look like? What sort of cash flow do you foresee generating?
It's a bit of a black art, but you should be able to have some idea of what you honestly think your company should be worth. If you don't have a clue about this, then you need to wait to pursue any sort of funding until you can figure out what your value proposition is.
Remember that when you look for funding you are offering to sell a portion of your company at a discount in exchange for expertise and liquidity. That discount increases along with risk. I don't know if it's a linear relation, but the two are most definitely related.