Kevin Grossman of Decathlon Capital Advisors explains how valuation multiples expand non-linearly with scale for SaaS companies with identical growth rates.
0:00 / 0:16exact quote · 16.8s
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“A five million dollar ARR software company that's growing at 25% a year versus a ten million dollar ARR software company growing at 25% a year. The ten million dollar company is probably going to be valued at four or five times what the five million ARR is because the market's value scale.”
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“I have a couple of examples from deals we've done here where the companies did their job right, then came to us because the equity value, you know, value of their company had gone down by 75%, even though they had grown a tremendous amount and reduced their bu…”
Kevin GrossmanMar 27, 2025▶ 7:2435 - Navigating Non-Dilutive Capital: Insights with Decathlon Capital's Kevin Grossman
Insight
Grossman: Early-Stage Startups Are Mostly Insensitive to Moderate Interest Rate Moves
“I think in this part of the market, so the more founder part of the market, the early stage venture-ish part, I don't think interest rates really matter. Candidly, they do more in the middle market because things are built on leverage and interest coverage and…”
Kevin GrossmanMar 27, 2025▶ 11:2335 - Navigating Non-Dilutive Capital: Insights with Decathlon Capital's Kevin Grossman
Insight
Grossman: Debt avoids equity dilution but imposes major operational restrictions
“So yeah, it doesn't come with dilution, but it does come with more strings attached. So even though I don't even have financial covenants, as I said, you still can't just go out and go create new entities and go buy other companies without our approval.”
Kevin GrossmanMar 27, 2025▶ 5:1735 - Navigating Non-Dilutive Capital: Insights with Decathlon Capital's Kevin Grossman
Disclosure
Grossman: Decathlon no longer requires 50% annual revenue growth from borrowers
“In today's market, I don't have to have 50% year over year growth like we had to have three or four years ago, because three or four years ago, the companies were burning more capital. Today, most companies that we see are not burning a lot.”
Kevin GrossmanMar 27, 2025▶ 8:1935 - Navigating Non-Dilutive Capital: Insights with Decathlon Capital's Kevin Grossman
Disclosure
Grossman: Decathlon Capital Refuses Second-Lien Lending to Loss-Making Companies
“I'm not a second lien lender. So back when I was doing middle market lending, I would do second lien stuff because the companies were cash flowing. Really hard to do my job and rather painful to do my job if I take a, if I let a bank, whoever it is, a Silicon …”
Kevin GrossmanMar 27, 2025▶ 9:0835 - Navigating Non-Dilutive Capital: Insights with Decathlon Capital's Kevin Grossman
Disclosure
Grossman: Decathlon Avoids Low-Gross-Margin Sectors Due to EBITDA Valuations
“And it's the reason we don't work with industries that have low gross margins, for instance, because typically what that means is the business is only going to be valued on its EBITDA.”
Kevin GrossmanMar 27, 2025▶ 9:5435 - Navigating Non-Dilutive Capital: Insights with Decathlon Capital's Kevin Grossman
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