Are Your Prices Fair? There’s a Simple Formula to Find Out

I have spent most of my professional life sitting at the intersection of ideas and capital. Over time, you develop a sense for when something is working and when it is not.

Price is meant to be a signal. It is supposed to communicate information between people who are building something and people who are deciding whether to support it. When price works, it coordinates behavior. It tells creators where to focus and gives investors a way to measure progress over time, but there are moments when price stops discovering value and starts suppressing it. This shift changes what gets built, how long companies are allowed to mature and who gets to participate in growth. When that happens, we still talk about valuation, but what we are really doing is negotiating around fear. 

When valuation becomes compression

Modern finance is extremely good at measuring what already exists. It is far less effective at recognizing what is still forming. If it exists on a balance sheet or inventory, a good financier can estimate its value. When the thing of value is still in development, the waters become much murkier.

I have advised entrepreneurs for decades on raising capital for their businesses — real companies with customers, employees and momentum. Again, I have watched valuation conversations turn into exercises in leverage. Whoever controlled capital dictated the structure, the pace, and ultimately, the price. This outcome is the product of incentives that reward certainty over development and speed over patience.

I saw this dynamic clearly while working alongside the founders of Archipelago ECN, one of the earliest platforms to execute equity trades over the internet. We solved fragmentation in the markets, improved pricing efficiency and increased speed. When trading volume became the dominant driver, entire categories of companies, particularly smaller and earlier-stage public companies, quietly stopped mattering to the system.

The consequences show up quickly. The number of publicly traded companies dropped. The immediate result was a shrunken marketplace with a reduced pipeline of new entrants. 

Those that remained found themselves competing against the giants in the market. The necessity to show growth over everything else led founders to begin optimizing for near-term benchmarks instead of building durable businesses. Capital providers prioritize early extraction over long-term participation to avoid opportunity cost. 

When companies are pushed toward premature exits or forced to remain private far longer than what makes sense, the price is wrong because the system never allowed it to be right.

Equilibrium pricing as alignment

Equilibrium pricing begins with a simple observation: Value does not arrive fully formed. Before there is revenue, there is effort. Before there is volume, there is work. Before there is certainty, there is risk taken by people who believe in an idea enough to build it. Equilibrium pricing respects that process. Capital must be aligned with a company’s stage of development. When it is not, timelines compress and decision-making distorts. 

I have seen this alignment change outcomes instantly. For example, a company I advised struggled to secure a $5 million working capital line while private, despite steady operations and clear growth prospects. Shortly after becoming public, without any meaningful change to the business itself, its bank extended a $20 million credit facility. The difference was transparency, liquidity and price discovery operating in an environment designed to recognize development, not discount it.

Misalignment is often visible in how capital behaves under pressure. Capital that demands certainty before development has occurred, or accelerates timelines unnaturally or prioritizes extraction over progress, signals that alignment has already been lost.

Markets function best when valuation occurs in environments where information, participation and discipline can coexist. 

Too much of today’s valuation happens behind closed doors. Numbers are attached to ideas through private negotiation, but the broader market never sees how those numbers were reached or participates in the growth that follows. 

AI, algorithms and repeating the same mistake faster

Artificial intelligence (AI) now sits at the center of modern financial analysis. It processes information faster than any human ever could. But speed does not equal wisdom. If valuation models are built around short-term outputs, algorithms will optimize relentlessly around those outputs. If markets reward volume over development, AI will accelerate that preference. The result is faster repetition of the same blind spots.

This is where market design becomes inseparable from technology. Algorithms are only as good as the environments in which they operate. Public markets structured for smaller companies generate different data than private negotiations. They introduce transparency, discipline and participation without forcing premature scale. Outside of those environments, algorithms risk making the same mistake perfectly, millions of times over. 

The greatest risk is the systematic failure to recognize opportunity because the tools are pointed in the wrong direction.

Letting price discover value again

Price is one of the most powerful coordination tools ever created. When it functions properly, it allocates resources, rewards contribution and supports growth. 

Equilibrium pricing is about restoring balance. It means aligning incentives, matching capital to stage and designing public infrastructure that values development alongside liquidity. That is how durable value has always been created.

If we want capital markets to support the next generation of transformative companies, we must give price the conditions needed to work. When alignment exists, price starts revealing possibility. 

For leaders, restoring alignment requires deliberate choices:

• Examine how you define risk.
  Ask whether your valuation frameworks allow time, effort and development to register as information.
• Match capital to the stage of growth.
  Capital that aligns with development allows price to emerge.
• Separate speed from insight.
  Faster analysis does not guarantee better valuation. Ensure technology is operating meaningfully.
• Favor environments where price can evolve.
  Valuation works best where transparency, participation and discipline coexist. 
• Design incentives that reward participation, not extraction.
  When incentives prioritize early control over long-term contribution, price becomes distorted. Alignment corrects that.

Markets fail when the systems meant to recognize value are pointed in the wrong direction.

I have spent most of my professional life sitting at the intersection of ideas and capital. Over time, you develop a sense for when something is working and when it is not.

Price is meant to be a signal. It is supposed to communicate information between people who are building something and people who are deciding whether to support it. When price works, it coordinates behavior. It tells creators where to focus and gives investors a way to measure progress over time, but there are moments when price stops discovering value and starts suppressing it. This shift changes what gets built, how long companies are allowed to mature and who gets to participate in growth. When that happens, we still talk about valuation, but what we are really doing is negotiating around fear. 

When valuation becomes compression

Modern finance is extremely good at measuring what already exists. It is far less effective at recognizing what is still forming. If it exists on a balance sheet or inventory, a good financier can estimate its value. When the thing of value is still in development, the waters become much murkier.