And following up on our discussion of valuation sources for early-stage companies (see BVWire #52-2), we asked frequent expert contributor Neil Beaton (Grant Thornton, LLP) his opinion on the Real Options Group (www.rogroup.com), and their software Strategic Real Options Valuation™, which purports “to go beyond a standard Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis by identifying, modeling and valuing the embedded strategic options, giving managers a deeper insight into their company's true worth.”

“This group is the top of the heap,” Beaton replies. “Trigeorgis literally wrote the book on real options,” he adds, citing ROG’s founder and president, Lenos Trigeorgis, Ph.D. “If I needed someone to turn to, it would be these folks.”