valuation
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John Shumate and the value of a slow barrel
A bourbon barrel takes years to become a bottle. John Shumate saw a financing problem in the wait - and a way to connect his work with entrepreneurs to the business of investing.
Plutus Business Advisory makes the case for the boring bits
An investor introduction gets the applause. Plutus Business Advisory works on the forecasts, valuations and legal details that give the introduction a chance.
The Boston bank that only speaks fluent brand
A boutique bank that refuses to do anything but consumer deals just got a lot bigger. Here is how a Boston firm turned brand obsession into a specialty M&A practice - and why Origin Merchant Partners bought in.
The Bank That Would Rather Have One Client Than a Hundred
Founded by dealmakers who left Morgan Stanley and TPG, Incentrum Group built a merchant bank around a contrarian idea - take fewer clients, own the advice, and put your own money where your counsel is.
The Bank That Wins When Everyone Else Is Losing
It ranks No. 1 in global M&A by deal count and No. 1 in restructuring. One of those businesses thrives in good times, the other in bad. Houlihan Lokey owns both.
ValueMate
ValueMate is a Y Combinator (X25) startup rebuilding the residential real estate appraisal stack around AI. Its smartphone app uses LiDAR to capture a property in a roughly three-to-five minute walkthrough, generating a 3D model, 2D floor plans and a near-final, regulator-ready appraisal report that complies with the new UAD 3.6 and ANSI standards. The company says it makes appraisers about 80% more efficient, cutting turnaround from days or weeks to hours, and also runs its own in-house appraisal firm, VM Appraisals.
Is ServiceNow a Casualty of the AI Transition? A Deep Dive Valuation
In this episode of the Liam Highland portfolio, the host runs a complete deep-dive valuation of ServiceNow after its stock dropped 18% in a single session on its Q1 2026 earnings—the biggest one-day fall in its history—leaving it down 43% year to date and 57% off its ~$220 billion peak. The analysis argues the sell-off is not about near-term numbers (ServiceNow beat guidance, raised its full-year outlook, grew subscription revenue 22%, and holds a 97% renewal rate) but about the market repricing the company's 'terminal value' on fears that AI agents could commoditize the workflow layer. Using a seven-layer enterprise data stack and a software repricing matrix, the host builds bear, base, and bull cases with specific share-price ranges, then lays out four signals (demand, profit, AI monetization, and the moat) plus four dated earnings checkpoints to test which scenario the data confirms.
PJ Patel
PJ Patel is Co-CEO and Senior Managing Director of Valuation Research Corporation (VRC), the New York-headquartered valuation firm that puts a number on the intangible - brands, goodwill, illiquid securities, complex derivatives. A CFA and Accredited Senior Appraiser, he leads VRC's global initiatives through the Valuation Research Group (VRG) network and is a frequent voice on ASC 805, 350/360 and 820 in accounting circles.
Yann Magnan
Yann Magnan is the CEO and co-founder of 73 Strings, an AI-powered valuation and portfolio-monitoring platform for the private capital industry. A corporate-finance veteran of more than 25 years, he built Duff & Phelps' Paris office in 2007 and rose to lead its EMEA region across 27 offices before joining a pair of former colleagues to attack one of finance's most stubborn problems: pricing illiquid private assets. Under his leadership, 73 Strings raised a $55M Series B led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives in February 2025 and now serves managers overseeing trillions in assets from offices spanning Paris, New York, London, Bengaluru and beyond.
The Underdog That Refused to Retrofit
UJET is a cloud-native, mobile-first, CRM-native contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) platform positioning itself as the modern 'Experience Center' alternative to legacy giants like Five9, NICE, Talkdesk, and Genesys. Built around enterprise-grade AI, a zero-PII-storage architecture, and two-month deployments, UJET has raised roughly $231M across five rounds at an estimated ~$500M valuation. This story sizes up where the underdog actually stands in a consolidating CCaaS market where every vendor is shouting the same AI promises.
John Meadows
John Meadows is the co-founder and co-CEO of Bowery Valuation, a New York-based proptech company building the first vertically integrated appraisal-tech platform for commercial real estate. A certified appraiser who valued more than $3 billion of property at BBG before he turned 30, Meadows left the legacy appraisal world in 2015 to rebuild it from scratch with partners Noah Isaacs and Cesar Devers. He runs the company as a co-CEO partnership, has raised over $80 million in venture funding, and treats company culture as a system to be engineered rather than a slogan.
VRC (Valuation Research Corporation)
Valuation Research Corporation (VRC) is a full-service, independent global valuation and advisory firm that has provided objective, supportable conclusions of value since 1975. With a U.S. team of 300+ professionals across a dozen offices and an international network of nearly 1,500 valuation experts through Valuation Research Group, VRC serves private equity funds, financial sponsors, and acquisitive public and private companies with fairness opinions, solvency opinions, financial-reporting valuations, tax valuations, and the pricing of complex, illiquid securities.