Arrington at TechCrunch has an interesting story about YouNoodle.com, a site that purports to automatically generate a valuation for your startup with some relatively simple information:

In February a well backed startup called YouNoodle said that they were developing a product that would accurately predict the future success of startups based on an analysis of the business and the founding team. Much like a credit rating tells creditors how likely an entity is to pay off debt, YouNoodle aimed to tell investors how likely they would be to see a return on their investment, and would even go so far as to estimate the exact valuation of a startup a few years into the future.

We were skeptical, to say the least. Particularly because the product was being announced while still in development.

Now YouNoodle is preparing to launch the predictor tool (sign up to be notified here). CEO Bob Goodson let me test the service out last week and shared some of the early results with me.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/05/the-highly-controversial-younoodle-startup-predictor-is-coming/

http://younoodle.com/

And a post on doing it the old fashioned way(s): http://blog.startupprofessionals.com/2009/10/startup-valuation-top-ten-techniques.html