Building the Feature: Indicative Valuation, powered by Vlerick

Building an indicative valuation feature sounds straightforward on paper. Take a multiple, apply it to EBITDA, and you have a number.

In practice, that simplicity rarely holds. Even when models are built, investors still need a reliable way to sanity-check assumptions early on.

Mathieu Luypaert, Professor of Corporate Finance at Vlerick Business School and lead researcher behind the Vlerick M&A Monitor, worked closely with Steve Deplacie, Managing Director at openthebox, on translating the research into a product feature.

This instalment of Building the Feature looks at how openthebox partnered with Vlerick Business School to translate its well-established M&A Monitor into a valuation signal that is usable inside the platform, defensible in its methodology, and honest about its limits.

From research insight to product reality

The starting point was not a product idea, but a user behaviour.

Across private equity, family offices and corporate development teams, we consistently saw the same pattern. When investors needed a first-pass sense of value, many already turned to the Vlerick M&A Monitor. They used its sector multiples as a trusted reference, manually combining them with company financials to decide whether a target warranted deeper analysis.

That manual step revealed the opportunity.

Rather than replacing judgement or detailed valuation work, the ambition became to productise that initial orientation moment, making it faster, more consistent and easier to apply across thousands of companies. In practice, this means presenting users with an indicative valuation range directly within openthebox, grounded in Vlerick sector multiples and company-level financial data.

Doing so immediately raised fundamental design questions. Vlerick’s M&A Monitor is applied academic research, reflecting what is actually paid in the Belgian M&A market, particularly for mid-sized and privately held transactions. Translating those sector-level insights into company-level signals required clear methodological choices.

• Which EBITDA should be used when performance fluctuates year to year?
• How should fast-growing or highly volatile companies be treated?
• And where does an indicative valuation stop being responsible?

These were not edge cases, but core design decisions. The solution was not to smooth away complexity, but to build guardrails. Average EBITDA over multiple years, sector-specific multiples, explicit ranges rather than point estimates, and clear conditions under which no valuation is shown at all.

The result is not a promise of value, but a credible, research-backed indication.

Indicative by design

A recurring theme throughout development was restraint. Valuation is context-dependent. Deal structure, growth expectations, financing conditions and strategic rationale all matter. No model can capture that fully.

Rather than chasing theoretical precision, the feature deliberately focuses on indicative valuation ranges grounded in observed market behaviour. When data quality drops, for example in cases of extreme EBITDA volatility, no valuation is shown at all.

This philosophy mirrors the way experienced investors already use multiples: as a compass, not a destination.

More than a number

While the valuation itself is useful, the real impact comes from how it integrates into the broader openthebox platform.

Indicative valuation unlocks new ways of exploring the market. Investors can filter companies based on realistic value ranges, align opportunity sourcing with fund size or budget constraints, and focus attention where it makes strategic sense.

This turns valuation from a static calculation into a dynamic discovery tool.

Where academia meets product

Academic research and product development operate on different timelines and incentives. Research prioritises validity and methodological rigour. Products demand usability, clarity and scale.

The collaboration with Vlerick forced both sides to meet in the middle, aligning academic discipline with product pragmatism.

That balance is what ultimately made the feature viable.

Trust, transparency and attribution

Putting the Vlerick name behind the feature was a deliberate choice. As Mathieu Luypaert explains, “If you see that in roughly one out of three Belgian M&A transactions the monitor plays a role, then that is exactly what you want as a researcher. If you can increase that impact even further by embedding it in a product, all the better.”

The M&A Monitor is already widely used in Belgian dealmaking, informing a significant share of transactions each year. Referencing it transparently anchors the valuation logic in a trusted, well-understood source, rather than an opaque algorithm.

For users, that clarity matters. It makes the assumptions visible and the signal easier to interpret.

Designed to evolve

M&A markets are not static, and neither is this feature.

Multiples change. Sector dynamics shift. Financing conditions evolve. Any valuation logic that claims permanence quickly loses relevance.

That is why the Indicative Valuation feature is designed as a living component, continuously updated as new research becomes available, and open to future extensions that go beyond price alone.

At openthebox, building features is not about adding complexity. It is about removing friction between data, insight and decision-making. By translating Vlerick’s M&A research into a product-ready valuation signal, this feature aims to help investors move faster, with better context and fewer blind spots.

More broadly, it reflects how openthebox approaches product development: starting from how professionals actually work, grounding decisions in trusted data, and designing features that evolve alongside the market. Not by telling investors what a company is worth, but by giving them a clearer, more reliable starting point.