Metrics & Performance
EBITDA
Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization — a proxy for operating cash flow and profitability, especially relevant for growth equity and PE deals.
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) is a measure of a company's core operational profitability. By stripping out interest, taxes, and non-cash items (depreciation, amortization), EBITDA approximates cash generated from operations before capital structure and accounting decisions. For early-stage VC companies, EBITDA is often negative (they're intentionally burning cash to grow). EBITDA becomes more relevant at growth equity and private equity stages, where investors pay EBITDA multiples to value mature companies. In the Rule of 40 framework for SaaS, EBITDA margin is one of the two inputs alongside revenue growth rate.