Personally, I just put a price at 3 years of profit, calculated at a growth rate of 2200% annually, and was surprised someone took it (e-commerce app). It had nothing to do with the cash in the end, but because our CAC was so much lower than the acquiring company's current channels.

For tech, you're often selling an asset in some form and not necessarily a profit stream.

It could be a difficult integration (like payments in certain countries). It could be a type of market niche, e.g. Estonian restaurants. It could be a channel - if users are loyal to the brand, you might just be reaching out to them. It could also be some form of stickiness; if someone is integrated into say, Evernote or Medium, a better product would have trouble pulling them away because there's costs to changing.

For a lot of acquirers, they're trying to expand into a certain market but don't want to localize and build from scratch. Especially when there's bureaucracy and licensing involved. Sometimes it could take a year to get a fintech license for a thing, so someone tosses $50m at the problem to buy the license. Hiring is also quite difficult, so instead of interviewing and finding recruiters, some people might pay a premium to get a team that's proven.

But some people do buy simply for the profits. If that's the case, you could follow all those tips of calculating the numbers.