At the early stage, valuation is more an art than a science, first both sides have to want to do the deal, then is there an intersection between my maximum and their own minimum valuation, if there is then we do a deal, otherwise I try to connect them to later stage investors or we revisit when the company has made enough progress to get the valuation they want.

Another contrarian viewpoint, I don't think many companies that get started are venture backable, they may make good profitable software businesses but only 2-3% of software or tech-enabled businesses are venture backable. It's a function of how big the company can be from a revenue standpoint (at a minimum $25m/yr), which is a function of how big the market is ($100m+/yr and growing) and fast you can capture the market i.e. an adequate distribution strategy for the product offering.

For now, I am biased towards B2B & B2B2C offerings - consumer African startups have struggled to scale cost-effectively so we are looking for businesses that can leverage commercial / distribution partnerships to scale.