Week 13 Reading Reflection

The thing that surprised me the most right away in reading this chapter was all the reasons for acquisition, which is an important reason as to why an entrepreneur should value their existing business. I thought the only reason why you would need to know the value of your company would be if you were looking to sell it, either to a patent label, larger corporation or different small-business owner. But rather, according to the book, you should know the value of your business for more reasons than just an exit strategy, but possibly even a growth strategy. The textbook lists many reasons as to why you should price the value of your business, many of the reasons include expanding on your current venture.
The price/earning section was the most confusing part. I actually remember doing this in math at some point in my life, I can't remember when, but I was very confused by it then and I think I only ever slightly understood it. The formula always seemed confusing to me, as did the values used (I didn't understand what net income and stock price, etc. were). I also don't really understand what this formula answers for a business owner. Maybe I would have understood this more if the formula was given more in a linear, note form as opposed to the word, horizontally-written form. This way it would have been easier to follow and possibly understand.
How do you choose with method for venture valuations is best? They all seemed to have their own usefulness, as well as draw-backs, so how do you choose one as opposed to the other? And if you should do all of them exactly for this reason that they each have their own problems, how do you compare one method to the other to find the most accurate value of your company?
I didn't necessarily think the author was wrong here, but I thought his 14.2 table was way too long and confusing. How do you keep track of all of these answers to compare them to find a fair value of your firm? I also disagreed that the discounted earnings method couldn't be the most real value of your firm since this method uses projection values, thus also having it's own fall-back due to error with estimations.