Ask HN: 409A Valuation for Pre-VC, Post-Rev Startup?

Hello!

We're a small tech company that is pre-VC, but post-revenue (about $500K gross annual in 2013 and 2014). We've bootstrapped the company this far (incorporated in 2011), with zero outside financing.

We've recently hired our first couple of employees and would like to create an ESOP, but are a bit hung-up on what to do about the 409A rules and strike price we should use for our employee option grants.

From what we can gather online, it seems that that pre-vc, pre-revenue companies can just go with the par value of the common stock, but given that we have assets (100K+ in cash, 20K+ in hardware, etc.) and historical cashflows we're not sure how to go about getting a proper 409A.

Should we contract out a valuation firm or is this something we can do in-house?

Would love to hear from anyone in the HN community that has gone through something similar.

Thanks!