Startup Glossary

10x Engineer The idea that some engineers are dramatically, roughly ten times, more productive than average. A popular but contested notion ... Advisory Shares A small equity grant, typically a fraction of a percent, given to an advisor for their ongoing help, usually vesting over a yea... Async Work Asynchronous Work Working in a way that does not require everyone to be online at the same time, relying on written communication and documentati... Attrition Rate Employee Attrition · Employee Churn The rate at which employees leave a company over a period, whether they quit or are let go. The workforce equivalent of custome... Bus Factor The number of people who would have to be hit by a bus (or simply leave) before a project or company is in serious trouble beca... Chief of Staff CoS A right-hand person to a founder or CEO who drives priorities, runs cross-functional projects, and handles whatever needs doing... Co-Founder Cofounder A person who starts a company with you, sharing the earliest risk, ownership, and work. Usually brings complementary skills, a ... Culture Fit Culture Add How well a candidate's values and working style match the company's. Increasingly reframed as culture add, valuing what a perso... Employee Onboarding The process of integrating a new hire into the company, setup, training, context, and relationships, so they become productive ... Employee Value Proposition EVP Employee value proposition: the full set of rewards and reasons a company offers people for working there, compensation, growth... Employer Branding The reputation a company has as a place to work, and the effort to shape it, so talented people want to join and stay. Your bra... ESOP Buyback Liquidity Program When a company buys back vested stock options from employees for cash, giving them liquidity before an exit. Increasingly commo... Founder Burnout Burnout The state of chronic exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced effectiveness from prolonged stress and overwork. Common among founders ... Founder Equity Split Equity Split How founders divide ownership of the company among themselves. Can be equal or weighted by contribution, role, or timing, and i... Fractional Executive Fractional CxO · Fractional CFO An experienced executive who works part-time across one or more companies, a fractional CFO or CMO, giving a startup senior exp... Full-Time Equivalent FTE Full-time equivalent: a way of counting staff by workload, where two half-time people equal one FTE. Used for headcount plannin... Generalist T-Shaped Someone who can do many things across functions rather than specializing deeply in one. Often described as T-shaped, broad abil... Hiring Funnel The stages candidates move through, sourcing, screening, interviews, offer, with fewer surviving each step. The recruiting equi... Key Performance Indicator KPI Key performance indicator: a specific metric a team tracks to gauge how well it is doing against its goals, revenue growth, chu... Layoff RIF · Reduction in Force · Downsizing Terminating employees, usually for financial reasons rather than performance, to cut costs and extend runway. Also called a red... Moonlighting Holding a second job or side gig alongside full-time employment, often without the primary employer's knowledge. A charged topi... Objectives and Key Results OKR · OKRs Objectives and key results: a goal-setting framework where you set an ambitious objective and a few measurable key results that... One-on-One 1:1 A regular, private meeting between a manager and a team member to discuss progress, obstacles, growth, and feedback. A cornerst... Org Chart Organizational Chart A map of how a company is structured: who reports to whom, and how teams and roles fit together. It shows the lines of responsi... Performance Review A structured evaluation of an employee's work over a period, covering achievements, areas to improve, and often goals and compe... Remote-First An organization designed around remote work as the default, with processes, tools, and culture built for a distributed team, ra... Startup Advisor Advisor An experienced person who guides a startup informally, on strategy, introductions, or a domain, usually in exchange for a small... Sweat Equity Ownership earned through work rather than cash investment, the shares founders and early team get for building the company with...

409A Valuation 409A An independent appraisal of a private company's common stock, required in the US to set the strike price for employee options a... Accelerator A fixed-term program (often three months) that takes a cohort of startups, gives a small investment and mentorship, and ends in... Angel Investor Angel An individual who invests their own money into early-stage startups, usually in small cheques at the pre-seed and seed stage, o... Anti-Dilution Provision Anti-Dilution A provision that protects investors if the company later raises at a lower valuation, by adjusting the price at which their pre... Board Observer Observer Rights A board observer attends board meetings and sees the materials but has no vote. Investors who want visibility without full dire... Board of Directors Board The group that governs the company and holds the company's biggest decisions: hiring or firing the CEO, approving budgets and f... Board Seat A position on the company's board of directors, giving its holder a formal vote on major decisions. Lead investors usually take... Bridge Round Bridge Financing · Bridge Loan · Seed Extension A smaller raise between two main rounds, meant to extend runway until a larger round or a milestone. Often done on a SAFE or no... Capital Call When a fund asks its LPs to actually transfer committed money, drawn down over time as deals happen, rather than all upfront. L... Cap Table Capitalization Table The record of who owns what in your company: founders, investors, and the employee option pool, share by share and percentage b... Carried Interest Carry Carried interest is the share of a fund's profits the general partners keep, classically 20 percent, after returning capital to... Common Stock Common Shares The basic ownership shares held by founders and employees (through options). Common sits behind preferred in a payout and carri... Convertible Note Note A loan that is meant to convert into equity at your next round instead of being paid back in cash. Like a SAFE, but structured ... Crowdfunding Equity Crowdfunding Raising money from a large number of people, each contributing a small amount, online. Rewards crowdfunding pre-sells a product... Dilution The drop in your ownership percentage when the company issues new shares, usually to raise money or grant employee options. You... Down Round A round raised at a lower valuation than the previous one. It dilutes existing shareholders more and can trigger anti-dilution ... Drag-Along Rights Drag-Along A clause that lets a defined majority of shareholders force the rest to go along with a sale of the company, so a small holder ... Dry Powder The capital a fund has raised but not yet invested, available for new deals and follow-ons. A measure of how much a VC can stil... Due Diligence DD The investigation an investor runs before wiring money: checking the financials, legal structure, cap table, contracts, tech, a... ESOP Employee Stock Option Pool · Option Pool A block of shares set aside to grant to employees as stock options, so the people you hire early can own a piece of what they b... Follow-On Investment Follow-On An additional investment an existing investor makes in a later round to keep or increase their stake, rather than backing a new... Full Ratchet The harshest form of anti-dilution: if you raise a down round, earlier investors get repriced as if they had paid the new, lowe... Fund of Funds FoF A fund that invests in other venture funds rather than directly in startups, giving its own investors diversified exposure to V... General Partner GP The general partner runs a venture fund: raises it from LPs, decides which startups to back, sits on boards, and earns a manage... Grant Non-Dilutive Funding · Non-Dilutive Capital Non-dilutive money, from a government, foundation, or corporate program, that you do not repay and that does not take equity. U... Incubator A program that helps very early startups take shape, often over a longer, looser timeline than an accelerator, sometimes provid... Institutional Investor A professional organization that invests other people's money at scale, such as a venture fund, pension fund, or asset manager,... Lead Investor The investor who anchors a round: they set the terms, do the deepest diligence, usually write the biggest cheque, and often tak... Limited Partner LP Limited partners are the investors who put money into a venture fund: pension funds, endowments, family offices, and wealthy in... Liquidation Preference Liq Pref · 1x Liquidation Preference The rule for who gets paid first, and how much, when a company is sold or wound down. A 1x preference means preferred investors... Management Fee 2 and 20 An annual fee, classically 2 percent of the fund, that a VC firm charges LPs to cover salaries and operations, regardless of re... Micro VC Nano Fund · Micro Fund A small venture fund, often under 50 million dollars, that writes early cheques and typically leads or co-leads pre-seed and se... Most Favored Nation MFN A most favored nation clause lets an investor automatically get the best terms you later give to anyone else in the same round.... Participating Preferred A liquidation preference where investors first take their money back, then also share in the remaining proceeds alongside commo... Pay-to-Play A term that requires existing investors to keep investing in future rounds, or lose some of their rights and preferences, often... Post-Money SAFE The version of the SAFE that Y Combinator introduced in 2018, where the cap is set on the post-money valuation, so an investor'... Post-Money Valuation Post-Money A company's valuation right after an investment, equal to the pre-money valuation plus the amount raised. An investor's ownersh... Preferred Stock Preferred Shares The class of shares investors receive, carrying extra rights over common stock: liquidation preference, anti-dilution, and ofte... Pre-Money Valuation Pre-Money A company's valuation just before an investment goes in. Add the new money and you get the post-money valuation. Pre-Seed Pre-Seed Round The earliest institutional money a startup raises, usually to go from an idea or prototype to a first version and a little evid... Priced Round A funding round where investors buy shares at an agreed price per share, which sets an explicit valuation for the company, unli... Pro Rata Rights Pro Rata The right of an existing investor to invest enough in future rounds to maintain their ownership percentage as the company issue... Revenue-Based Financing RBF Revenue-based financing gives a startup capital in exchange for a fixed percentage of future revenue until a set amount is repa... Right of First Refusal ROFR A right of first refusal lets the company or its investors match any offer before a shareholder sells their shares to an outsid... Rolling Fund A venture fund that accepts new capital and makes investments on a rolling quarterly basis, rather than raising one closed pool... SAFE Simple Agreement for Future Equity A short investment contract where someone gives you money now in exchange for shares later, when you next raise a priced round.... SAFE Discount Discount Rate A percentage price break a SAFE or note holder gets when their investment converts into shares at the next priced round, reward... Secondary Sale Secondaries · Secondary Market A sale of existing shares from one holder to another, rather than the company issuing new shares. Lets founders or early employ... Seed Round Seed Funding · Seed The first proper round most startups raise, meant to take a validated idea to product-market fit and early revenue. Sizes vary ... Series A The first large priced round, raised once you have real product-market fit and a repeatable way to grow. A lead VC sets the ter... Series B The round after Series A, raised to scale a business that already works: expand the team, enter new markets, and pour fuel on c... Series C and Beyond Series C · Late Stage Later-stage rounds (C and beyond) raised by companies with substantial revenue, often to fund acquisitions, new lines of busine... Special Purpose Vehicle SPV A special purpose vehicle is a company set up to pool several investors' money into a single investment in one startup, so they... Strategic Investor Corporate VC · CVC A corporation (or its venture arm) that invests for strategic reasons, access to your technology, market, or data, as well as f... Syndicate Angel Syndicate A group of angel investors who pool money to back a startup, usually led by one lead who sources and diligences the deal while ... Tag-Along Rights Tag-Along · Co-Sale Rights A right that lets minority shareholders join a sale on the same terms when a major shareholder sells their stake, so they are n... Term Sheet A short, mostly non-binding document that lays out the key terms of an investment: valuation, amount, share type, board rights,... Tranche Milestone-Based Funding A portion of a funding round released in stages, with later portions unlocked only when the company hits agreed milestones, rat... Up Round Flat Round A round raised at a higher valuation than the previous one, the outcome every founder wants. A flat round holds the valuation s... Valuation Cap Cap The maximum company valuation at which an early investor's SAFE or note converts into shares. It rewards them for backing you e... Venture Capital VC Money that professional funds invest into high-growth startups in exchange for equity, pooled from limited partners. VCs bet on... Venture Debt A loan made to venture-backed startups, usually alongside or after an equity round, that must be repaid with interest but dilut... Vesting Cliff · Four-Year Vesting Earning your equity over time instead of all at once. The standard is four years with a one-year cliff: nothing vests until you... Warrant The right to buy shares at a set price within a period, sometimes given to investors, lenders, or partners as a sweetener along... Weighted Average Anti-Dilution The standard, fairer form of anti-dilution: a down round adjusts earlier investors' conversion price based on both the new pric...

83(b) Election A US tax election that lets founders and employees with vesting stock pay tax on its value now, when it is low, rather than as ... Articles of Association AOA Articles of association: the document setting out the internal rules for running a company, how shares work, how decisions are ... C-Corporation C-Corp A C-corporation: a US company structure taxed separately from its owners, able to issue multiple classes of stock. The standard... Copyright Automatic legal protection for original creative works, writing, code, designs, music, giving the creator exclusive rights to c... Data Privacy GDPR · DPDP The laws and practices governing how you collect, store, and use people's personal data. Major regimes include Europe's GDPR an... Delaware C-Corp Delaware Incorporation A C-corporation incorporated in the US state of Delaware, whose well-developed corporate law and courts make it the default hom... DPIIT Recognition Startup India Recognition Recognition by India's Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, the official Startup India stamp that unlocks t... Founders' Agreement Founder Agreement A contract among co-founders setting out equity splits, roles, decision-making, vesting, and what happens if someone leaves. Th... Incorporation Incorporating Legally forming your company as a distinct entity, separate from you as a person, so it can own assets, sign contracts, raise m... Indemnification A contractual promise by one party to cover certain losses or legal costs the other suffers, for example if a product infringes... Intellectual Property IP Intellectual property: creations of the mind that the law protects as assets, inventions, brands, code, designs, content, throu... IP Assignment Assignment of IP · Invention Assignment An agreement transferring intellectual property created by a founder, employee, or contractor to the company, so the business, ... Limited Liability Company LLC A limited liability company: a flexible US structure that shields owners from personal liability and passes profits through to ... Limited Liability Partnership LLP A limited liability partnership: a structure combining a partnership's flexibility with limited liability for its partners. In ... Memorandum of Association MOA Memorandum of association: the document that defines a company's name, registered office, objectives, and scope at incorporatio... Non-Compete Non-Compete Clause A clause restricting someone, a founder, employee, or seller, from competing with the company for a period after they leave. En... Non-Disclosure Agreement NDA A non-disclosure agreement: a contract binding parties to keep shared information confidential. Used before sharing sensitive d... Non-Solicitation A clause preventing a departing person from poaching the company's employees or customers for a set period. Often used where a ... One Person Company OPC A one person company: an Indian structure that lets a single founder incorporate with limited liability, without needing a seco... Patent A legal right granting an inventor exclusive use of an invention for a set period (usually 20 years) in exchange for publicly d... Private Limited Company Pvt Ltd · Private Limited A private limited company: the standard incorporated structure for Indian startups, giving limited liability, the ability to is... Regulatory Compliance Compliance Meeting the legal and regulatory rules that apply to your business, corporate filings, taxes, data protection, sector-specific ... Regulatory Sandbox A controlled program run by a regulator that lets startups test innovative products, often in fintech, with real customers unde... ROC Filing Registrar of Companies Submitting required documents to the Registrar of Companies, the government body that maintains India's corporate records, for ... Shareholders' Agreement SHA A shareholders' agreement: a contract among a company's shareholders governing their rights and obligations, voting, transfers,... Startup Flip Flip · Delaware Flip Restructuring so that a foreign (often US Delaware) holding company owns the operating company, common for Indian startups that... Stock Purchase Agreement SPA A share purchase agreement: the definitive contract in a priced round or acquisition that sets out the terms on which shares ar... Trademark A legal protection for the names, logos, and slogans that identify your brand, preventing others from using confusingly similar... Trade Secret Confidential business information that gives you an edge, a formula, algorithm, process, or customer list, protected by keeping...

A/B Testing Split Testing Comparing two versions of something, a page, a headline, a flow, by showing each to a random slice of users and measuring which... Agile An approach to building software in small, frequent increments with constant feedback, rather than planning everything upfront.... Aha Moment The point where a new user first genuinely gets the value of your product, the moment it clicks. Often tied to a specific actio... Alpha Alpha Release A very early release, usually to internal users or a tiny trusted group, to test core functionality while the product is still ... API Application Programming Interface An application programming interface: a defined way for one piece of software to talk to another, letting products connect, exc... Beta Beta Launch · Public Beta A release to a limited set of real users to test the product under real conditions before a full launch. A public beta opens it... Design Sprint A structured process, popularized by Google Ventures, that compresses idea, prototype, and user test into a few focused days to... Dogfooding Eating Your Own Dog Food Using your own product day to day, so the team feels its rough edges as users do. From the phrase eating your own dog food. Feature Creep Scope Creep The gradual pile-up of extra features that bloats a product beyond its core purpose, making it harder to use, maintain, and exp... Feature Flag A switch in the code that turns a feature on or off without a new deployment, letting teams release to some users, run tests, o... Feature Parity Matching the set of features a competitor or an older system offers, so customers do not lose anything by switching to you. Feedback Loop A cycle where you release something, gather how users respond, and feed that learning into the next release. The tighter and fa... Iteration Ship Fast Improving a product through repeated small cycles of building, shipping, and learning, rather than one big release. The steady ... Jobs to Be Done JTBD Jobs to be done: the idea that customers hire a product to make progress on a specific job in their life, so you should design ... Kanban A method of managing work as a continuous flow, visualized on a board of columns (to do, doing, done), limiting how much is in ... Minimum Lovable Product MLP Minimum lovable product: a first version that does more than barely function, it delights on the one thing that matters, so ear... Minimum Viable Audience A term from Seth Godin: the smallest group of people you can build for and delight, rather than trying to appeal to everyone fr... Minimum Viable Product MVP Minimum viable product: the simplest version of your product that lets real users experience the core value and gives you real ... No-Code Low-Code · No-Code/Low-Code Tools that let people build software, apps, sites, automations, workflows, with visual interfaces instead of writing code. Low-... Product Backlog Backlog The prioritized list of everything a product team might build: features, fixes, and improvements, ordered by importance. Work i... Product Discovery The work of figuring out what to build and why, through user research, experiments, and validation, before committing to buildi... Product-Led Growth PLG Product-led growth: a go-to-market approach where the product itself drives acquisition, conversion, and expansion, through fre... Product-Market Fit PMF The point where you have a product a specific market clearly wants, so much that people pull it from you rather than you pushin... Product Roadmap Roadmap A plan of what a product team intends to build and in roughly what order, tying near-term work to the product's goals. A commun... Prototype An early, often throwaway version of a product or feature built to test an idea, a clickable mockup, a rough demo, before inves... SaaS Software as a Service Software as a service: software delivered over the internet on a subscription, rather than installed and owned. The dominant mo... Scrum A specific agile framework built around fixed-length sprints, defined roles (product owner, scrum master, team), and set ritual... SDK Software Development Kit A software development kit: a bundle of tools, libraries, and documentation that makes it easier for developers to build on or ... Soft Launch Releasing a product quietly, to a limited audience, region, or without announcement, to gather data and iron out issues before ... Sprint A short, fixed block of time, often one or two weeks, in which a team commits to completing a defined set of work. A core unit ... Technical Debt Tech Debt The future cost of taking shortcuts in code or architecture today: quick fixes and skipped cleanup that make the next changes s... User Journey Customer Journey Map The full path a user takes to accomplish a goal with your product, from first touch through each step, often mapped to spot fri... User Onboarding Onboarding The experience that guides a new user from signing up to getting real value, setup, first actions, and the aha moment. Distinct... User Persona Buyer Persona A semi-fictional profile of a target user or buyer, capturing their goals, context, and frustrations, used to keep the whole te... User Story A short description of a feature from the user's point of view, usually in the form: as a type of user, I want to do something,... Wireframe A bare-bones visual sketch of a screen or flow, showing layout and structure without colors, styling, or real content. The blue...

Account Executive AE Account executive: the salesperson who owns deals end to end, running discovery, demos, and negotiation to close, and usually c... BANT Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline A lead-qualification framework, budget, authority, need, timeline, used to decide whether a prospect is worth pursuing by check... Business Development Rep BDR Business development representative: much like an SDR, focused on generating and qualifying new opportunities, sometimes leanin... Champion Internal Champion A person inside a prospect's organization who believes in your product and pushes for it internally, helping navigate stakehold... Closing Close The final stage of a deal, getting the prospect to commit and sign, and the skills around it: asking for the business, handling... Cold Calling Phoning a prospect who has not asked to hear from you, to start a conversation or book a meeting. One of the oldest outbound sa... Cold Outreach Contacting prospects who have no prior relationship with you, by email, calls, or social, to open a sales conversation. The eng... Consultative Selling An approach where the seller acts as a trusted advisor, diagnosing the customer's problem and recommending the right solution, ... Cross-Sell Selling an existing customer an additional, complementary product or service alongside what they already buy, widening the rela... Customer Relationship Management CRM Customer relationship management software that tracks leads, contacts, deals, and interactions in one place, so a team can mana... Customer Success CS · CSM The function responsible for making sure customers get value after they buy, driving adoption, retention, renewals, and expansi... Discovery Call Disco Call An early sales conversation focused on understanding a prospect's situation, needs, and goals, rather than pitching, so you can... Enterprise Sales Selling to large organizations, marked by big deals, long sales cycles, multiple stakeholders, procurement, and security review... Founder-Led Sales Founder Sales The founder personally selling the product in the early days, running discovery, demos, and closes, before hiring a dedicated s... Go-to-Market GTM · Go-to-Market Strategy Go-to-market: the plan for how you reach customers and win them, who you sell to, through which channels, with what pricing and... Inside Sales Field Sales Selling remotely, by phone, email, and video, rather than in person. Field sales, the alternative, involves meeting customers f... Land and Expand A strategy of winning a customer with a small initial deal, then growing the account over time through more seats, usage, or pr... Lead A person or company that has shown some interest or fits your target, and might become a customer. The raw material of the sale... Marketing Qualified Lead MQL A marketing qualified lead: a lead that has engaged enough, downloaded, signed up, visited key pages, that marketing judges the... Mid-Market Companies between SMB and enterprise in size, big enough to need a sales conversation but without the full procurement gauntlet... Objection Handling The skill of responding to a prospect's concerns, price, timing, risk, competitors, in a way that addresses the real worry and ... On-Target Earnings OTE On-target earnings: a salesperson's total expected pay if they hit 100 percent of quota, combining base salary and commission. ... Pilot Pilot Program A small, real-world deployment of your product with a customer, often paid, to prove value before a full rollout. Broader and m... Product Demo Demo A live or recorded walkthrough showing a prospect how your product solves their specific problem. A key step in most B2B sales. Proof of Concept POC A proof of concept: a limited, time-boxed trial where a prospect tests whether your product actually solves their problem in th... Prospect Prospecting A potential customer who fits your target and whom you are actively pursuing or plan to. Prospecting is the work of finding and... Renewal When an existing customer continues their subscription or contract for another term. The moment recurring revenue is either ret... Sales Cycle The typical time and sequence of steps from first contact to a closed deal. Consumer and self-serve cycles can be minutes; ente... Sales Development Rep SDR Sales development representative: a rep focused on the top of the funnel, prospecting and qualifying leads, then handing warm o... Sales Enablement Everything that equips a sales team to sell effectively: playbooks, training, scripts, case studies, competitive intel, and too... Sales Funnel The stages a prospect moves through on the way to buying, from awareness to qualification to proposal to close, with fewer surv... Sales-Led Growth SLG A go-to-market model where a sales team drives acquisition and expansion, as opposed to product-led growth, where the product s... Sales Motion The overall way a company sells, self-serve, inside sales, field sales, channel partners, matched to its product, price, and bu... Sales Pipeline Pipeline The set of deals a sales team is working, organized by stage from first contact to closed. A live view of future revenue. Sales Playbook A documented guide to how your company sells: the ideal customer, the pitch, the process, common objections and answers, and wh... Sales Qualified Lead SQL A sales qualified lead: a lead that sales has vetted, budget, need, timing, and accepted as a real opportunity worth actively p... Sales Quota Quota The sales target a rep or team is expected to hit in a period, in revenue or deals. The core measure of sales performance. SMB Small and Medium Business Small and medium businesses: customers smaller than enterprises, typically bought with shorter cycles, lower prices, and lighte... Upsell Selling an existing customer a higher tier, more capacity, or a premium version, increasing what they pay. A key source of expa... Value-Based Selling Selling by framing your product around the concrete business value it delivers, revenue gained, costs saved, risk reduced, rath...

Accounts Payable AP Money you owe suppliers and vendors for goods or services you have received but not yet paid for. A liability on the balance sh... Accounts Receivable AR Money customers owe you for goods or services already delivered but not yet paid for. An asset on the balance sheet until it is... Accrual Accounting Cash Accounting Recording revenue and expenses when they are earned or incurred, not when cash changes hands. Cash accounting, the simpler alte... Balance Sheet A snapshot of what a company owns (assets), owes (liabilities), and the owners' stake (equity) at a point in time. One of the t... Break-Even Point Break-Even The point at which total revenue exactly covers total costs, so you are neither making nor losing money. Beyond it, additional ... Burn Rate Net Burn · Gross Burn How fast you are spending cash. Gross burn is everything going out each month, net burn is that minus the revenue coming in, th... Capital Expenditure CapEx Capital expenditure: money spent to acquire or upgrade long-lived assets like equipment, servers, or buildings, whose cost is s... Cash Flow The actual movement of money in and out of the business over a period. Positive cash flow means more came in than went out, reg... Contribution Margin What each additional sale contributes after its own variable costs, before fixed costs. It shows how much every extra unit help... Cost of Goods Sold COGS Cost of goods sold: the direct costs of producing and delivering what you sell, hosting and payment fees for software, material... Default Alive Default Dead A framing from Paul Graham: a startup is default alive if, on its current growth and burn, it would reach profitability before ... Depreciation Amortization Spreading the cost of a long-lived physical asset over its useful life in the accounts, rather than expensing it all at once. A... EBITDA Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization: a measure of operating profitability that strips out financing... Financial Model Financial Projections A spreadsheet that projects a company's future revenue, costs, cash, and headcount based on assumptions about growth and spendi... Fixed Costs Costs that stay roughly the same regardless of how much you sell, like rent, salaries, and software subscriptions. You pay them... Free Cash Flow FCF The cash a business generates after covering operating costs and the capital spending needed to keep running. What is actually ... Gross Margin The share of revenue left after the direct cost of delivering your product or service (cost of goods sold). Software has high g... Income Statement P&L · Profit and Loss The statement that shows revenue, costs, and profit over a period, also called the profit and loss or P&L. It answers whether y... Net Margin The share of revenue left as profit after every cost: production, operations, marketing, salaries, interest, and taxes. The bot... Operating Expenses OpEx Operating expenses: the ongoing costs of running the business that are not tied directly to a unit of product, salaries, rent, ... Operating Margin The share of revenue left after operating costs (production plus running the business) but before interest and taxes. Shows how... Profitability Path to Profitability The state of making more money than you spend, so the business generates rather than consumes cash. The path to it, and when yo... Ramen Profitable A term from Paul Graham for a startup earning just enough to cover the founders' basic living costs, ramen noodles being the cl... Runway How many months your company can keep operating at its current spend before the bank account hits zero. Cash in the bank divide... Variable Costs Costs that rise and fall with how much you produce or sell, like materials, shipping, payment processing, and usage-based hosting. Working Capital The money tied up in day-to-day operations: current assets like receivables and inventory minus current liabilities like payabl...

Acquihire Acqui-Hire An acquisition made mainly to hire the target's team rather than for its product or revenue. A common soft landing for startups... Cash Cow A product or business that reliably generates strong, steady profit with little further investment, whose cash can fund other, ... Elevator Pitch A very short, compelling summary of what your company does and why it matters, deliverable in the time of a short elevator ride... Exit Exit Strategy The event where founders and investors convert their ownership into cash or liquid assets, usually through an acquisition or an... Fail Fast The principle of testing ideas quickly and cheaply so that the ones that will not work fail early, before you have sunk much ti... FOMO Fear of Missing Out Fear of missing out: the anxiety that others are seizing an opportunity you are not. In startups it drives investors to chase h... Founder A person who starts a company, taking on the earliest risk to turn an idea into a business. Founders shape the vision, culture,... FUD Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt Fear, uncertainty, and doubt: negative or misleading information spread to make people wary of a competitor or technology. A ta... Greenfield A project or market with no existing constraints or legacy to work around, a blank slate you can build on from scratch. The opp... Growth Mindset The belief that abilities can be developed through effort and learning, rather than being fixed. From psychologist Carol Dweck,... Hockey Stick Growth Hockey Stick A growth curve that stays flat for a while, then bends sharply upward, like a hockey stick. The shape founders hope for and inv... Hustle Culture Hustle Intense, relentless work and drive, often glorified in startup culture as hustle culture. Increasingly questioned for glorifyin... Initial Public Offering IPO Initial public offering: when a private company first sells shares to the public and lists on a stock exchange, raising capital... Intrapreneur Intrapreneurship Someone who builds new products or ventures inside an existing company, applying startup-style initiative and risk-taking withi... Liquidity Event Any event that lets shareholders turn their equity into cash, an acquisition, IPO, or secondary sale. The moment paper wealth b... Merger and Acquisition M&A · Acquisition Mergers and acquisitions: one company buying another (or two combining). For startups, being acquired is the most common exit, ... Moat Defensibility · Competitive Advantage The durable advantage that makes it hard for competitors to copy you and take your customers: network effects, switching costs,... Moonshot An extremely ambitious, high-risk project aiming at a breakthrough rather than an incremental improvement. From the effort to l... Move Fast and Break Things Move fast and break things: Facebook's early motto favoring speed and iteration over caution and polish, accepting that some th... Pitch Deck One-Pager A short slide presentation founders use to tell their company's story to investors, covering the problem, solution, market, tra... Pre-Revenue A startup that has not yet started earning revenue, still building, testing, or pre-launch. Post-revenue means money has starte... Serial Entrepreneur Someone who starts multiple companies over their career, one after another, applying lessons from earlier ventures to later ones. Skin in the Game Having a real personal stake, money, time, reputation, in an outcome, so you share in the downside as well as the upside. Popul... Solo Founder Solopreneur Someone who starts a company alone, without a co-founder. Also called a solopreneur when the business stays deliberately small ... Startup A young company built to grow fast by solving a problem in a new or better way, usually under high uncertainty. Paul Graham's d... Stealth Mode Stealth Operating quietly without publicly revealing what you are building, to avoid tipping off competitors or before you are ready to... Traction Evidence that your startup is working: growing users, revenue, engagement, or other signs that people want what you are buildin... Vision and Mission Mission Statement The vision is the future you are trying to create; the mission is what your company does day to day to move toward it. Together... Wantrepreneur A slightly mocking term for someone who talks about starting a company, reads and plans endlessly, but never actually launches ... Zombie Startup Zombiecorn A company that survives but does not meaningfully grow, alive enough to keep going, not successful enough to thrive or raise mo...

Actionable Metric A metric that ties to a specific action and can guide a decision, like activation rate by signup source, as opposed to a vanity... Activation Rate Activation The share of new users who reach the point where they first experience the product's core value, the aha moment, rather than si... Annual Contract Value ACV Annual contract value: the revenue a customer contract represents per year, averaged if the deal is multi-year. A standard way ... Average Order Value AOV Average order value: the average amount a customer spends per transaction, a core e-commerce metric. Average Revenue Per Account ARPA Average revenue per account: total revenue divided by the number of customer accounts. Preferred over ARPU in B2B, where one ac... Average Revenue Per User ARPU Average revenue per user: the total revenue over a period divided by the number of users. A quick read on how much each user is... Billings The amount you have actually invoiced customers in a period, whether or not the revenue has been recognized yet. Sits between b... Bookings The total value of contracts customers have committed to, signed but not necessarily paid or delivered yet. A forward-looking m... Bounce Rate The percentage of visitors who land on a page and leave without taking any further action or visiting another page. Burn Multiple How much cash a startup burns to add each unit of new recurring revenue, popularized by David Sacks. Lower is more efficient. CAC Payback Period Payback Period How long it takes for a customer to pay back what you spent to acquire them. Measured in months of their gross profit against y... Churn Churn Rate · Attrition The rate at which customers stop paying you over a period. Revenue churn measures the money that leaves, customer churn measure... Click-Through Rate CTR Click-through rate: the percentage of people who click a link, ad, or email out of everyone who saw it. Cohort Analysis Cohort Grouping users by when they started (their cohort) and tracking how each group behaves over time: how many stay, how much they ... Conversion Rate The percentage of people who take a desired action out of everyone who had the chance: visitors who sign up, trials who pay, an... Cost Per Acquisition CPA · Cost Per Action Cost per acquisition (or action): what you pay to get one conversion, whether a signup, lead, or sale, from a campaign. Narrowe... Cost Per Click CPC Cost per click: what you pay each time someone clicks your ad. A core unit of paid acquisition. Cost Per Mille CPM · Cost Per Thousand Cost per mille: the cost to show your ad one thousand times, the standard price unit for impression-based advertising. Customer Acquisition Cost CAC What it costs you, all in, to win one new paying customer: the sales and marketing spend over a period divided by the customers... Customer Effort Score CES Customer effort score: how much effort a customer felt they had to put in to get something done, like resolving an issue or com... Customer Satisfaction Score CSAT Customer satisfaction score: a direct measure of how happy customers are with a specific interaction or the product overall, us... Daily Active Users DAU Daily active users: the number of unique people who used your product on a given day. The tighter cousin of MAU. Deferred Revenue Money a customer has paid for a service you have not yet delivered, like an annual subscription paid upfront. It sits as a liab... Expansion Revenue Upsell Revenue Additional recurring revenue from existing customers through upgrades, seats, or add-ons, rather than from new customers. The e... Gross Merchandise Value GMV · Gross Merchandise Volume Gross merchandise value: the total value of goods sold through a marketplace or platform over a period, before taking out fees,... Gross Revenue Retention GRR Gross revenue retention measures how much recurring revenue you keep from existing customers, counting only losses from churn a... Lagging Indicator A metric that reports an outcome after it has happened, like revenue, churn, or profit. Reliable but backward-looking. Leading Indicator A metric that predicts future results, like sign-ups or qualified leads, as opposed to a lagging indicator that reports what al... Lead Velocity Rate LVR Lead velocity rate: the month-over-month growth in the number of qualified leads. A forward-looking indicator of future revenue. Lifetime Value LTV · CLV · Customer Lifetime Value The total gross profit you expect from a customer across their whole relationship with you. It turns a monthly price into the r... Logo Churn The rate at which you lose customers as accounts (logos), regardless of how much each paid, over a period. Distinct from revenu... Monthly Active Users MAU Monthly active users: the number of unique people who used your product at least once in the last 30 days. A standard measure o... MRR Monthly Recurring Revenue · ARR · Annual Recurring Revenue The predictable subscription revenue you can count on each month (MRR), or the same figure annualised (ARR). It strips out one-... Net Promoter Score NPS Net promoter score: a survey that asks how likely someone is to recommend you on a 0 to 10 scale, then subtracts the share of d... Net Revenue Retention NRR · Net Dollar Retention · NDR Net revenue retention measures how much recurring revenue you keep from existing customers over a year, including upgrades and ... Pipeline Coverage The ratio of the total value of open deals in your pipeline to your sales target for the period. A 3x coverage means three time... Repeat Purchase Rate The share of customers who buy again within a period, a measure of loyalty and habit in e-commerce and consumer businesses. Retention Retention Rate · Cohort Retention How many of your users or customers keep coming back over time. Usually read as a cohort curve: of everyone who started in a gi... Return on Ad Spend ROAS Return on ad spend: the revenue generated for every unit of currency spent on advertising. A 4x ROAS means four rupees back for... Rule of 40 A rule of thumb that a healthy software company's revenue growth rate plus its profit margin should add up to at least 40 perce... SaaS Magic Number Magic Number A measure of sales and marketing efficiency: how much new annual recurring revenue you generate for each unit spent on sales an... SaaS Quick Ratio Quick Ratio A SaaS growth-quality metric comparing revenue gained (new plus expansion) to revenue lost (churn plus contraction) in a period... Sales Velocity How fast revenue moves through your pipeline, combining the number of deals, their average value, your win rate, and the sales ... Stickiness DAU/MAU Ratio How habitual your product is, usually measured as the ratio of daily to monthly active users. A DAU/MAU of 50 percent means the... Take Rate The percentage of transaction value a marketplace keeps as revenue, the platform's cut of GMV. Time to Value TTV Time to value: how long it takes a new user or customer to reach their first real benefit from your product, from signup to the... Total Contract Value TCV Total contract value: the full value of a customer contract over its entire term, including one-off fees, not just the annual p... Unit Economics The revenue and cost of a single unit of your business, usually one customer, boiled down to whether that unit makes or loses m... Vanity Metric A number that looks impressive but does not inform decisions or reflect real progress, like total registered users or cumulativ... Viral Coefficient K-Factor · K Factor How many new users each existing user brings on average, also called the k-factor. Above 1 means self-sustaining, exponential g... Win Rate The percentage of sales opportunities that end in a closed deal, out of all the qualified deals you pursued.

Affiliate Marketing Paying partners a commission for the customers or sales they refer to you, usually tracked through unique links. Performance-ba... Answer Engine Optimization AEO · GEO · Generative Engine Optimization Answer engine optimization (also called GEO, generative engine optimization): making your content the source that AI assistants... Backlink A link from another website to yours. Search engines treat them as votes of credibility, so quality backlinks help you rank hig... Bottom of Funnel BOFU Bottom of funnel: the decision stage, where a ready buyer needs the final push, demos, trials, pricing, testimonials, to conver... Brand Awareness How well your target audience knows and recognizes your brand and what it stands for. A top-of-funnel asset that makes every ot... Call to Action CTA A call to action: the prompt telling a visitor exactly what to do next, sign up, start free, book a demo, usually a button or l... Cold Email Sending a targeted, personalized email to a prospect who has not contacted you, to start a conversation or book a meeting. A st... Community-Led Growth Community-Led Growing by building a community around your product or space, where members help, teach, and attract each other, so the communi... Content Marketing Attracting and keeping an audience by consistently publishing useful or interesting content, articles, videos, guides, rather t... Conversion Rate Optimization CRO Conversion rate optimization: systematically improving the share of visitors who take a desired action, through testing copy, d... Demand Generation Demand Gen Marketing that creates awareness and interest in your product across the whole funnel, so more of the right people want what yo... Flywheel Growth Flywheel A self-reinforcing loop where each part feeds the next, so momentum builds over time, Amazon's lower prices to more customers t... Growth Hacking A mindset of finding fast, often unconventional, data-driven ways to grow, running many cheap experiments across the funnel rat... Growth Loop A cycle where the output of using a product feeds back into acquiring or activating more users, content created gets found in s... Ideal Customer Profile ICP A sharp description of the exact customer your product is best for: their size, role, situation, and pain. Not everyone who cou... Inbound Marketing Inbound A marketing approach that draws customers to you with helpful content and experiences, SEO, blogs, tools, so they come looking,... Influencer Marketing Partnering with people who have trusted audiences, creators, experts, niche personalities, to promote your product to those aud... Landing Page A standalone page built around a single goal, get the visitor to sign up, buy, or book, without the distractions of a full webs... Lead Generation Lead Gen The work of attracting and capturing potential customers' interest and contact details, so you can nurture them toward a sale. ... Lead Magnet Something valuable offered free, a guide, template, tool, or checklist, in exchange for a prospect's contact details, so you ca... Marketing Attribution Attribution · Multi-Touch Attribution Figuring out which marketing touches deserve credit for a conversion, so you know what is actually working. Multi-touch attribu... Marketing Funnel Funnel · Conversion Funnel The path a person takes from first hearing about you to becoming a customer, drawn as a funnel because people drop off at each ... Middle of Funnel MOFU Middle of funnel: the consideration stage, where interested people evaluate you, through case studies, comparisons, webinars, a... Network Effects Network Effect When a product gets more valuable to each user as more people use it, phones, marketplaces, social networks. Growth makes the p... North Star Metric NSM The single metric that best captures the core value your product delivers to customers, the one number a whole team can rally a... Organic Growth Growth that comes without paying directly for each customer, through word of mouth, SEO, content, referrals, and virality, as o... Outbound Marketing Outbound Proactively reaching out to potential customers who have not asked to hear from you, cold email, cold calls, ads, LinkedIn, to ... Paid Acquisition Paid Media Acquiring customers by paying for reach, search ads, social ads, sponsorships, as opposed to organic channels. Its efficiency i... Performance Marketing Paid marketing bought and measured against specific, trackable outcomes, clicks, leads, sales, so spend can be optimized toward... Pirate Metrics AARRR Pirate metrics: a framework by Dave McClure that breaks growth into five stages, acquisition, activation, retention, referral, ... Positioning Brand Positioning The distinct place your product holds in customers' minds relative to alternatives, what it is, who it is for, and why it is di... Referral Program Referral Loop A system that rewards existing users for bringing in new ones, discounts, credits, perks, turning happy customers into an acqui... Retargeting Remarketing Showing ads to people who already visited your site or used your product but did not convert, to bring them back. Also called r... Search Engine Marketing SEM Search engine marketing: buying visibility on search results through paid ads, most commonly Google Ads, so you appear for chos... Search Engine Optimization SEO Search engine optimization: earning visibility in unpaid search results by making your content and site match what people searc... Top of Funnel TOFU Top of funnel: the awareness stage, where you reach people who do not yet know you, through content, ads, SEO, or PR. The wides... Unique Selling Proposition USP Unique selling proposition: the one thing that makes your product different and better for its target customer, the reason to c... Value Proposition Value Prop A clear statement of the value you deliver: the benefit a customer gets, for whom, and why it beats the alternatives. The core ... Virality Viral Growth The tendency of a product to spread from user to user as a natural part of being used, invitations, shares, collaboration, so g... Waitlist A signup list for people who want a product before it is fully available, used to build anticipation, gauge demand, and control... Word of Mouth WOM People recommending your product to others on their own, in conversation, online, or by example. The most trusted and cheapest ...

Aggregator Aggregation Theory A business that owns the demand side by controlling access to users, then commoditizes suppliers who must come through it, Goog... B2B Business to Business Business to business: selling products or services to other companies rather than to individual consumers. Enterprise software,... B2B2C Business to business to consumer: selling to a business that then delivers your product to end consumers, so you reach consumer... B2C Business to Consumer Business to consumer: selling directly to individual people rather than to companies. Consumer apps, D2C brands, and marketplac... Beachhead Market Beachhead · Beachhead Niche A small, specific initial market you can dominate first, then use as a base to expand into adjacent segments. From military str... Blitzscaling Reid Hoffman's term for prioritizing speed over efficiency to grow extremely fast and win a big market before competitors, acce... Blue Ocean Blue Ocean Strategy · Red Ocean A strategy of creating a new, uncontested market space (a blue ocean) instead of fighting rivals in a crowded existing market (... Bootstrapping Bootstrapped · Self-Funded Building a company using your own money and the revenue it generates, rather than raising outside investment. Also called self-... Business Model How a company creates, delivers, and captures value: what it sells, to whom, how it makes money, and what it costs to deliver. ... Business Model Canvas A one-page template that maps the nine building blocks of a business, customers, value proposition, channels, revenue, costs, a... Category Creation Category Design Building and defining a new market category rather than competing in an existing one, so you shape how customers think about th... Centaur 100M ARR Club A SaaS company that has reached 100 million dollars in annual recurring revenue. A newer benchmark focused on real revenue rath... D2C Direct-to-Consumer · DTC Direct to consumer: brands that sell straight to shoppers through their own channels, online store, app, rather than through re... Decacorn A privately held startup valued at ten billion dollars or more, ten times the unicorn threshold. The rarest tier of private com... Disruptive Innovation Disruption Clayton Christensen's idea: a smaller entrant with a simpler, cheaper offering serves overlooked customers, then improves until... Economies of Scale The cost advantages that come from getting bigger: as volume rises, the cost per unit falls because fixed costs spread wider an... Fast Follower A company that lets someone else pioneer a market, then enters quickly with a better or cheaper version, learning from the firs... First-Mover Advantage First Mover The edge a company can gain by being first into a market, brand, learning, network effects, or lock-in, before competitors arrive. Founder-Market Fit How well suited the founders are to the specific market they are attacking, through experience, insight, network, or passion, d... Freemium Offering a free tier with core features to attract users, then charging for premium features, capacity, or advanced needs. Free... Lean Startup Build-Measure-Learn Eric Ries's methodology for building startups under uncertainty: turn ideas into small experiments, measure real customer respo... Marketplace A business that connects buyers and sellers and takes a cut of the transactions, rather than owning the inventory itself. Airbn... Market Sizing Bottom-Up Market Sizing · Top-Down Market Sizing Estimating how big a market is, using a top-down approach (start from a big industry figure and narrow) or bottom-up (build fro... Penetration Pricing Launching at a deliberately low price to win market share fast, planning to raise prices or monetize later once you have scale ... Pivot A significant change in a startup's direction, product, market, model, or customer, while keeping what has been learned. Not fa... Platform Platform Business A product others build on or transact through, an operating system, an app store, an API, so its value grows as more developers... Pricing Strategy How you decide what to charge, based on costs, competitors, and above all the value customers get. It covers the model, the tie... Revenue Model The specific way a business earns money: subscriptions, transactions, advertising, licensing, marketplace fees, or a mix. One p... Serviceable Addressable Market SAM Serviceable addressable market: the portion of the total market you could actually serve given your product, business model, an... Serviceable Obtainable Market SOM Serviceable obtainable market: the share of your serviceable market you can realistically win in the near term, given competiti... Soonicorn A startup widely expected to become a unicorn soon: fast-growing, well-funded, and closing in on a billion-dollar valuation. A ... Subscription Model Subscription Charging customers a recurring fee, monthly or yearly, for ongoing access to a product or service, rather than a one-time purch... Switching Costs The effort, money, or risk a customer faces to move from your product to a competitor's, learning a new tool, migrating data, r... Tiered Pricing Offering several packages at different price points, each with more features or capacity, so customers self-select the tier tha... Total Addressable Market TAM Total addressable market: the total revenue opportunity if you captured 100 percent of the demand for your product. The biggest... Two-Sided Marketplace Two-Sided Market A marketplace serving two distinct groups who need each other, riders and drivers, guests and hosts, where each side becomes mo... Unicorn A privately held startup valued at one billion dollars or more. Coined by Aileen Lee in 2013, when such companies were rare, he... Usage-Based Pricing Pay-as-You-Go · Consumption Pricing Charging customers based on how much they use, API calls, compute, transactions, so the bill scales with consumption. Also call... Value-Based Pricing Setting prices based on the value customers get, the revenue you generate or costs you save them, rather than your own costs or... Vertical Integration Owning more of your supply chain or value chain, making rather than buying, controlling distribution rather than relying on par... Vertical SaaS Horizontal SaaS Software built for one specific industry, dental clinics, construction, restaurants, with deep, tailored features. Horizontal S... Wedge Wedge Strategy A narrow, sharp initial product or use case that gets you into a market, earns you a foothold, and then lets you expand into a ... Winner-Take-All Winner-Takes-All A market where one or a few players end up capturing almost all the value, usually because of strong network effects or economi... Zero to One Peter Thiel's idea of creating something genuinely new, going from nothing to something (zero to one), versus copying what exis...