Disrupting disruption with disruptive disruptions since 2010.
A competitive advantage so strong that rivals can't easily replicate your business, borrowed from medieval castle terminology because startup founders fancy themselves as kings defending their kingdoms. Most startup moats are about as deep as a puddle.
Someone who talks about starting a company the way other people talk about going to the gym -- constantly, passionately, and with absolutely no intention of following through. Their startup is always launching next month, and next month is always next month.
Annual Recurring Revenue -- the amount of subscription money a company expects to collect over a year, assuming nobody cancels, which they will. It's the startup metric most likely to appear in fundraising decks and least likely to match reality.
When a startup operates in secrecy to avoid competitors copying their idea, which assumes competitors would care about the idea in the first place. It's the startup equivalent of whispering at a party where nobody is listening.
The percentage of customers who cancel your service each month, also known as the number that keeps founders awake at 3 AM. A high churn rate means your product is a revolving door; a low one means customers haven't figured out how to find the cancel button yet.
The numbers a startup tracks to measure success, carefully selected to be whichever ones happen to be going up. When those numbers go down, they become vanity metrics, and new key metrics are discovered.
A growth chart that shows flat revenue followed by a sudden exponential spike, resembling a hockey stick if you squint and ignore the part where most startups never reach the blade. It's the most fictional graph in pitch decks since the invention of PowerPoint.
The process by which employees gradually earn their stock options over time, designed to keep people from taking the equity and running. It's a four-year golden handcuff that makes quitting feel like leaving money on the table, even when the money is imaginary.
A spreadsheet that tracks who owns what percentage of a company, growing increasingly depressing with each funding round as the founders' share shrinks like a wool sweater in a dryer. It's the scoreboard of startup capitalism.
The strategy for launching a product to customers, which in startup land typically involves a 90-slide deck, a Slack channel called launch-war-room, and a blog post nobody reads. It's called go-to-market because go-to-three-customers-who-are-your-friends doesn't sound as impressive.
An ambitious, seemingly impossible project that aims to solve a massive problem, named after the Apollo missions because both require billions of dollars and a willingness to ignore the odds. For every actual moonshot, there are a thousand founders calling their food delivery app a moonshot.
Total Addressable Market -- the theoretical maximum revenue if you sold your product to every possible customer on Earth, including people who don't want it, can't afford it, and live in places without internet. It's the biggest number in every pitch deck and the most fictional.
The initial period before any stock options vest, typically one year, during which employees own exactly nothing and question all their life choices. It's called a cliff because if you leave before it, you fall off the edge of ownership into the abyss of having worked for below-market salary for nothing.
The period where you pretend to be a detective, an engineer, and an accountant all at once to figure out if a property is a goldmine or a money pit. Spoiler: it's usually somewhere between "fine" and "oh no."
The estimated worth of a company, a number that ranges from scientifically calculated to completely made up depending on who's doing the estimating. Startup valuations in particular are an art form, where a company with no revenue and an idea on a napkin can be worth a billion dollars if the napkin is impressive enough.
A product that has been announced and marketed but doesn't actually exist yet, which in Silicon Valley is just called a pre-launch strategy. It's the tech equivalent of selling tickets to a concert before you've learned to play an instrument.
The earliest stage of startup funding, which is a polite way of saying you're raising money based on nothing but a dream, a napkin sketch, and the audacity of a person who has never run a business. It's called pre-seed because the seed hasn't even been planted yet -- you're basically fundraising with dirt.
The process by which your ownership percentage shrinks with each funding round until you own approximately as much of your company as you own of the Pacific Ocean. It's like splitting a pizza with more and more people, except you baked the pizza and now you get one olive.
When a company buys another company not for its product but for its employees, which is the corporate equivalent of buying a house just for the kitchen. The product gets quietly killed while the team gets quietly absorbed and quietly regrets everything.
The strategy of growing a company at breakneck speed while intentionally ignoring efficiency, profitability, and the screams of your finance team. It's named after the German military tactic because both involve advancing recklessly and hoping the supply lines hold.
A loan that converts into equity during a future funding round, allowing investors and founders to avoid the uncomfortable conversation about what the company is actually worth. It's a financial IOU wrapped in optimism and legal jargon.
A self-reinforcing business cycle where each component feeds the next, creating unstoppable momentum, at least on the whiteboard. In practice, most startup flywheels have the momentum of an actual flywheel purchased from a junkyard -- theoretically functional, practically stuck.
A startup valued at over ten billion dollars, because apparently unicorn wasn't exclusive enough and Silicon Valley needed a word that makes mythological creatures sound like a tiered loyalty program. Next up: hectocorn, at which point we're just making up zoo animals.
A funding round where a company raises money at a lower valuation than the previous round, which is the startup equivalent of your house being appraised for less than you paid for it, except everyone on Twitter knows about it. Morale is measured in tears per employee.