Disrupting disruption with disruptive disruptions since 2010.
Sequential rounds of venture funding with progressively larger checks and increasingly skeptical investors asking harder questions.
The initial capital injection used to plant your business idea and hope it doesn't get eaten by birds before it sprouts.
Serviceable Obtainable Market—what you can realistically capture in the first 3-5 years. It's the intersection of TAM, SAM, and aggressive optimism.
A clause ensuring investors get their money back first when the company sells or dies—like having a reserved lifeboat while founders and employees fight over pool floaties. Can be 1x (reasonable) or 3x (predatory).
A calculation of ownership percentages that includes all possible shares—options, warrants, convertible notes, and that napkin the founder signed in 2009. The number that reveals how little of the company you actually own.
Special privileges allowing certain LPs to invest additional money directly into specific portfolio companies alongside the fund, usually with lower or no fees. The VIP backstage pass of venture investing.
Additional money invested in a portfolio company after the initial round—either because things are going great and you want more ownership, or things are terrible and you're protecting your original investment. Hope and desperation look surprisingly similar.
A provision requiring existing investors to participate in future funding rounds or lose their special privileges. The venture capital equivalent of 'use it or lose it.'
A buyout mechanism where one co-founder can offer to buy out another at a specific price, and the recipient must either sell at that price or buy the offerer's shares at the same price. The nuclear option for irreconcilable founder disputes.
The information conveyed to the market by investor actions, such as who leads a round or whether insiders participate in follow-ons. In startup land, subtext is text.
A schedule requiring founders to earn their equity over time, typically 4 years with a 1-year cliff. The investor-imposed acknowledgment that founding a company doesn't mean you'll stick around to build it.
An investment opportunity sourced exclusively by one firm rather than through competitive process. The venture capital equivalent of finding $20 in your coat pocket—rare, lucky, and probably won't happen again.
A company that owns and controls every layer of its product or service delivery, from manufacturing to customer experience, rather than relying on existing infrastructure or platforms. It's vertical integration for the startup age.
The AARRR framework measuring Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue—the key metrics for growth-stage startups. Named because AARRR sounds like a pirate, which is somehow still funny to founders.
A venture fund typically under $50M that invests small checks in very early-stage startups. They offer founder-friendly terms and actual attention, mainly because they can't afford fancy offices or ignore their investments.
Someone who receives equity for occasionally responding to emails and allowing you to use their name on your website. The advisor-to-impact ratio is the lowest in all of business, yet every startup has seven of them.
A PowerPoint presentation optimized for skimming, typically 10-15 slides explaining why your startup will change the world and only needs $2M to do it. It's fiction dressed up as financial projections.
Excess stock options or debt that will dilute existing shareholders, hanging over the cap table like a financial storm cloud. Future pain that everyone pretends isn't there.
An investment strategy of making many small bets across a wide portfolio, hoping a few massive winners will compensate for numerous failures—essentially portfolio construction as gambling. The scatter-shot approach favored by funds who believe they can't predict winners.
A corporate entity investing for business reasons beyond pure financial returns, bringing industry expertise and potential partnerships along with capital. Either your best ally or a Trojan horse gathering intelligence for a future competitive assault.
The time required for an investment fund to return its original capital to LPs through exits and distributions. It's the VC equivalent of asking 'when do I get my money back?'
Simple Agreement for Future Equity—a Y Combinator innovation that lets startups take money now and figure out the valuation later. 'Simple' is debatable; some lawyers call them 'complex convertible debt without the debt.'
The mathematical reality that in venture capital, one or two investments generate nearly all the returns while the rest are mediocre or dead. Why VCs can lose money on 90% of their portfolio and still return 3x the fund.
The startup world's euphemism for customers abandoning ship, measured as the rate at which subscribers cancel or stop using your service. It's the metric that keeps SaaS founders up at night, because acquiring new customers is expensive but losing existing ones is devastating. High churn is basically your business slowly bleeding out, but with spreadsheets.