Cap Table

Definition

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.

Example Usage

"I looked at the cap table after our Series C and discovered I own 3% of the company I built from scratch, which still feels generous compared to my co-founder's 1.5%."

Related Terms

Beginner

Key Metrics

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.

🚀 Startup / VC

Beginner

Founder

The person who started a company and will remind you of this fact in every meeting, email signature, and LinkedIn post until the heat death of the universe. They wear the title like a crown, even when the kingdom is a WeWork desk and two interns.

🚀 Startup / VC

Advanced

zombie VC

A venture capital firm that's functionally dead but still managing old funds, unable to raise new capital but too undead to fully shut down. They're not investing in new companies but still collecting management fees from their limited partners.

🚀 Startup / VC

Intermediate

revenue multiple

A valuation metric calculated by dividing company valuation by annual revenue, popular in tech because it works even when profits are mythical. Allows investors to justify astronomical valuations by citing "industry standards."

🚀 Startup / VC

Beginner

warm introduction

A referral to an investor through a trusted mutual connection, as opposed to cold outreach. The difference between getting a response and having your email automatically archived.

🚀 Startup / VC

Intermediate

Valuation

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.

💰 Finance / Accounting🚀 Startup / VC

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