Founder

Definition

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.

Example Usage

"As the founder, I sleep four hours a night, eat one meal a day, and call it hustle culture instead of what my doctor calls a slow-motion health crisis."

Related Terms

Intermediate

voting rights

The power to vote on corporate matters, typically held by common stock and sometimes special classes of preferred stock. Theoretically democratic, practically controlled by whoever wrote the term sheet.

🚀 Startup / VC

Advanced

Blitzscaling

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.

🚀 Startup / VC

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pro forma

Financial projections showing what a company's metrics would look like under hypothetical conditions or future scenarios. Latin for 'as a matter of form,' startup-ese for 'this is the fantasy we're selling investors.'

🚀 Startup / VC

Advanced

zombie fund

A venture fund that's technically alive but has stopped making new investments, usually because performance is so bad that raising a follow-on fund is impossible. It shambles along, managing existing investments until the limited partnership agreement expires.

🚀 Startup / VC

Intermediate

churn

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.

🚀 Startup / VC

Intermediate

give-to-get

The VC expectation that founders will make introductions, provide advice, and help other portfolio companies in exchange for investment and support. Networking as a contractual obligation.

🚀 Startup / VC

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