innovative

Definition

The adjective slapped on every product, service, and startup pitch deck to signal 'we're doing something allegedly new.' Something innovative is supposed to be groundbreaking and forward-thinking, though these days it often means 'we added AI to it.' If your company isn't innovative, you're basically admitting you're stuck in 2005 with a flip phone.

Example Usage

The company's innovative approach involved doing exactly what their competitors did but with a millennial pink color scheme.

Source: Business and technology terminology

Related Terms

Intermediate

Hockey Stick

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.

🚀 Startup / VC

Intermediate

party round

A funding round with so many small investors that the cap table looks like a nightclub guest list—lots of names, minimal commitment from anyone. Usually signals either a hot deal everyone wants a piece of, or a desperate founder who couldn't land a lead investor.

🚀 Startup / VC

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

pay-to-play

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.'

🚀 Startup / VC

Beginner

gross margin

Revenue minus cost of goods sold, expressed as a percentage—the fundamental measure of whether your business model makes sense before accounting for all those pesky operating expenses. VCs want this above 70% for SaaS.

🚀 Startup / VC

Beginner

Scale

The startup obsession with growing bigger, faster, and more unsustainably, as if a company were a goldfish and the market were an ocean. Everyone wants to scale, few know how, and most just end up spending more money to lose money at an impressive rate.

🚀 Startup / VC

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togtfooh

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