Product-Market Fit

Intermediate 🚀 Startup / VC

Definition

The mythical moment when your product perfectly matches what customers want, described by VCs as essential but defined by no one in any useful way. It's like obscenity -- you know it when you see it, and most startups never see it.

Example Usage

"We achieved product-market fit, which we define as having more than zero customers who aren't the founder's relatives."

Related Terms

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advisor

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.

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innovate

The corporate buzzword for 'doing something new' that appears in every mission statement and keynote presentation. To innovate is to revolutionize or introduce novelty, though in practice it often means adding an app to something that worked fine without one. Companies that claim to innovate daily are usually just iterating on someone else's idea with a slightly different shade of blue.

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founder mode

An operating style where founders maintain deep involvement in company details rather than delegating everything to managers. Popularized by Paul Graham as a counterpoint to conventional management wisdom that says CEOs should stay hands-off.

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limited partner

The actual money behind venture capital—pension funds, endowments, and rich people who give VCs money to invest and hope they know what they're doing. They're 'limited' because they can't tell the GP how to do their job.

🚀 Startup / VC
Advanced

non-participating preferred

Preferred stock that must choose between taking its liquidation preference OR converting to common and sharing the remaining proceeds—can't do both. The slightly-less-greedy version of investor terms.

🚀 Startup / VC
Beginner

up round

A financing round at a higher valuation than previous rounds, signaling growth and traction to the market. The opposite of a down round and considerably better for everyone's mood, if not always their long-term prospects.

🚀 Startup / VC

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