Series A / Series B / Series C

Definition

A funding round naming scheme that allows investors to pretend they understand what stage a company is at. Each round requires the company to promise even more revolutionary metrics.

Example Usage

We're closing our Series B at a $50M valuation with commitments to triple user growth while halving customer acquisition costs.

Source: Venture capital terminology

Related Terms

Beginner

product roadmap

A timeline of planned features that will be delivered late, if at all—your product team's creative fiction exercise. It exists primarily to give the sales team something to promise prospects that engineering will later disappoint.

🚀 Startup / VC

Intermediate

hatchery

A startup incubator or accelerator where fledgling companies are artificially nurtured in batches, given standardized advice, and released into the wild to either soar or become someone's acqui-hire. Like its fish farm counterpart, success depends on carefully controlled conditions, periodic feeding (of capital), and accepting that most won't make it to maturity. The industrial approach to entrepreneurship for founders who enjoy being treated like salmon.

🚀 Startup / VC

Intermediate

dilution

The soul-crushing moment when a startup issues new shares, and existing shareholders watch their ownership percentage shrink faster than a wool sweater in a hot dryer. While you still own the same number of shares, you now own a smaller slice of the pie—assuming the company actually grows enough to justify the dilution. It's the price founders pay for other people's money, and the reason early employees cry into their vested options.

🚀 Startup / VC

Beginner

liquidity event

The magical moment when your paper wealth becomes actual money you can spend—typically through an acquisition or IPO. It's what everyone's working toward but few actually experience.

🚀 Startup / VC

Beginner

warm intro

An introduction to an investor or customer through a mutual connection, vastly more effective than cold outreach. The difference between your email being read and being instantly deleted by an EA.

🚀 Startup / VC

Advanced

party to the exit

A shareholder who has contractual rights to approve or block an acquisition or IPO, giving them veto power over exit decisions regardless of ownership percentage. Democracy in action, if democracy meant a small group could overrule the majority.

🚀 Startup / VC

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