Disrupting disruption with disruptive disruptions since 2010.
The romanticized art of starting businesses, taking risks, and pretending to enjoy working 80-hour weeks for the slim chance of eventual success. It's capitalism's version of the hero's journey, complete with failure, redemption arcs, and way too many LinkedIn posts about "grinding." Business schools teach it, VCs fund it, and most people quit it within three years.
The percentage of transaction value a platform extracts as revenue, revealing how much you're actually taxing your users for the privilege of using your service. Too high and users revolt; too low and investors revolt.
The revenue and costs associated with a single customer or transaction, supposedly proving your business model works before you scale. Often the awkward math that reveals you lose money on every sale but plan to make it up in volume.
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.
A startup valued at over $1 billion that has never undergone the reality check of going public or getting acquired. Their unicorn status exists purely in the fantasy land of private market valuations.
The reduction in ownership percentage when additional shares are issued, especially painful in a down round where new shares are issued at a lower price. Watching your equity stake shrink while your company's value simultaneously decreases.
The impossible choice between maintaining control of your company and maximizing its financial value, first articulated by Harvard's Noam Wasserman. You can be rich or you can be king, but probably not both.
The magical moment when stock options or retirement contributions officially become yours to keep, transforming from corporate dangling carrot into actual ownership. It's the golden handcuffs' lock clicking shut, ensuring you'll think twice before rage-quitting. The startup world's version of 'you must be this loyal to ride this rocket ship.'
Building a company with personal savings, credit cards, and stress ulcers instead of venture capital—either a badge of honor or an excuse for slow growth, depending on your exit results. It's entrepreneurship on hard mode.
A spreadsheet model showing how acquisition proceeds flow to different shareholders based on liquidation preferences and other terms—usually revealing that founders get far less than their ownership percentage suggests. It's where equity dreams go to die.
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.
The magical property where your product becomes more valuable as more people use it—or what every social startup claims to have despite zero evidence. True network effects are rarer than honest user growth numbers.
Provisions allowing minority shareholders to join a sale if majority shareholders exit—the friendlier sibling of drag-along rights. It's protection ensuring you can't get abandoned while insiders cash out.
An organizational dysfunction where the loudest voice wins every argument, regardless of actual merit or logic. Common in toxic startups and poorly-managed teams where decibel level is somehow confused with leadership ability, ensuring the best ideas often die in quiet corners while mediocre ones get screamed into existence.
The glossy sales document that makes every investment opportunity look like the next Amazon and every university look like Hogwarts, carefully balanced between legal obligation and marketing fantasy. In startup land, it's the formal document that transforms 'three guys in a garage with an app idea' into 'disruptive technology platform poised for exponential growth.' Every prospectus contains enough disclaimers to absolve everyone of everything while somehow still convincing you to hand over your money.
When a startup 'grows up' from an accelerator program or moves from seed to institutional funding, like leaving college but with more awkward Demo Days. Implies you're now playing with the big kids.
The privilege granted to preferred shareholders to convert their fancy preferred stock into common stock, typically exercised when they want to sell or when common stock becomes more valuable (rare but delightful). It's a one-way ticket that investors usually only take when they're confident they're not leaving money on the table.
The time window (usually 3-5 years) during which a venture fund actively deploys capital into new investments, after which the GP is supposed to stop writing checks and focus on managing the existing portfolio. Think of it as the VC equivalent of last call at the bar.
The formal demand from a general partner to limited partners to wire their committed funds, usually with 10-30 days notice and an implied "or else" hanging in the air. It's how venture funds move committed money from promised to deployed.
The minimum annual return (typically 8%) that limited partners receive before general partners can claim carried interest, functioning as a hurdle rate to ensure LPs get paid first. Think of it as making the GP eat their vegetables before getting dessert.
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.
The practice of revaluing portfolio companies to reflect current fair market value rather than cost basis, theoretically providing accurate fund performance but practically involving educated guesses and wishful thinking. Quarterly existential crisis as an accounting process.
The art of watering down your ownership stake in a company, usually because someone with deeper pockets decided your equity pie needs more slices. In the startup world, this happens when new investors come aboard and everyone's percentage shrinks faster than your enthusiasm during Series D. It's not personal, it's just cap table mathematics.
Total Addressable Market, Serviceable Addressable Market, and Serviceable Obtainable Market—three increasingly pessimistic estimates of how much money you might theoretically make. The trilogy of optimism, realism, and 'if everything goes perfectly.'