Disrupting disruption with disruptive disruptions since 2010.
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.
The magical period where startup founders burn through investor cash while "validating their business model," ostensibly nurturing their fledgling company from idea to viable business. Like hatching eggs, except the eggs cost millions of dollars and most of them produce nothing. Incubators and accelerators love this word because it makes burning money sound scientific and inevitable.
Patient, flexible funding that accepts below-market returns to achieve social impact alongside financial returns, pioneered by organizations like Omidyar Network. Capitalism with a conscience, or venture capital with lowered expectations, depending on your perspective.
Additional investment in portfolio companies by existing investors in subsequent rounds. Doubling down on your bets or, less charitably, throwing good money after bad while hoping the first investment wasn't a complete disaster.
Fake stock that feels like ownership but isn't, giving employees the illusion of having skin in the game without actual legal rights. It's participation trophy capitalism.
The startup mantra that romanticizes abandoning your original business plan when it becomes clear nobody wants what you're building. It's plan B through Z, pitched as strategic thinking rather than desperate flailing.
The year a venture capital fund closes and begins making investments, used to compare fund performance across similar time periods. It's like birth year for wine or funds—context that matters for quality assessment.
A minimum funding round size (typically $1-2 million) that triggers the automatic conversion of SAFEs or convertible notes into equity. It's the threshold that separates real funding rounds from friends-and-family pocket change.
The process of slapping a number on something that probably doesn't have a real value. In venture capital, it's educated guessing dressed up as financial analysis—your startup is worth $100M because we feel like it is, and also because everyone else paid way too much for similar companies.
A provision that adjusts an investor's ownership if future funding rounds happen at lower valuations. Basically a rich person's insurance policy.
An investment strategy of making many small bets across countless startups, hoping a few will hit big enough to compensate for the inevitable carnage. The venture capital equivalent of buying lottery tickets in bulk.
Someone who gives you money in exchange for a piece of your company, future profits, or the thrill of watching their capital evaporate. They're either your best friend or worst nightmare, depending on whether your quarterly numbers are trending upward. In startup land, they're the people whose calls you always take.
The process of taking an idea, product, or technology and transforming it into something that actually makes money, because apparently innovation for its own sake doesn't pay the bills. It's the startup world's coming-of-age ceremony, where brilliant concepts either become profitable products or expensive lessons. Essentially, it's the bridge between "we built something cool" and "people are actually buying it."
The industry dedicated to using living organisms and biological systems to create products, solve problems, and generally play god in the most profitable way possible. It's where biology meets engineering meets venture capital, resulting in everything from life-saving drugs to designer yeast that makes better beer. Think of it as science's entrepreneurial phase, where petri dishes can lead to IPOs.
Having the qualities of someone who starts businesses, takes risks, and believes their idea will totally disrupt an industry despite statistical odds suggesting otherwise. It's the adjective form of optimistic delusion mixed with genuine innovation and an unhealthy comfort with uncertainty. Basically, it describes people who see opportunities where normal humans see reasons to keep their day job.
The rate at which investment opportunities come across a VC's desk. Good deal flow means seeing quality startups before everyone else; bad deal flow means getting pitched by anyone with a Squarespace website and a dream.
A go-to-market strategy dependent on human sales teams to drive customer acquisition, typical in complex B2B products with long sales cycles. The opposite of letting the product sell itself.
Investors who prey on distressed startups, offering unfavorable terms when founders are desperate. They prefer the smell of burning runway in the morning.
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.
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.
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.'
The degree to which a founder's background, skills, and experience uniquely position them to solve a particular problem. The startup equivalent of being born for this moment, or at least having a plausible narrative for why you were.
A system where VCs give small pools of capital to well-connected individuals to make investments on the firm's behalf. A brilliant way to outsource deal flow while paying in equity instead of salary.
General Partner, the VC fund managers who make investment decisions and carry legal liability for the fund's operations. They're the ones whose names are on the door and whose reputations are on the line.