Disrupting disruption with disruptive disruptions since 2010.
Lifetime Value—the total revenue a customer generates before churning, which you compare against acquisition cost to pretend your business makes sense. Usually wildly optimistic because it assumes customers stick around forever.
The magical realm where scientists play God with DNA and investors play roulette with their portfolios. Short for biotechnology, it's the industry that promises to cure cancer, extend your lifespan, and justify obscene R&D budgets—all while burning through cash faster than a lab incinerator. Whether it's CRISPR gene editing or synthetic biology, biotech is where biology meets business and hope meets hype.
The process of narrowing your target market to a smaller, more specific segment rather than trying to serve everyone. What pivoting looks like when you finally accept your TAM assumptions were delusional.
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.
Moving to build or sell products at higher layers of technology infrastructure, typically where margins are better and you're further from commoditized infrastructure. The opposite of down-stack, and usually more profitable.
A fancy term for someone who invests in or undertakes risky business ventures, particularly in the startup ecosystem where optimism meets capitalism. These bold souls throw money and energy at unproven business ideas, hoping to strike gold before bankruptcy strikes them. It's like being an explorer, except instead of discovering new lands, you're discovering new ways to burn through Series A funding.
The fancy business term for a proposal or offer, usually dressed up with adjectives like 'value' or 'unique' to make it sound more impressive than 'hey, wanna buy our stuff?' In startup pitch decks, the 'value proposition' is that one slide where founders explain why anyone should care about their idea, typically using a Venn diagram that doesn't quite make sense. A good proposition answers 'what's in it for me?' before the listener falls asleep.
A capital efficiency metric calculated as net burn divided by net new ARR, measuring how many dollars a company incincinerates to generate each dollar of recurring revenue. A burn multiple under 1.5x suggests efficiency; above 3x suggests a bonfire of investor capital.
The most stripped-down version of your product that customers will actually use without demanding a refund—or at least that's the theory. In practice, it's whatever you can ship before running out of money.
Your master plan for how you'll actually convince humans to exchange money for your product, typically involving buzzwords like 'omnichannel' and 'vertical integration.' It's the section of your pitch deck you update most frequently as each approach fails.
What investors claim your company is worth before they invest—a number that's actually meaningless but gets thrown around in press releases. Add the investment amount to get post-money, which is what your ownership percentage is actually based on.
The person you start a company with based on four hours of friendship and mutual delusion, who will become either your closest ally or your most expensive breakup. Dating is easier than finding a compatible co-founder.
A PowerPoint presentation optimized for skimming, typically 10-15 slides explaining why your startup will change the world and only needs $2M to do it. It's fiction dressed up as financial projections.
A company culture claiming to make decisions based on data analysis rather than gut feeling, though which metrics get measured mysteriously align with what leadership already wanted to do. It's astrology for MBAs.
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.
Excess stock options or debt that will dilute existing shareholders, hanging over the cap table like a financial storm cloud. Future pain that everyone pretends isn't there.
IRS tax designation (Section 1202) that can exclude up to $10 million in gains from federal taxes for early startup investors, assuming you navigate the Byzantine requirements. The tax break that makes angel investing slightly less insane.
Company valuation after investment capital is added, the number founders brag about while carefully omitting the 'post-money' qualifier. What your company is theoretically worth with someone else's money included.
When a company or investor offers to buy shares from existing shareholders at a set price, providing liquidity without a full exit. A release valve for the equity pressure cooker.
A group of users who started in the same time period, tracked to see how many stick around. The cruel truth about how fast people abandon your product.
Any exchange of goods, services, or money, elevated to sound more important when preceded by 'business' or followed by 'cost.' In startup world, it's the holy grail metric that proves people are actually using your product for its intended purpose rather than just kicking the tires. VCs obsess over transaction volume, transaction value, and transaction frequency as if counting exchanges of value will somehow predict the future.
A supplemental investment vehicle created alongside a main fund to accommodate additional capital from LPs or special investors, often for a specific deal or opportunity too large for the main fund. The VC version of ordering extra fries because one serving isn't enough.
Legal promises in investment agreements where founders swear everything they've said is true and the company isn't hiding skeletons. Breaking these can result in personal liability, making due diligence the most stressful time to discover that intern you hired in 2019 never signed an IP assignment.
When a VC aggressively increases their investment in a portfolio company across multiple rounds, betting their career on being right. Conviction investing taken to its logical extreme.