Disrupting disruption with disruptive disruptions since 2010.
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.
Investment opportunities sourced through unique channels rather than pitch competitions and cold emails, giving VCs the illusion they've discovered something competitors haven't. Usually just means they have better interns.
A funding round with so many small investors that the cap table looks like a nightclub guest list—lots of names, minimal commitment from anyone. Usually signals either a hot deal everyone wants a piece of, or a desperate founder who couldn't land a lead investor.
A contractual provision that lets majority shareholders force minority investors to join in selling the company, whether they like it or not. Democracy dies in cap tables.
Emergency funding meant to tide a startup over until the 'real' funding round happens, often at desperate terms. Named after a bridge because you're hoping it doesn't collapse before you reach the other side.
A non-binding document outlining the key terms of an investment deal—think of it as a letter of intent that's about as reliable as a Tinder profile. The real fun begins when lawyers turn these bullet points into a 60-page agreement.
A clause protecting investors from getting screwed when a company raises money at a lower valuation, automatically giving them more shares to maintain their investment value. Founders hate it; investors demand it.
A punitive clause forcing existing investors to participate in future rounds or lose their special privileges—the venture capital equivalent of 'put up or shut up.' Popular after market downturns when companies need to separate real believers from fair-weather friends.
A funding round where the company's valuation is explicitly set and shares have a specific price—as opposed to convertible instruments where everyone kicks the valuation can down the road. Forces uncomfortable conversations about what the company is actually worth.
Simple Agreement for Future Equity—a Y Combinator innovation that lets startups take money now and figure out the valuation later. 'Simple' is debatable; some lawyers call them 'complex convertible debt without the debt.'
The mathematical reality that in venture capital, one or two investments generate nearly all the returns while the rest are mediocre or dead. Why VCs can lose money on 90% of their portfolio and still return 3x the fund.
The annual fee (typically 2% of committed capital) that VC fund managers charge to keep the lights on, whether or not they make good investments. The guaranteed money that pays for offices, salaries, and kombucha before carried interest kicks in.
The VC who actually makes investment decisions and sits on boards, bearing unlimited liability but collecting management fees and carried interest. The person founders pitch to, hoping they're in a good mood.
A chair at the table where actual company decisions get made, typically negotiated by lead investors who want control over their millions. Where strategy is debated, CEOs are fired, and founders learn they don't actually run their company alone.
The minimum return a VC fund must achieve before partners can collect carried interest—usually 8% annually. The bar LPs set to ensure their capital at least beats a boring index fund before the GP gets rich.
Special privileges allowing certain LPs to invest additional money directly into specific portfolio companies alongside the fund, usually with lower or no fees. The VIP backstage pass of venture investing.
Restructuring a company's capital stack—often a euphemism for 'things went poorly and we need to reset everyone's expectations and ownership.' Can range from modest adjustments to burning everything down and starting over.
Additional money invested in a portfolio company after the initial round—either because things are going great and you want more ownership, or things are terrible and you're protecting your original investment. Hope and desperation look surprisingly similar.
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 art of turning literally anything—your attention, your data, your grandmother's cookie recipe—into cold hard cash, typically by inserting ads or charging subscription fees. It's what happens when tech companies realize that 'free' products need to pay the bills somehow, usually by selling your eyeballs to advertisers. Essentially, if you're not paying for the product, someone's monetizing you.
The corporate fantasy of growing a business exponentially while somehow maintaining quality, usually uttered right before everything falls apart. It's the process of increasing capacity to handle growth—or in startup speak, the thing you'll figure out later after raising millions in VC funding. In tech, it means making systems handle more users; in reality, it means discovering all the shortcuts you took when building the foundation.
The startup world's euphemism for customers abandoning ship, measured as the rate at which subscribers cancel or stop using your service. It's the metric that keeps SaaS founders up at night, because acquiring new customers is expensive but losing existing ones is devastating. High churn is basically your business slowly bleeding out, but with spreadsheets.
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.
Risky business undertakings or investments that could either make you rich or teach you expensive lessons about market dynamics. In startup speak, it's what venture capitalists fund, hoping that one unicorn will make up for the nine failures. Think of ventures as business experiments where the hypothesis is "this will make money" and the results are usually mixed.