innovator

Definition

A self-appointed visionary who had an idea first or adopted one early; startup world's favorite honorific for anyone owning three blockchain apps and genuine FOMO.

Example Usage

She branded herself an innovator after being among the first hundred thousand users of ChatGPT.

Source: Common startup and business terminology

Related Terms

Beginner

boomerang founder

An entrepreneur who returns to start another company after their previous venture was acquired or failed. They're either gluttons for punishment or genuinely addicted to the startup lifestyle.

🚀 Startup / VC

Advanced

preference stack

The hierarchical order in which different classes of investors get paid during an exit, determined by liquidation preferences from multiple funding rounds. It's a legal game of Jenga where common stockholders usually lose.

🚀 Startup / VC

Beginner

Freemium

A business model where the basic product is free but all the useful features cost money, like a restaurant that gives you a free plate but charges for the food. It's the startup equivalent of a drug dealer's first-one's-free strategy, but legal and with worse margins.

🚀 Startup / VC

Intermediate

management fee

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.

🚀 Startup / VC

Intermediate

Moonshot

An ambitious, seemingly impossible project that aims to solve a massive problem, named after the Apollo missions because both require billions of dollars and a willingness to ignore the odds. For every actual moonshot, there are a thousand founders calling their food delivery app a moonshot.

🚀 Startup / VC

Beginner

Key Metrics

The numbers a startup tracks to measure success, carefully selected to be whichever ones happen to be going up. When those numbers go down, they become vanity metrics, and new key metrics are discovered.

🚀 Startup / VC

Translate This Term

See “innovator” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on X Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Advanced

409A valuation

An IRS-mandated appraisal of your company's common stock price, required so employees don't accidentally commit tax frau...