Startup and venture capital language is its own dialect, half optimism and half hedging. It is the vocabulary of people raising money, deploying it, or explaining why the last round did not work out. The words below show up in pitch decks, board updates, and the kind of LinkedIn post that announces a "journey."
Most of it exists to make ordinary business sound inevitable. A moat is just an advantage competitors cannot easily copy. A flywheel is a loop that gets easier as it spins. Useful ideas, all of them, but they harden into tells: the more of these in a deck, the more you should read the actual numbers.
The worst offenders
- Blitzscale (Managing Director) "Blitzscale" means to grow a company as fast as possible, deliberately accepting chaos and inefficiency in exchange for speed.
- Default alive (Managing Director) "Default alive" means a startup can reach profitability on its current trajectory without raising additional funding.
- Down round (Managing Director) "Down round" means a funding round where a company raises money at a lower valuation than its previous round, signaling the company is worth less than before.
- 996 (Managing Director) "996" refers to a work schedule of 9am to 9pm, six days a week, a practice common in some tech companies that is sometimes presented as a sign of dedication.
- Acquihire (Managing Director) "Acquihire" means buying a company primarily to gain its employees rather than its product, technology, or revenue.
- Agentic (Managing Director) "Agentic" describes an AI system that can take sequences of actions or make decisions on its own to complete a goal, rather than just answering a single question.
The full Startup & VC Jargon glossary
All 71 terms in this category, with the plain-English swap. Click any phrase for the full breakdown, the seniority tier, and a before-and-after example.
| Phrase | Say instead |
|---|---|
| 10x | much bigger |
| 996 | brutal work hours |
| Acquihire | buy a company for its people |
| Activation | a new user's first real win |
| Agentic | acts on its own |
| Aha moment | when the product clicks |
| AI-first | AI at the core |
| AI-native | built around AI |
| ARR | yearly recurring revenue |
| Asymmetric bet | small risk, big upside |
| Blitzscale | grow fast at all costs |
| Bridge round | short-term funding to reach the next round |
| Build in public | sharing progress openly |
| Burn rate | how fast cash goes |
| Cap table | ownership spreadsheet |
| Capital efficient | does a lot with little money |
| Category-defining | first of its kind |
| Churn | customers leaving |
| Cohort analysis | tracking users by signup date |
| Conviction | strong belief in the deal |
| Deep work | focused, uninterrupted time |
| Default alive | profitable without more funding |
| Disrupt | shake up |
| Disruptive | industry-changing |
| Dogfooding | using our own product |
| Down round | lower-valuation raise |
| Expansion revenue | more revenue from existing customers |
| Fail fast | learn quickly from mistakes |
| First principles | from the ground up |
| Flywheel | self-reinforcing loop |
| Founder mode | hands-on leadership |
| Founder-led sales | the founder doing the selling |
| Founder-market fit | why you're right for this problem |
| Generational company | once-in-a-generation company |
| Go-to-market | launch plan |
| Grindset | hustle mentality |
| Heads down | focused on the work |
| High agency | takes initiative |
| Hypergrowth | very fast growth |
| Iterate | improve in rounds |
| Land and expand | start small, then grow it |
| Locked in | focused |
| LTV:CAC | customer value vs. cost to win |
| Moat | lasting advantage |
| Moonshot | huge bet |
| Move fast and break things | ship quickly, fix later |
| MRR | monthly recurring revenue |
| Net revenue retention | how much existing customers grow or shrink |
| Network effects | value from more users |
| Oversubscribed | more demand than space in the round |
| Picks and shovels | sell the tools, not the product |
| Power users | your most active users |
| Product-led growth | growth through the product itself |
| Product-market fit | people actually want it |
| Raise a round | get funding |
| Ramen profitable | covering basic living costs |
| Rise and grind | start the workday |
| Rocketship | fast-growing |
| Runway | months of cash left |
| Scrappy | resourceful |
| Ship it | release it |
| Stealth mode | kept quiet |
| Stickiness | how often users return |
| Talk to users | interview your customers |
| Term sheet | deal outline |
| Time to value | how fast onboarding pays off |
| Total addressable market | total market size |
| Unicorn | billion-dollar startup |
| Vibe coding | coding by prompting AI |
| Warm intro | intro through a mutual contact |
| Zero to one | building something new |
This is the editorial cut. For the bare index, see the Startup & VC Jargon category page.