Startup glossary

Also called acqui-hire

An acquihire is an acquisition or acquisition-like transaction in which the buyer's primary goal is to hire the target company's team rather than to acquire the target's operating business, revenue, customers, or standalone product.

Blitzscaling is a startup scaling strategy that deliberately prioritizes speed over efficiency in the face of uncertainty in order to win a large, valuable, winner-take-most market.

Build in public means openly sharing the process of creating, launching, and growing a product or company while the work is still happening.

Also called investor conviction

In startup investing, conviction means an investor has enough justified belief in a company, founder, market, or thesis to commit capital, reputation, time, and follow-on support despite uncertainty.

Default alive means a startup is on a trajectory to reach profitability before it runs out of cash, assuming its current expenses stay roughly constant and its recent revenue growth continues.

Default dead means a startup will run out of cash before it reaches profitability if it keeps operating on its current trajectory and does not raise additional capital or make significant changes.

A hair-on-fire problem is a customer problem so urgent, painful, costly, frequent, risky, or embarrassing that the customer is already trying to solve it now.

An indie hacker is a founder who tries to make money independently by building and selling an internet-based product, usually without venture capital, a large team, or a traditional employer.

A party round is an early startup financing round with many small investors and no clear lead investor, or only a very weak lead.

A pivot is a structured change in a startup's product, customer, market, business model, channel, technology, or growth strategy after evidence shows that the current path is not working well enough.

Also called pre-seed round

Pre-seed is the earliest named startup financing stage, usually raised before a company has enough product, traction, revenue, or institutional validation to raise a traditional seed round.

Ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough money to cover the founders' basic living expenses, usually with an extremely lean cost structure.

A solo founder is a startup founder who starts and leads a company without a cofounder.

Stealth mode is a startup operating strategy in which the company deliberately limits public visibility while it builds a product, secures intellectual property, tests privately, raises from trusted investors, or prepares a controlled launch.

Also called startup studio

A venture studio is an organization that systematically creates new startups by generating or sourcing ideas, validating them, building early products, recruiting founders or operators, providing shared resources, and retaining meaningful equity in the companies it helps create.

A zombie startup is a company that is still operating but no longer has a realistic path to the outcome it was built or funded to pursue.