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Startup & SaaS Speak

Public
by Vernaq • 60 items

A translation guide to the buzzwords, metrics and founder-speak that show up everywhere in startup and SaaS conversations.

Items

10x engineer
A mythical developer who does the work of an entire team.
Activation
The moment a user experiences the product’s value.
AI-powered
Using artificial intelligence somewhere in the product.
API
A way for other software to interact with yours.
Beta
A not-quite-finished product people can try.
Blitzscaling
Growing extremely fast and hoping the problems sort themselves out.
Bootstrapped
Built without external funding.
Burn rate
The speed at which money disappears.
Cap table
A spreadsheet showing who owns what percentage of the company.
Churn
Customers leaving the product.
Customer acquisition cost
How much it costs to get a new user.
Default alive
The business can survive without raising more money.
Default dead
The company will run out of money unless something changes.
Default global
Building the product for worldwide use from day one.
Developer experience
How easy it is for developers to use the product.
Dilution
When raising money reduces your ownership percentage.
Disrupt
Replace an industry by doing things slightly differently.
Dogfooding
Using your own product internally.
Early access
Users can try it before it’s fully released.
Ecosystem
A collection of products, partners and integrations.
Feature request
A polite suggestion that often becomes a roadmap item.
Flywheel
A system where growth feeds more growth.
Founder market fit
The founder deeply understands the problem space.
Founder mode
When the founder starts micromanaging everything again.
Founder story
The narrative explaining why the startup exists.
Founder-led
The founder still runs the company.
Freemium
Give the product away and hope people eventually pay.
Growth hacking
Creative ways of getting users when you don’t have a marketing budget.
Integration
Connecting two products together.
Launch
Tell everyone the product exists.
Leverage
Using tools or systems to multiply impact.
Lifetime value
How much revenue a user generates over time.
Mission
The purpose the company claims to pursue.
Moat
Something that makes the company hard to compete with.
Move fast and break things
Ship quickly and deal with problems later.
MVP
The smallest version of the product we can ship without being too embarrassed.
Network effects
The product becomes more valuable as more people use it.
North star metric
The one number everyone agrees is the most important.
Onboarding
Helping new users understand the product.
Pivot
Change the entire strategy while pretending it was intentional.
Platform
A product that does many things.
Pre-seed
Very early funding used to build the first version of the product.
Product Hunt launch
A startup tradition involving internet points.
Product–market fit
The magical moment when people actually want what you built.
Refactor
Rewrite code so it’s less chaotic.
Retention
How many users keep coming back.
Roadmap
A rough plan that will definitely change.
Runway
How long the company can survive before the money runs out.
Scale
Grow the business without everything breaking.
Seed round
The first proper investment round.
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