10 Startup Jargons You Must Be Acquainted With - Decision Tree

Originally posted at www.ciba.org.in

Just began your entrepreneurial journey and already baffled by startup jargons swooshing past your ears?

Startup lingo is full of slangs, unclear phrases, and seemingly complex jargons. Startup experts and mentors can hurl these at an unsuspecting entrepreneur leaving him wondering about the true crux of a discussion or advice.

Necessary or not, useful or annoying, startup jargons are here to stay and the best an entrepreneur can do is to understand their true meaning.

We bring to you a list of 10 startup jargons and their actual meaning to help you decide how, when, and where to use them; or simply drop them out of your vocabulary:

1. Business Accelerator – Another name for business incubator. Incubation centres help baby startups find their feet by providing early support in terms of office space, phone and internet connectivity, as well as mentorship support in product development and marketing stages. These incubation services ‘accelerate’ the business growth and hence the alternate name
2. Deck – A deck is a crisp and comprehensive document that explains your business or entails your business plan in short and clear terms. So, an 8 – 10 slide PowerPoint presentation listing the superiority of your products / services is a ‘sales deck’. And an executive summary of your business plan with all the requisite numbers will be your ‘pitch deck’.
3. B2B / B2C – Frequently used terms, B2B and B2C are abbreviations for ‘Business-to-Business’ and ‘Business-to-Customer’. A B2B organization sells its products and services to other businesses, while a B2C sells its offerings directly to the masses.
4. Bootstrapping – You must have heard this term numerous times and often wondered what it meant. Essentially, a ‘bootstrapped’ startup is a self funded startup. So, bootstrapping is running a startup with private funds of the promoter(s).
5. Seed Capital – Seed capital is the first stage of funding; required to setup the business. Seed funding is required to transform an idea to actual tangible business. Since investors are wary of untested business ideas, most startups bootstrap to get the seed funding.
6. Pivot – The word ‘pivot’ indicates a point facilitating the change of direction. In the startup parlance, a pivot indicates change in focus of the business (from its original). So, when an organization changes its market segment, or uses its capabilities / technology for a completely new purpose, it is said to have experienced a pivot.
7. Burn Rate – While the term can indicate anything and looks vague, in startup environment it explains the rate at which a startup is spending its funds. Often, startups fall in the trap of blowing lot of funds in a bid to grow faster and have to wind up the startup. Evidently, keeping the burn rate low and opting to grow sustainably is the right way for the startups.
8. Scalable – The word is of immense interest for investors and bankers. They want to know if your business is scalable or not. What they are actually interested in knowing is whether your business model has scope to increase production / service incidents, grow the customer base, and enhance revenues. Investors and lenders are happy to consider business ideas that can be replicated at a larger platform and earn higher revenues.
9. Growth Hacking – An intelligent term, sadly over-abused and used as a cliché by many, Growth Hacking means attaining quick, scalable growth by adopting inexpensive marketing techniques. Aggressive social media promotion is a part of growth hacking strategy.
10. Traction – From a startup standpoint, traction refers to the true adoption of your product / service by the customers. It is generally described in terms of number of units sold / customers serviced or revenue generated in a given point in time.

Now equipped with some of the most commonly used startup jargons, we believe you are in a better position to dive into any startup conversation, like a pro!