Glossary

Plain-English definitions of startup funding, investment and pitch deck terms, from SEIS and EIS to pre-money valuation.

• 409A Valuation
• Acquisition / Trade Sale
• Activation Rate
• ACV / ARPU / ARPA
• Advisory Board
• Agile / Scrum
• AI / ML / LLM
• Angel Investor
• Angel Network / Syndicate
• Anti-Dilution Provision
• API (Application Programming Interface)
• ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
• Articles of Association
• ASA (Advance Subscription Agreement)
• Balance Sheet
• Board Observer
• Board of Directors
• Bootstrapping
• Bridge Round
• British Business Bank
• Burn Rate
• Business Model
• CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
• Cap Table (Capitalisation Table)
• Carry (Carried Interest)
• Cash Flow Statement
• Churn Rate
• CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment)
• Co-Founder
• COGS (Cost of Goods Sold)
• Cohort Analysis
• Cold Outreach
• Companies House
• Competitive Moat
• Competitor Analysis
• Contractor vs Employee
• Convertible Loan Note (CLN)
• Corporate VC (CVC)
• CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation)
• Crowdfunding
• Customer Discovery
• Data Processor vs Controller
• Data Room / Deal Room
• Deal Flow
• Default Alive vs Default Dead
• Deferred Revenue
• Delaware C-Corp
• Dilution
• Discount Rate (Convertible)
• Down Round
• Drag-Along Rights
• Dry Powder
• Due Diligence (DD)
• EBITDA
• EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme)
• Elevator Pitch
• EMI (Enterprise Management Incentive)
• EOR (Employer of Record)
• Executive Summary
• Exit
• Family Office
• First-Mover Advantage
• Flip-Up (Corporate Flip)
• Flywheel
• Follow-On Investment
• Founder Breakup / Co-Founder Conflict
• Founder Vesting Cliff
• Founder-Market Fit
• Fractional Executive
• Fully Diluted Shares
• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
• Go-to-Market (GTM)
• Grant Funding
• Gross Margin
• Growth Hub
• Holding Company
• ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
• Idea / Validation Stage
• Innovate UK
• Intellectual Property (IP)
• Investability
• Investability Report
• Investability Threshold (Score ≥750)
• Investment Thesis
• IPO (Initial Public Offering)
• IR35
• K-Factor (Virality)
• Key Person Risk
• KISS / SAFE
• Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP)
• KPI (Key Performance Indicator)
• Lead Investor
• Lean Startup
• Limited Company (Ltd)
• Liquidation Preference
• LP / GP (Limited Partner / General Partner)
• LTV / CLV (Customer Lifetime Value)
• Micro VC
• Moonshot
• MQL / SQL
• MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)
• MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
• NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)
• Network Effects
• No-Code / Low-Code
• North Star Metric
• NPS (Net Promoter Score)
• Option Pool (ESOP)
• P&L (Profit and Loss Statement)
• PAYE (Pay As You Earn)
• Pitch Deck
• Pivot
• PPC (Pay-Per-Click)
• Pre-Money vs Post-Money
• Pre-Seed Founder
• Pre-Seed Funding
• Pro-Rata Rights
• Product Roadmap
• Product-Led Growth (PLG)
• Product-Market Fit (PMF)
• PSC (Person with Significant Control)
• RDEC (Research & Development Expenditure Credit)
• Revenue-Based Financing (RBF)
• ROFR (Right of First Refusal)
• Runway
• Runway-to-Milestone
• SaaS (Software as a Service)
• Sales Pipeline
• Scalability
• Scale-Up
• SDK (Software Development Kit)
• Secondary Sale
• Seed Funding
• SEIS (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme)
• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
• Series A
• Series B / C / D
• Shareholders’ Agreement (SHA)
• SLA (Service Level Agreement)
• SME (Small and Medium-sized Enterprise)
• Sweat Equity
• Tag-Along Rights
• TAM, SAM, SOM
• Tech Stack
• Technical Debt
• Term Sheet
• Terms & Conditions / Terms of Service
• The Ask
• Traction
• Unicorn
• Unit Economics
• Uptime / Availability
• Valuation
• Valuation Cap
• Value Proposition
• Vanity Metrics
• Venture Capital (VC)
• Venture Debt
• Venture Studio
• Vesting
• Warrant
• Zombie Startup