Business Glossary

Comparing two versions of a marketing asset to see which performs better. The scientific method applied to marketing decisions.

The salesperson who owns the deal from qualified opportunity to signed contract. Carries a quota and earns commission on closed revenue.

Marketing aimed at specific target accounts rather than broad audiences. Sales and marketing collaborate to win named companies.

The purchase of a company by another company, providing a return to shareholders and a liquidity event for founders and employees.

The moment when a new user experiences the core value of a product for the first time, making them likely to return.

When an audience sees the same ad so often that engagement drops and performance declines.

An Architecture Decision Record that documents a significant technical decision and its reasoning.

A commerce model where AI agents evaluate, compare, and purchase products on behalf of human decision-makers.

A software development methodology that delivers work in short iterations with continuous feedback and adaptation.

The instant when a user first understands the value of a product, often through experiencing a key feature or outcome.

An AI system that can plan, reason, and take autonomous actions to complete tasks. Goes beyond chat to actually do things.

The practice of optimizing content so that AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude cite and surface it in their responses.

Optimizing content to be discovered and cited by AI systems. The AI-era equivalent of SEO, but for LLMs instead of search engines.

Automatically notifying engineers when system metrics cross predefined thresholds indicating problems.

A program where selected community members represent and promote a product in exchange for perks, access, and recognition.

A meeting where a company presents its strategy and product to an industry analyst.

Engaging with industry analysts who influence enterprise buying decisions.

A high-net-worth individual who invests their personal money in early-stage startups in exchange for equity.

A contract where the customer commits to paying for a full year, usually in exchange for a discount. Locks in revenue for the vendor.

The annualized value of a single customer contract. Tells you about individual deal size, while ASP tells you the average across all deals.

The annualized value of your active subscription contracts. The heartbeat metric of every SaaS business.

A permissive open source license that includes an explicit patent grant and requires attribution for modifications.

Application programming interface: a defined way for software programs to communicate with each other.

A unique string that identifies and authenticates an application or user when making API requests.

Comprehensive documentation of every endpoint, parameter, and response in an API, serving as the definitive technical specification.

The US accounting standard for revenue recognition. Five steps that determine when and how you can count revenue as earned.

The percentage of quota a salesperson or team actually achieved. The scorecard for sales performance.

The process of verifying who a user is, typically through credentials like a password or token.

The process of determining what actions or resources an authenticated user is allowed to access.

The percentage of time a system is operational and accessible to users.

The average revenue per deal closed. Tells you whether you are selling to the right segment at the right price.

The server-side part of an application that handles data, logic, and infrastructure.

Links from other websites pointing to your site, which signal authority and trust to search engines.

The prioritized list of all planned work that a team has not yet started.

The ability of new software to work with older versions, data, or integrations without breaking them.

A lead qualification framework: Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline. The simplest way to determine if a prospect is worth pursuing.

A one-page competitive reference for sales reps. Covers a competitor's strengths, weaknesses, and how to win against them.

Business development rep / Sales development rep. The people who prospect, qualify leads, and book meetings for account executives.

A pre-release version of a product or feature made available to a limited audience for testing and feedback before general availability.

Spending disproportionate time debating trivial details while ignoring important decisions.

The total amount invoiced to customers in a period. Revenue plus the change in deferred revenue. A leading indicator of future recognized revenue.

A strategy of prioritizing speed over efficiency to rapidly capture market share, accepting losses to outrun competitors.

A regularly updated section of a website where a company publishes articles to attract, educate, and engage its target audience.

A deployment strategy using two identical environments to enable instant cutover and rollback.

A presentation prepared for board meetings that covers company performance, key metrics, strategic decisions, and upcoming plans.

A signed deal. The total value of a customer contract at the time they commit to buy. Not the same as revenue.

Bookings is what you sold (total contract value when signed). Revenue is what you earned (recognized over the delivery period). They are never the same number.

Building a company without external investment, funding growth entirely through revenue and personal savings.

The decision stage where prospects are ready to buy. Content and experiences that help them choose you and take action.

A growth pattern where individual practitioners adopt a product first, and organizational purchasing follows after usage spreads.

The percentage of sent emails that were not delivered. Hard bounces are permanent failures. Soft bounces are temporary.

A parallel version of the code that lets developers work on changes without affecting the main codebase.

The sum of every perception, association, and feeling people have about your company. What they say about you when you are not in the room.

The extent to which your target audience recognizes your brand. Measured as aided (prompted) or unaided (unprompted) recall.

The commercial value of customer perception. Strong brand equity means customers pay more, stay longer, and refer others.

The measurable increase in brand awareness, perception, or intent after a marketing campaign. How much a campaign moved the needle.

A code change that causes existing functionality or integrations to stop working.

The process of compiling source code into a runnable application or deployable artifact.

How fast a startup spends cash each month. Gross burn is total spending. Net burn subtracts revenue. The clock on your runway.

A source-available license that restricts commercial use for a set period before converting to a fully open source license.

The group of people at a prospect company who collectively decide whether to purchase. Enterprise deals involve 6-10 stakeholders on average.

Storing a copy of data in a faster location so repeated requests do not hit the slower original source.

California's privacy law that gives residents the right to know what personal data is collected, request deletion, and opt out of data sales.

An open invitation from a conference for potential speakers to submit talk proposals for consideration.

The specific action you want the visitor to take. 'Start free trial.' 'Request a demo.' 'Download the guide.' One page, one primary CTA.

Gradually rolling out a new version to a small subset of users before making it available to everyone.

A spreadsheet or tool that tracks who owns what percentage of a company, including founders, investors, and employees with stock options.

Spending on long-term assets that are depreciated over time. Servers, office buildouts, acquired patents. Rare in pure SaaS companies.

A detailed story of how a specific customer used your product to solve a real problem. The most persuasive content in B2B marketing.

The actual movement of cash in and out of your business. Different from revenue because it includes timing of payments, not just accrual accounting.

Defining an entirely new market category instead of competing in an existing one. High risk, high reward.

Content delivery network: a global network of servers that caches and serves content from locations close to users.

A credential that validates a developer's expertise with a product or technology, earned by passing an exam or completing a program.

An internal advocate at the prospect's company who wants your solution to win and actively sells on your behalf inside their organization.

A record of all notable changes to a product, published regularly to keep developers informed about new features, fixes, and breaking changes.

Selling products through third-party partners like resellers, distributors, or value-added resellers instead of directly to end customers.

The rate at which customers cancel or do not renew. Measured as logo churn (customers lost) or revenue churn (dollars lost).

Using usage data, support patterns, and engagement signals to identify customers likely to cancel before they actually do.

Continuous integration and continuous deployment: automating code testing and delivery to production.

Command-line interface: a text-based tool for interacting with software through typed commands.

The percentage of people who click your ad or link after seeing it. Clicks divided by impressions. Measures how compelling your message is.

The minimum period an employee must work before any equity vests, typically one year in startup vesting schedules.

On-demand computing infrastructure (servers, storage, networking) provided by a third party.

A joint marketing effort between two companies to promote a shared initiative, integration, or event to both audiences.

A sales collaboration where two companies work together to close a deal, leveraging each other's relationships and expertise.

A metric measuring what percentage of source code is executed by automated tests.

The practice of having other developers examine code changes before they are merged.

A short, focused snippet of code that demonstrates how to use a specific API endpoint, SDK method, or product feature.

An AI tool that helps developers write, review, and debug code. GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Windsurf are the leading examples.

Grouping users by when they signed up and tracking their behavior over time to identify trends and measure the impact of changes.

Tracking how a specific group of customers acquired at the same time retains and spends over subsequent months or years.

The percentage of revenue a salesperson earns for closing a deal. The variable component of their compensation.

A deal the sales rep is confident will close this period. The highest-confidence category in a sales forecast.

A go-to-market strategy where a community of users, advocates, and practitioners drives product awareness and adoption.

Systematic collection and analysis of information about competitors. What they do, how they sell, where they win, and where they are vulnerable.

How you differentiate your product from specific competitors. The answer to 'why should I choose you over them?'

A presentation at a developer conference where a speaker shares technical knowledge, experience, or insights with an audience.

A pricing structure where revenue scales directly with customer usage. Broader than usage-based pricing, it includes credits and commitments.

Lightweight, portable packages that bundle application code with all its dependencies.

A systematic review of all existing content to evaluate what to keep, update, consolidate, or remove.

The process of promoting and sharing content across channels to reach your target audience after publication.

Creating and distributing valuable content to attract, engage, and convert your target audience. Education as a marketing strategy.

A core topic area that forms the foundation of a content strategy, with multiple related pieces branching from it.

Adapting a single piece of content into multiple formats to reach different audiences across different channels.

The plan for creating, publishing, and governing content that achieves specific business goals for a defined audience.

The maximum amount of text an LLM can process in a single request. Measured in tokens. Bigger windows handle more information at once.

The conditions in a sales agreement: length, auto-renewal, termination rights, payment schedule, and SLA commitments.

Revenue minus the variable costs of serving that revenue. What each dollar of revenue contributes toward covering fixed costs and profit.

A legal agreement that contributors sign before submitting code to a project, granting the project certain rights over their contributions.

The percentage of people who take a desired action. Visitors who sign up. Leads who become customers. The measure of how well each stage of the funnel works.

A form of short-term debt that converts into equity at the next priced funding round, often used in early-stage fundraising.

An AI assistant embedded in a workflow to augment human work. Named after GitHub's product but now a generic pattern across industries.

Writing text that persuades people to take a specific action, like clicking a button, signing up, or buying a product.

The direct costs of delivering your product to customers. For SaaS: hosting, support, professional services, and third-party software costs.

The cost to acquire a customer or conversion through a specific marketing channel. The bottom-line efficiency metric for paid campaigns.

How much you pay each time someone clicks your ad. The basic unit of cost in pay-per-click advertising.

The cost per 1,000 ad impressions. The standard pricing unit for display advertising and brand awareness campaigns.

A virtual currency customers buy upfront and spend as they use your product. The bridge between subscriptions and pure usage-based pricing.

Selling a different product or add-on to an existing customer. Expanding the relationship horizontally, not vertically.

The total cost of sales and marketing divided by the number of new customers acquired in a period.

Software that manages all customer and prospect interactions. The system of record for sales pipeline, contacts, and deal data.

The team and practice of ensuring customers achieve their goals with your product. Owns retention, expansion, and advocacy.

Metrics tracking how many unique users engage with a product daily and monthly, used to measure engagement and stickiness.

Word-of-mouth sharing that happens in channels you cannot track: Slack groups, DMs, text messages, private communities, and in-person conversations.

A contract between a data controller and data processor that defines how personal data will be handled, required under GDPR.

The requirement that data be stored and processed within specific geographic boundaries, often mandated by local laws or regulations.

A structured system for storing, organizing, and retrieving data.

A cross-functional team that reviews and approves non-standard deal terms, pricing, and contract structures.

Cash collected for services not yet delivered. A liability on the balance sheet that converts to revenue as you fulfill the contract.

The marketing function that creates awareness and interest in your product. Fills the top and middle of the funnel with qualified prospects.

A live product demonstration tailored to the prospect's use case. Not a feature walkthrough. A story about their problem and your solution.

An external library or package that your project requires to function.

The process of releasing code to servers where users can access it.

The process of phasing out a feature, API, or product version with advance notice so users can migrate to alternatives.

A technical document that describes how a system or feature will be built before implementation begins.

Representing developer interests within a company while helping developers succeed with the company's products.

A role that combines engineering skills with communication ability to help developers succeed with a product.

A formal program that recognizes and empowers the most active and influential developers in a product's community.

A group of developers who use a product and connect with each other to share knowledge, solve problems, and provide feedback.

The network of tools, libraries, integrations, and community resources that surround a developer platform.

Programs that teach developers new skills and concepts, including courses, workshops, and learning paths related to a product or technology.

How easy, productive, and enjoyable it is for developers to use a product, from documentation to API design to error messages.

The path a developer takes from first hearing about a product to becoming a proficient, active user and advocate.

A metric measuring how likely developers are to recommend a product to peers, adapted from the standard Net Promoter Score.

The process of guiding a developer from first discovery through to productively using a product in their workflow.

A dedicated website that centralizes all developer resources: documentation, API reference, SDKs, sample code, and community links.

The practice of building relationships between a company and its developer community through advocacy, content, and support.

A structured questionnaire sent to developers to gather feedback on product experience, satisfaction, and industry trends.

A go-to-market strategy that targets developers as the primary audience, relying on them to adopt and champion the product within organizations.

A set of practices that combines software development and IT operations to shorten the delivery cycle.

What makes your product meaningfully different from alternatives. Not features. The reason a customer chooses you over everything else.

The reduction in ownership percentage that existing shareholders experience when new shares are issued in a funding round.

Selling products directly from the company to end customers without intermediary partners or resellers.

A reduction in the list price offered to close a deal. A margin concession that should always come with a customer concession.

A structured framework defining what discounts sales can offer and under what conditions. Prevents rogue discounting.

The first structured sales conversation where a rep qualifies the prospect by understanding their problem, timeline, and buying process.

Visual banner ads shown on websites, apps, and social platforms. Used primarily for brand awareness and retargeting.

The most widely used platform for building, running, and sharing containerized applications.

Written resources that explain how to use a product, including guides, tutorials, API references, and troubleshooting information.

A score predicting how well a website will rank in search results, based on its backlink profile and overall site quality.

When a customer moves to a lower-priced plan or reduces their usage. Revenue goes down but the customer stays.

An automated email sequence that sends pre-written messages on a schedule. The simplest form of marketing automation.

The investigation process investors conduct before finalizing an investment to verify a company's financials, legal standing, and claims.

Publicity and attention you did not pay for. Press coverage, social shares, word of mouth, and organic mentions.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. A proxy for operating cash flow that strips out accounting and financing effects.

The person with the authority and budget to approve the purchase. Not the user, not the evaluator, but the one who signs the check.

A plan for building and leveraging a network of partners, integrations, and developers that create compounding value around a platform.

Running code on servers located close to users around the world instead of in a single data center.

A schedule that plans what content will be published, when, and on which channels.

The percentage of sent emails that actually reach the recipient's inbox. The foundation of every email marketing program.

Numerical representations of text that capture semantic meaning. Two similar sentences produce similar numbers, enabling AI-powered search.

Providing the sales team with the content, training, and tools they need to sell effectively. Bridging the gap between marketing and revenue.

An automated test that simulates a real user interacting with the full application from start to finish.

A legal contract between a software publisher and the end user that specifies how the software may be used.

The depth and frequency with which users interact with a product, beyond just logging in.

Custom pricing for large organizations, typically requiring a sales conversation. The "Contact us" plan on your pricing page.

A large body of work that can be broken into smaller user stories, representing a significant feature or initiative.

Ownership in a company represented by shares of stock, which entitle the holder to a proportional share of the company's value.

The percentage of requests that fail compared to total requests, usually measured over a rolling time window.

Using conferences, meetups, and hosted events to generate awareness, build relationships, and create pipeline. In-person and virtual.

A design pattern where systems communicate by producing and consuming events instead of direct calls.

Additional revenue from existing customers through upsells, cross-sells, and increased usage. The engine of net-negative churn.

A legal doctrine that allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission for purposes like commentary, education, and research.

The percentage of users who discover and regularly use a specific product feature.

A separate branch in version control where a developer builds a new feature before merging it to main.

Configuration toggles that control which features are active in production without deploying new code.

Restricting specific features to paid plans. The mechanism that turns free users into paying customers.

A highlighted answer box at the top of Google search results that extracts and displays content from a web page.

The US federal program that standardizes security assessment and authorization for cloud services used by government agencies.

A system for continuously collecting, analyzing, and acting on user feedback to improve the product.

Sales conducted through in-person meetings, often involving travel to the customer's location for demos, negotiations, and relationship building.

Training an existing model on your specific data to improve its performance on your tasks. Customization without building from scratch.

An attribution model that gives 100% of the credit for a conversion to the first marketing interaction. Simple but incomplete.

One price for everything. No tiers, no usage limits, no per-seat charges. Simple but rare in SaaS.

A self-reinforcing business model where each component accelerates the others, creating compounding growth over time.

A prediction of how much revenue the sales team will close in a given period. The number the CEO gives to the board.

A large AI model trained on broad data that can be adapted for many tasks. The base layer companies like OpenAI and Anthropic build.

Time-limited access to a paid product. Users get full features for 7-30 days, then must pay or lose access.

A pricing model where the base product is free and revenue comes from paid upgrades. The dominant model in developer tools.

The average number of times each person in your audience sees your ad or content. Too low and they miss it. Too high and they tune it out.

The part of an application that users see and interact with directly.

Content that requires the visitor to provide contact information (usually an email) before they can access it.

The official release of a product or feature to all customers, indicating it is production-ready and fully supported.

The European Union regulation that governs how companies collect, store, and process personal data of EU residents.

A branching model with long-lived develop and release branches alongside feature branches.

A copyleft open source license that requires derivative works to also be distributed under the GPL.

A strategic document that outlines how a company will launch a product or enter a market, covering positioning, channels, pricing, and sales.

A query language for APIs that lets clients request exactly the data they need.

Total monthly cash expenditure before any revenue. Every dollar that leaves the company's bank account.

Revenue minus cost of goods sold, expressed as a percentage. For SaaS, this is revenue minus hosting, support, and delivery costs.

The percentage of revenue retained from existing customers before counting expansion. Measures pure customer stickiness.

A closed cycle where the output of one step becomes the input of the next, creating compounding growth without linear investment.

The specific combination of sales, marketing, and product strategies a company uses to acquire and grow customers.

Writing and publishing content on another website to reach their audience and earn a backlink to your own site.

A time-limited event where developers build projects using a product, competing for prizes and learning through hands-on experience.

When an AI model generates confident but factually incorrect output. It sounds right. It reads well. It is wrong.

The US federal law that sets standards for protecting sensitive patient health information from disclosure.

A composite metric that combines usage data, engagement signals, and support patterns to indicate whether a customer account is healthy or at risk.

Adding more servers to handle increased load, instead of upgrading existing servers.

A go-to-market approach that sells a general-purpose product across multiple industries without vertical specialization.

A description of the company (not person) most likely to buy, succeed, and expand with your product. Your best-fit customer.

The property where performing an operation multiple times produces the same result as performing it once.

The number of times your ad or content is displayed. Counts views, not people. One person seeing your ad three times is three impressions.

Marketing that attracts prospects to you through content, SEO, and value-first engagement. They come to you, not the other way around.

An unplanned event that disrupts a service or degrades it below its expected quality, requiring a coordinated response.

A company that builds and sells software products, often as a partner that integrates with or extends a larger platform.

Managing servers, networks, and cloud resources through code files instead of manual configuration.

The process of offering shares of a private company to the public for the first time on a stock exchange.

Sales conducted remotely through phone, email, and video calls rather than in-person meetings.

Content that starts from your product and shows developers how to use it, including tutorials, feature guides, and product documentation.

A connection between two software products that allows them to share data and work together.

An automated test that verifies multiple components or services work correctly together.

Legal rights that protect creations of the mind, including patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.

Signals that indicate a company is actively researching or planning to buy a solution in your category. Third-party buying signals.

Links between pages on the same website that help users navigate and help search engines understand site structure.

A regular email from a founder to investors sharing company progress, key metrics, challenges, and specific asks for help.

An international standard for information security management systems that provides a framework for managing and protecting sensitive data.

An Agile workflow method that visualizes work on a board and limits work in progress to improve flow and reduce bottlenecks.

The most important metrics a business tracks to evaluate whether it is achieving its strategic goals.

An open-source system for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

A sales strategy where you start with a small deal or team and grow revenue within the account over time through expansion.

A standalone web page designed for a single conversion goal. No navigation distractions. One page, one purpose, one CTA.

A neural network trained on massive text data to generate and understand language. The technology behind ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

An attribution model that gives 100% of the credit to the last marketing interaction before conversion. Biased toward bottom-of-funnel channels.

The time delay between a request being sent and a response being received.

A framework for categorizing product launches by impact level. Different tiers get different marketing investment and attention.

A person or company that has shown interest in your product. The starting point of every sales pipeline.

A series of automated communications that guide leads through the funnel over time. Building trust and intent until they are ready to buy.

Assigning numerical values to leads based on their fit and engagement to determine which ones are ready for sales follow-up.

A methodology for building businesses through rapid experimentation, validated learning, and iterative product development.

"Looks Good To Me" -- a code review approval indicating the reviewer is satisfied with the changes.

Marketing tailored to each stage of the customer journey: awareness, acquisition, onboarding, retention, expansion, and advocacy.

The total gross profit expected from a customer over the entire relationship. LTV determines how much you can spend to acquire them.

Automated analysis of source code to flag programming errors, bugs, and style violations.

A file published on websites that helps AI language models understand the site's content structure and key information.

Distributing incoming network traffic across multiple servers so no single server becomes a bottleneck.

Recording timestamped events from an application to help with debugging and auditing.

The percentage of customers (logos) you lose in a period. Counts customers, not dollars.

A specific, multi-word search phrase with lower volume but higher intent than broad keywords.

An ad targeting audience built by finding people who resemble your existing customers.

Lifetime value divided by customer acquisition cost. The fundamental unit economics equation for any subscription business.

Net new ARR divided by sales and marketing spend from the prior quarter. Measures how efficiently you convert marketing dollars into recurring revenue.

The plan for entering a new market segment, geography, or customer tier with an existing or adapted product.

A document that defines market needs, target segments, and competitive landscape to guide product development decisions.

Software that automates repetitive marketing tasks: email sequences, lead scoring, campaign management, and lead routing.

The stages a prospect moves through from first awareness to purchase. Awareness, consideration, decision. Wide at the top, narrow at the bottom.

A statistical approach to measuring the impact of each marketing channel on business outcomes. Uses aggregate data, not individual tracking.

A lead that marketing has scored and deemed ready for sales follow-up based on fit and engagement signals.

A storefront where developers and users discover and install third-party integrations, extensions, or apps built for a platform.

The umbrella contract between a vendor and customer that governs the overall relationship, terms, and legal obligations.

A sales qualification framework: Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion.

A local, informal gathering of developers to learn, network, and discuss technical topics.

Combining code changes from one branch into another, integrating the work.

A system that stores and delivers messages between services, allowing asynchronous communication.

The specific words you use to communicate your positioning to different audiences. Positioning is singular. Messaging multiplies.

Tracking and measuring customer usage in real time for billing purposes. The plumbing that makes usage-based pricing work.

An architecture where an application is built as a collection of small, independent services.

The consideration stage where prospects evaluate solutions. Content that helps them understand whether your product fits their needs.

A scripted, versioned change to a database schema that evolves the data structure over time.

The simplest version of a product that can be released to test a hypothesis and learn from real user feedback.

A permissive open source license that allows anyone to use, modify, and distribute the software with minimal restrictions.

An open protocol that standardizes how AI applications connect to external data sources and tools.

Continuously checking system health using metrics, dashboards, and alerts to detect problems.

A single, unified application where all code runs in one process and deploys as one unit.

A single repository that contains multiple projects, packages, or services managed together.

A subscription that renews every month with no long-term obligation. Maximum flexibility for the customer, maximum churn risk for the vendor.

The monthly value of active subscription contracts. ARR divided by 12, or the sum of all monthly subscription fees.

Marketing qualified account: a company-level signal indicating buying intent across multiple contacts.

An attribution model that distributes credit across multiple marketing touchpoints in the buyer journey. More accurate but more complex.

The overarching story a company tells about the market, the problem, and its role in solving it. Bigger than a pitch. It is a worldview.

Monthly cash spending minus monthly revenue. The actual rate at which your bank account is shrinking. The number that determines runway.

The percentage of revenue retained from existing customers after expansion, contraction, and churn. Above 100% means you grow without new sales.

A customer loyalty metric based on one question: how likely are you to recommend us? Score ranges from -100 to +100.

Gross revenue minus refunds, credits, and discounts. What your business actually keeps after adjustments.

A dynamic where a product becomes more valuable as more people use it, creating a self-reinforcing growth advantage.

A recurring email to subscribers with curated content, insights, or updates. The most valuable owned audience channel in B2B marketing.

A legal contract that prevents one or both parties from sharing confidential information disclosed during a business relationship.

The single metric that best captures the core value a product delivers to its customers.

An open standard that lets users grant third-party apps limited access to their accounts without sharing passwords.

Preparing responses to common prospect concerns: pricing, competition, risk, and implementation. Turning 'no' into 'tell me more.'

A goal-setting framework that pairs ambitious objectives with measurable key results to track progress.

The ability to understand a system's internal state by examining its outputs: logs, metrics, and traces.

Regularly scheduled sessions where developers can ask questions and get live help from the product team or DevRel.

A rotation where engineers are responsible for responding to production alerts and incidents outside business hours.

Software or infrastructure that runs on a company's own servers in their own facilities.

The total compensation a salesperson earns if they hit 100% of quota. Base salary plus full variable commission.

The process of guiding new users from signup to their first experience of product value.

A single-page document summarizing a product, feature, or initiative for quick consumption.

The percentage of delivered emails that recipients opened. A proxy for subject line effectiveness and sender trust.

Software whose source code is publicly available for anyone to view, use, modify, and distribute.

The practice of tracking and fulfilling the legal obligations of all open source software used in a product.

The day-to-day costs of running your business. Salaries, rent, marketing, cloud hosting. Everything that is not a capital expenditure.

Revenue minus all operating expenses, expressed as a percentage. Shows how much profit your core business generates before interest and taxes.

Unpaid social media content shared through a company's or individual's profiles to build audience and engagement naturally.

Marketing and sales that reaches out to prospects directly. Cold calls, cold emails, and targeted ads aimed at specific accounts.

Content that addresses topics your audience cares about broadly, attracting them before they know they need your specific product.

Charges that kick in when a customer exceeds their plan's included usage limits. The bill that surprises people.

Marketing channels you control: your website, blog, email list, documentation, and social accounts. Content you create and distribute yourself.

Percentile metrics showing the latency experienced by 50%, 95%, or 99% of requests.

A tool that automates installing, updating, and removing software dependencies for a project.

How you bundle features into plans and tiers. Which features go in which plan at which price. The architecture of your pricing page.

Any marketing channel where you pay for visibility: search ads, social ads, display ads, sponsorships, and paid content placements.

Advertising on social media platforms to reach targeted audiences beyond your organic following.

A go-to-market strategy where partnerships with other companies drive customer acquisition and revenue through co-selling and integrations.

The number of months it takes to recoup the cost of acquiring a customer. Shorter is better for cash flow.

A security standard for any organization that handles credit card data, requiring specific controls to protect cardholder information.

A semi-fictional representation of the individual buyer or user. Describes their role, goals, pain points, and decision-making process.

A long, comprehensive page that covers a broad topic and serves as the hub for a topic cluster.

The total dollar value of deals your sales team is actively working. The most important leading indicator in any sales organization.

The ratio of total pipeline value to quota. Tells you whether you have enough opportunities to hit your number.

How fast deals move through the pipeline, measured by the dollar value of revenue your pipeline generates per day.

A presentation that a startup uses to tell its story to investors, typically 10-15 slides covering the problem, solution, market, and team.

A fundamental change in a startup's product, target market, or business model based on learnings from the current approach.

A software product that other developers build upon, extending its capabilities through APIs, integrations, and custom applications.

An audio series distributed via RSS where companies share expertise, interview guests, and build audience relationships.

How you define what your product is, who it is for, and why it is different from alternatives. The foundation of every marketing decision.

The value of a company immediately after receiving investment, calculated as pre-money valuation plus the investment amount.

A written analysis of an incident: what happened, why, and what the team will do to prevent it from recurring.

Public relations: managing how a company is perceived through media and public communication.

The value of a company before receiving investment in a funding round.

The earliest stage of startup funding, typically $100K-$1M from angels or small funds to build the initial prototype.

A formal written announcement distributed to media outlets about company news.

Publishing your prices publicly on your website instead of hiding them behind "Contact us." A trust signal for developers.

A structured method for deciding which features or initiatives to work on first based on impact, effort, and strategic alignment.

A legal document that explains what personal data a company collects, how it uses that data, and how it protects it.

The department responsible for negotiating vendor contracts, terms, and pricing. The last stop before a signed deal.

Tools and practices for tracking how users interact with a product to inform decisions about features, onboarding, and growth.

A coordinated go-to-market effort to announce and drive adoption of a new product or feature.

A document that defines what a product or feature should do, who it serves, and how success will be measured.

A go-to-market strategy where the product itself drives acquisition, conversion, and expansion. Users try before they buy.

A go-to-market strategy where the product itself drives acquisition, conversion, and expansion through self-serve usage.

A sales approach where product usage data identifies and qualifies sales opportunities from self-serve users.

The point where a product satisfies strong market demand, evidenced by organic growth and high user retention.

The live environment where real users interact with the application.

Writing instructions that get the best output from an AI model. The difference between a useless response and a useful one.

A limited trial where the prospect tests your product in their environment to prove it works for their specific use case.

A structured evaluation that proves not just that the product works, but that it delivers measurable business value.

Original data and findings generated by a company through surveys, product usage analysis, or experiments that no one else has.

A proposal to merge code changes from one branch into another, with review.

Quality assurance: the practice of testing software to find bugs before users do.

A structured meeting between the vendor and customer to review value delivered, align on goals, and plan for the next quarter.

A concise, step-by-step guide that gets a developer from zero to a working implementation in the shortest time possible.

The revenue target assigned to a salesperson for a specific period. The number they must hit to earn full commission.

Restricting how many requests a client can make to an API within a time window to prevent abuse and overload.

The number of unique people who saw your content or ad. Unlike impressions, reach counts people, not views.

Restructuring existing code without changing its external behavior to improve readability and maintainability.

A document accompanying a software release that describes new features, improvements, bug fixes, and known issues.

The total value of contracted revenue not yet recognized. Includes deferred revenue plus unbilled contracted amounts. A measure of future revenue visibility.

When an existing customer extends their contract for another term. The foundation of recurring revenue.

A repository: the central location where a project's source code and version history are stored.

A third-party company that purchases a product and sells it to end customers, often adding services or bundling it with other products.

Representational State Transfer: an architectural style for building web APIs using HTTP methods.

A company's promise to give an employee shares of stock after vesting conditions are met, with no purchase required.

Showing ads to people who previously visited your website or engaged with your content. Following up with warm audiences.

A chart showing what percentage of users continue using a product over time, revealing whether the product has lasting value.

Fetching relevant data and feeding it to an LLM so the response is grounded in real, current information instead of training data alone.

A team meeting at the end of a sprint or project where members discuss what went well, what went wrong, and what to improve.

Revenue generated per dollar spent on advertising. A ROAS of 5:1 means every $1 in ad spend generated $5 in revenue.

The profit or value generated relative to the cost of an investment. The universal metric for whether something was worth doing.

Income recognized according to accounting rules. What you actually earned, not what you sold or contracted.

The percentage of recurring revenue lost from cancellations and downgrades in a period. Measures the dollar impact of attrition.

A valuation method that expresses a company's worth as a multiple of its annual revenue, commonly used for SaaS companies.

The accounting rules for when you can count revenue as earned. Not when you sign the deal or collect the cash, but when you deliver the service.

A Request for Comments document that proposes a technical change and invites structured feedback from the team.

A prioritization framework that scores initiatives by Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort to produce a comparable priority score.

A strategic plan that outlines upcoming product features, priorities, and timelines to align the team and communicate direction.

Reverting a deployment to a previous known-good version when the new version causes problems.

Updating instances of an application one at a time (or in batches) so the service stays available.

A systematic process for identifying the underlying cause of an incident rather than just fixing the symptoms.

Revenue growth rate plus profit margin should equal 40 or higher. A shorthand for whether a SaaS company balances growth and profitability.

A documented set of step-by-step procedures for handling specific operational tasks or incidents.

How many months a startup can operate before running out of cash. Cash in the bank divided by monthly net burn.

New MRR plus expansion MRR divided by churned MRR plus contraction MRR. Measures whether your growth outpaces your losses.

The average time from first contact with a prospect to closed-won deal. Longer for enterprise, shorter for self-serve.

How much revenue you generate per dollar spent on sales and marketing. A measure of whether your go-to-market engine is working.

The technical counterpart to the account executive. Runs demos, answers technical questions, and proves the product works.

A lead that a salesperson has vetted and confirmed has real buying intent, budget, and authority.

A buying model where customers start self-serve but get human help for larger deals. The middle ground between PLG and traditional sales.

A hybrid go-to-market approach where a self-serve product is supplemented by sales engagement for larger or more complex deals.

A go-to-market strategy where the sales team drives customer acquisition through outbound prospecting, demos, and direct engagement.

A complete, working application that demonstrates how to use a product or API for a specific use case.

An interactive environment where developers can experiment with a product's APIs or features without affecting production data.

The structure and organization of a database, defining tables, columns, types, and relationships.

Structured data added to web pages that helps search engines understand the content and display rich results.

The gradual, uncontrolled expansion of a project's requirements beyond the original plan.

An Agile framework that organizes work into fixed-length sprints with defined roles, ceremonies, and artifacts.

Software development kit: a set of tools and libraries for building with a specific platform or API.

Paying for ads that appear in search engine results. Google Ads is the primary platform. Instant visibility but stops when you stop paying.

The practice of improving your website to rank higher in search results. The longest-lasting, highest-ROI demand generation channel.

The page displayed by a search engine in response to a query, containing organic results, ads, and rich features.

Charging per user who has access to the product. Simple to understand, easy to predict, but increasingly challenged by AI.

The first significant round of funding for a startup, typically raising $1-5M to validate the product and find initial customers.

A group of customers or prospects that share common characteristics. How you divide the market into targetable groups.

A buying experience where customers sign up, configure, and pay without talking to a salesperson. Credit card in, product out.

A versioning scheme using MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH numbers to communicate the type of changes in each release.

A score assigned to your email domain and IP address by email providers. Determines whether your emails reach the inbox or spam folder.

The first major institutional funding round, typically $5-20M, raised after a startup demonstrates product-market fit and initial traction.

A growth-stage funding round, typically $20-60M, raised to scale a proven business model across markets and customer segments.

Late-stage funding rounds that finance category dominance, acquisitions, international expansion, or preparation for IPO.

A source-available license that requires anyone offering the software as a service to open source their entire stack.

A cloud model where the provider manages all infrastructure and you only pay for actual execution time.

The portion of TAM that your product can actually serve given your current capabilities, geography, and distribution.

The realistic share of SAM you can capture in a defined period. Your actual revenue target, grounded in competitive reality.

A classification system (SEV-1 through SEV-4) that ranks incidents by impact and urgency to determine response priority.

The percentage of total market conversation that mentions your brand compared to competitors. How much of the conversation you own.

Slang for deploying code to production. An expression of confidence that the code is ready for users.

A simple investment instrument created by Y Combinator that converts to equity at the next priced funding round.

Service level agreement: a contractual commitment to specific performance and availability levels.

Service level indicator: a specific metric used to measure the reliability of a service, like latency or error rate.

Service level objective: an internal reliability target for a service, like 99.9% availability or p99 latency under 200ms.

An auditing standard that evaluates whether a company's systems meet trust service criteria for security, availability, and confidentiality.

Using social media platforms to promote content, engage audiences, and build brand awareness.

Evidence that other companies trust and use your product. Logos, testimonials, ratings, and customer counts that reduce buyer risk.

A sales methodology that focuses on understanding the buyer's problem first, then positioning the product as the solution to that specific problem.

A short-term bonus paid to salespeople for specific behaviors or outcomes. A tactical incentive on top of standard commission.

Paying to associate your brand with an event, publication, or community. Visibility through association rather than direct advertising.

A fixed time period (usually 1-2 weeks) in which a team commits to completing specific work.

A meeting where the team selects which work to complete in the upcoming sprint and plans how to accomplish it.

Site Reliability Engineering: an engineering discipline focused on keeping systems running reliably at scale.

Single sign-on: one login that grants access to multiple applications without signing in separately to each.

A pre-production environment that mirrors production for testing before release.

EU-approved contract templates that allow the lawful transfer of personal data from the EU to countries without equivalent data protection laws.

A brief daily team meeting where each member shares progress, plans, and blockers.

A document specifying what the vendor will deliver, the timeline, pricing, and acceptance criteria for a specific engagement.

How frequently users return to a product, typically measured as the DAU/MAU ratio.

The right to purchase company shares at a fixed price (the strike price), typically granted to employees as part of compensation.

A unit of measure for estimating the relative effort required to complete a work item in agile development.

Machine-readable information added to web pages that helps search engines and AI systems understand page content.

Branded merchandise given away at events and to customers. T-shirts, stickers, socks, and the occasional rubber duck.

Republishing your content on third-party platforms to reach a wider audience while keeping the original on your site.

The accumulated cost of shortcuts and deferred work in a codebase that slows future development.

The point in the sales process where the prospect's technical team confirms your product meets their requirements.

Writing that explains complex technical concepts clearly, including documentation, tutorials, API references, and guides.

A company whose product integrates with yours, creating mutual value through a shared technical connection.

A non-binding document outlining the key terms of an investment, including valuation, board seats, and investor rights.

The legal contract between a software provider and its users that governs how the product may be used.

A direct quote from a customer endorsing your product. Best when specific, attributed to a real person, and including measurable results.

Content that establishes a person or company as an authority in their field by sharing original insights and perspectives.

The number of operations a system can process in a given time period.

Offering multiple pricing plans at different price points, each with more features or higher limits. The classic Good/Better/Best model.

The time it takes a developer to go from first visiting your site to getting their first working result with your product.

The amount of time it takes a new user to experience the core value of a product after signing up.

The smallest unit of text an LLM processes. Roughly 4 characters or 3/4 of a word. Tokens determine cost and context limits.

The awareness stage of the marketing funnel. Content and campaigns that introduce your brand to people who do not know you yet.

A sales approach that targets executive decision-makers first, who then mandate adoption across the organization.

A group of interlinked content pieces organized around a central pillar page, covering a topic from multiple angles.

The total revenue opportunity if you captured 100% of the market. The theoretical ceiling, not a realistic target.

The total dollar value of a contract over its entire term, including subscription fees, services, and one-time charges.

Following a request's path through distributed services to understand performance and find failures.

A branching strategy where developers commit directly to main (trunk) or use very short-lived branches.

A step-by-step guide that teaches a developer how to accomplish a specific task or build a specific project using a product.

Content available without requiring contact information. Maximizes reach and trust at the cost of direct lead capture.

A privately held startup valued at $1 billion or more.

The revenue and cost associated with a single customer. Profitable unit economics mean each customer generates more revenue than they cost to acquire and serve.

An automated test that verifies a small, isolated piece of code behaves correctly.

The percentage of email recipients who opt out after receiving a message. A measure of audience satisfaction and content relevance.

Selling a customer a higher-tier plan or more expensive version of what they already buy. Moving them up, not out.

Uptime is when a service is working and available to users. Downtime is when it is not.

Observing real users as they attempt tasks in your product to identify confusion, friction, and areas for improvement.

Charging customers based on how much they consume. Pay for what you use. The model behind Snowflake, Twilio, and AWS.

The practice of studying users through interviews, observation, and data analysis to understand their needs and behaviors.

A short, plain-language description of a feature from the perspective of the user who wants it.

The second major version of a product or feature, typically a significant overhaul that incorporates learnings from V1.

The estimated worth of a company, determined during a funding round by negotiation between founders and investors.

A clear statement of the specific benefit your product delivers to a specific customer. The reason someone buys.

A sales methodology that quantifies the economic impact of a product to justify the purchase based on measurable ROI.

Setting prices based on the value your product delivers to customers, not on your costs or competitors' prices.

A database optimized for storing and searching embeddings. The backbone of every RAG pipeline and semantic search system.

The amount of work a team completes per sprint, measured in story points or similar units.

A form of private equity financing where firms invest fund money in high-growth startups in exchange for equity.

The practice of assigning unique version numbers to software releases to track changes over time.

Upgrading an existing server with more CPU, RAM, or storage instead of adding more servers.

A go-to-market approach that focuses on specific industries, tailoring the product, messaging, and sales process for each vertical.

The process by which an employee earns their equity over time, typically over four years with a one-year cliff.

Using video content to promote products, educate audiences, and build brand awareness across platforms like YouTube and social media.

The number of new users each existing user generates, measuring how effectively a product spreads through word of mouth and referrals.

An HTTP callback that sends data to your application automatically when an event occurs in another system.

An online presentation or workshop that educates prospects and generates leads. A mid-funnel workhorse when done right.

The percentage of pipeline that converts to closed deals. If you have $1M in pipeline and close $250k, your win rate is 25%.

Structured interviews with prospects who chose you (wins) and those who did not (losses) to understand why. The most honest feedback you will ever get.

A hands-on educational session where developers build something guided by an instructor, learning by doing.

A series of small, seemingly unrelated tasks that must be completed before the original task can begin.

A search where the user gets their answer directly on the results page without clicking through to any website.