One word for every part of the business

The terms a company runs on, each defined once. Your team, your fractionals and your agents read the same definition, so a decision means the same thing to everyone who acts on it.

A

  • A/B testing

    A/B testing is a method of showing two versions of one thing, such as an email subject line or a page headline, to separate random halves of an audience and judging which one wins on a single agreed number.

  • Above the fold

    Above the fold is the part of a web page visible the moment it loads, before any scrolling. It is the first impression, and it has to say what the page offers and what to do next.

  • Account-based marketing

    Account-based marketing, or ABM, focuses marketing and sales effort on a chosen list of target companies instead of a broad audience. It suits B2B businesses that win a small number of large deals.

  • Accountability Chart

    An accountability chart is a one-page map of the seats a company needs, the outcomes each seat owns and the one person who holds it. It separates the work from the people doing it.

  • Accounts Receivable

    Accounts receivable is the money customers owe a business for goods or services already delivered but not yet paid for. It appears on the balance sheet as an asset until the cash arrives.

  • Acquihire

    An acquihire is an acquisition made mainly to bring on the target company's team, not to buy its product or revenue. The product is often shut down, and the price reflects the people hired.

  • Activation rate

    Activation rate is the share of new leads or sign-ups who take a defined step that shows real interest or fit, such as a pricing page visit or first use of a key feature, divided by all new ones.

  • Agent evals

    Agent evals are tests that score whether an AI agent's outputs are correct, by comparing them with known-good answers or real outcomes, instead of trusting that they look right.

  • Agent skill

    An agent skill is a packaged set of instructions, and sometimes scripts, that an AI agent loads only when a task matches it. It teaches an agent a company's own way of doing a job once.

  • Agentic Operations

    Agentic operations means running parts of a company with AI agents that take real actions, such as pulling data, drafting outputs and updating records, instead of only answering questions.

  • Agentic org chart

    An agentic org chart is a company map in which AI agents, not only people, hold defined operational seats, such as first-line support or lead research, while people own the judgement calls and oversee the agents.

  • Agentic workflow

    An agentic workflow is a process in which an AI agent decides its own steps to reach a goal, checking results and adjusting as it goes, instead of following one fixed script.

  • Aha Moment

    The aha moment is the point in a new user's first experience where they see for themselves the value a product delivers. It is the experience that turns a curious sign-up into a likely long-term user.

  • AI Citation

    An AI citation is a link or footnote in which an AI answer engine names your page as the source for something it tells a user, shown beside the generated answer.

  • AI coding agent

    An AI coding agent is an AI model that works inside a codebase by itself, reading files, running commands and editing code across a project to finish a task, instead of only suggesting the next line.

  • AI copilot

    An AI copilot is an AI tool that works alongside a person, suggesting, drafting or checking while the person stays in control and makes the final call. It differs from an autonomous agent, which carries out the work on its own.

  • AI harness

    In AI work, a "harness" is everything built around a model, its instructions, tools, memory and checks, that lets it do a real job reliably instead of only answering in a chat window.

  • AI Note-Taker

    An AI note-taker is a tool that joins a video call, records and transcribes it, then writes a summary and a list of action items without anyone typing.

  • AI Overview

    An AI Overview is the AI-generated summary Google shows at the top of many search results, answering the question directly and linking a few sources above the ordinary results.

  • AI SDR

    An AI SDR is software that does the work of a sales development representative: it finds prospects, writes personalised outreach, follows up and tries to book meetings for a person to take.

  • AIDA

    AIDA is a four-stage model of persuasion: a message must win attention, build interest, create desire and then ask for action, in that order.

  • Annual Contract Value (ACV)

    Annual contract value (ACV) is the average yearly revenue a single customer contract brings in, found by dividing the total value of the contract by the number of years it runs.

  • Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

    Annual recurring revenue (ARR) is the yearly value of the subscriptions and other contracts that repeat, a snapshot of the revenue a business can expect over the next twelve months if nothing changes.

  • Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)

    Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), also called Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), is the practice of making content easy for AI tools to find, trust and cite when they compose an answer, instead of only ranking a link in a list.

  • Answer-First Content

    Answer-first content opens with the direct answer to the reader's question in its first lines, then adds the reasoning, detail and evidence underneath instead of building up to the point.

  • API

    An API, or application programming interface, is a defined way for one piece of software to ask another to do something or hand over data, so tools can work together without a person copying between screens.

  • API key

    An API key is a secret string of characters that identifies an app to an online service and proves it is allowed to use it. Whoever holds the key can act as that app, so it must be guarded like a password.

  • Architecture decision record

    An architecture decision record, or ADR, is a short written note capturing one technical decision, why it was made and which options were rejected, so that later work does not unknowingly undo it.

  • ARR multiple

    An ARR multiple is the number that a business's annual recurring revenue (ARR) is multiplied by to estimate what it is worth. ARR of 2 million euros at a multiple of 4 gives a value of 8 million euros.

  • Async

    Async, short for asynchronous, is a way of working where people send information and reply in their own time instead of needing to be online together. It swaps many meetings for clear written messages, recordings and documents.

  • Attribution model

    An attribution model is the rule that decides which marketing touchpoints get credit for a sale, out of everything a buyer saw and did before purchasing. Different rules give different answers from the same data.

  • Attribution window

    An attribution window is the period after someone sees or clicks an ad during which a later purchase or sign-up is still credited to it. A seven-day click window credits a sale made eight days later to nobody.

  • Audit trail

    An audit trail is a permanent, time-ordered record of who or what did what, when and to which item, kept so it cannot be quietly changed. It supports trust in agent actions, compliance checks and decision logs.

  • Authentication

    Authentication is the process of proving who a user is, usually with a password, a code sent to a phone or a sign-in through another account. It answers the question of identity, not of what the person may do.

  • Authorisation

    Authorisation is deciding what a verified user is allowed to see or do, such as who may view invoices, edit a deal or delete an account. It comes after authentication, which only confirms who the person is.

  • Autonomous agent

    An autonomous agent is an AI system that pursues a goal across many steps on its own, choosing actions and using tools without a person approving each move. It stops when it finishes or gets stuck.

  • Average deal size

    Average deal size is the mean revenue per closed deal, found by dividing the total revenue from deals won in a period by the number of deals won. It sets how many deals a revenue target needs.

  • Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)

    Average revenue per user, or ARPU, is the revenue earned in a period divided by the number of active users or customers in that period, usually measured monthly. It shows what a typical customer is worth.

  • Avg. Unit price

    Average unit price is the average amount a business earns per unit sold, found by dividing total revenue by the number of units or customers sold. It reflects what customers actually paid, after discounts and mix.

B

  • B2B

    B2B, or business to business, describes a company that sells its products or services to other companies rather than to individual consumers. It shapes the sales cycle, the price and who counts as the buyer.

  • Back-office Automation

    Back-office automation is using software to do the repetitive internal admin that keeps a company running, such as invoicing, bank reconciliation, onboarding and expense handling, instead of having people do it by hand.

  • Backend

    The backend is the hidden part of a product that stores data, checks who is allowed to do what and runs the business logic. It runs on servers, not on the visitor's device, and answers requests from the frontend.

  • Backlinks

    A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Search engines treat a link from a respected, relevant site as a vote of confidence in the page it points to, which helps that page rank.

  • BANT

    BANT is a four-point sales qualification check, covering budget, authority, need and timing, used to decide whether a lead deserves serious selling time before a deal is pursued.

  • BANT vs MEDDIC

    BANT vs MEDDIC is the choice between two sales qualification checklists: BANT, four questions for short, simple deals, and MEDDIC, six areas for long, high-value deals with several people involved in the decision.

  • Battle card

    A battle card is a one-page reference that shows a salesperson how your product compares with one named competitor, which objections to expect and the exact words to answer them with.

  • Billings

    Billings is the total value of the invoices a business sends to customers in a period, whether or not those customers have paid yet and whether or not the work has been delivered.

  • Booking rate

    Booking rate is the share of qualified leads who go on to book a sales meeting, found by dividing meetings booked by qualified leads. It shows how many interested people become an actual conversation.

  • Bootstrapping

    Bootstrapping means funding and growing a business from its own revenue and the founder's savings, with no outside investors. The name comes from the saying about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.

  • Bottleneck

    A bottleneck is the single step in a process that limits total output, however fast every other step runs. It is also called the constraint, because it sets the speed of the whole system.

  • Bottleneck Resource

    A bottleneck resource is the specific person, tool or slice of capacity whose limited availability sets the ceiling on how much the whole operation can produce, such as a founder's hours or one specialist's time.

  • Bottom-Up Adoption

    Bottom-up adoption is when individual users or small teams start using a product on their own, and usage spreads inside a company until it is formalised and paid for. The decision to buy comes after the use, not before.

  • Bounce rate

    Bounce rate is the share of visits that end without meaningful engagement on the page. Depending on the tool, that means a single-page visit, or a visit that was short and led to no second click or action.

  • Braindump

    A braindump is the act of getting everything in your head, such as tasks, ideas and worries, onto a page or screen in one sitting, before sorting any of it.

  • Branch

    A branch is a separate line of work copied from the main code, where a person or an AI agent can try a change without touching the live version until the work is reviewed and merged.

  • Break-Even Point

    The break-even point is the level of sales at which revenue exactly covers total costs, leaving neither profit nor loss. Every sale beyond it adds profit.

  • Bridge round

    A bridge round is a small, short-term raise that carries a company from one funding round to the next, or to a milestone that earns a better valuation. It buys a few more months of cash.

  • Build in public

    Building in public means sharing a product's progress, numbers, decisions and setbacks openly while the work is still happening, usually through social posts, a newsletter or a public dashboard.

  • Burn Multiple

    The burn multiple is the net cash a business burns in a period divided by the net new annual recurring revenue it adds in the same period. It shows how much cash is spent to buy each unit of growth.

  • Burn Rate

    Burn rate is the amount of cash a business loses each month when spending runs ahead of income. Gross burn is all the cash going out, and net burn is cash out minus cash in.

  • Buyer persona

    A buyer persona is a short, research-based profile of a typical person who buys or influences a purchase: their role, what they are measured on, what worries them and how they decide.

C

  • CAC Payback Period

    CAC payback period is the number of months of gross profit a new customer takes to repay what it cost to win them. A shorter payback returns cash sooner, ready to be spent on the next customer.

  • Cache

    A cache is a stored copy of something, kept so it can be reused quickly instead of being fetched or calculated again. Caches make sites fast, and they explain why a change sometimes does not show up straight away.

  • Cadence

    A cadence is a fixed, repeating rhythm for an activity, such as a weekly numbers review, a monthly close or a series of follow-up emails, so it happens on schedule instead of when someone remembers.

  • Call-to-Action (CTA)

    A call to action, or CTA, is the button, link or line of copy that tells a visitor the one thing to do next, such as booking a call, starting a trial or downloading a guide.

  • Cap table

    A cap table, or capitalisation table, is the record of who owns what in a company: founders, investors and anyone holding options or convertible instruments, with their share and percentage.

  • Capacity Planning

    Capacity planning is working out in advance how much work a team can deliver with the people, hours and tools it actually has, then checking new commitments against that limit before saying yes.

  • Cashflow

    Cashflow is the movement of money into and out of a business over a period, counted when cash actually lands in or leaves the bank, not when a sale or cost is recorded.

  • CDN

    A CDN, or content delivery network, is a worldwide group of servers that keep copies of a site's files and serve each visitor from the nearest one. It makes pages load faster and absorbs traffic spikes.

  • Champion

    A champion is a person inside a prospect's company who wants your solution to win, has real influence there and argues for it in meetings you are not invited to.

  • Churn rate

    Churn rate is the percentage of customers who cancel or stop paying during a period, found by dividing customers lost by customers at the start. It is the opposite of retention.

  • CI/CD

    CI/CD, short for continuous integration and continuous delivery, is an automated pipeline that tests every code change and then ships the passing ones to production, so nobody has to run those steps by hand.

  • Click-through rate (CTR)

    Click-through rate, or CTR, is the share of people who saw an ad, email, search result or link and clicked it, calculated as clicks divided by the number who saw it.

  • Closing techniques

    Closing techniques are the specific moves a salesperson uses at the end of a deal to take a prospect from still considering to a signed agreement, such as summarising the case or agreeing the next step.

  • Code review

    Code review is the check a code change goes through before it is merged: does it work, does it fit the existing patterns, and does it add bugs, security gaps or duplicated logic.

  • Cohort analysis

    Cohort analysis groups customers by a shared starting point, usually the month they signed up, and compares how each group behaves over time, so changes in retention or revenue can be traced to a cause.

  • Cohort Retention Curve

    A cohort retention curve plots what share of a group of customers who joined together are still active or paying, month by month since they started, so the shape shows when and how fast customers leave.

  • Cold email

    Cold email is targeted, researched outreach by email to someone who never asked to hear from you, sent to start a relevant conversation rather than to broadcast an offer.

  • Command line interface

    A command line interface, or CLI, is a program you control by typing text commands instead of clicking buttons. Most AI coding agents, hosting services and developer tools offer one, because typed commands are easy to repeat and automate.

  • Commit

    A commit is a saved checkpoint in version control: a snapshot of the project's files at one moment, with a short message describing what changed and why.

  • Committed Monthly Recurring Revenue (CMRR)

    Committed monthly recurring revenue, or CMRR, is the monthly recurring revenue a business has contractually secured, including signed deals that have not started billing yet and excluding customers who have given notice.

  • Community-led growth

    Community-led growth is a way of growing a business where a group of customers, users or peers who talk to each other become the main source of awareness, trust, support and referrals.

  • Competitive advantage

    A competitive advantage is something a business does better or differently that rivals find slow, expensive or impossible to copy, which lets it win customers or protect its margin over time.

  • Compound growth rate

    Compound growth rate is the steady rate at which a metric would have to grow each period to get from its starting value to its end value, with each period building on the last.

  • Confidence interval

    A confidence interval is a range of values around a measured result, such as a two-point lift in sign-ups, showing how far the true figure could sit from what the sample suggests. A narrow range means a firm estimate and a wide one means a shaky one.

  • Contact management

    Contact management is the practice of keeping one clean record for every person a business deals with, holding their details, role, company and full history of conversations, so anyone on the team can see the context before reaching out.

  • Content calendar

    A content calendar is a shared schedule of every planned piece of content, with its topic, format, channel, owner and publish date, so a team publishes steadily and in time for the buyers it is written for.

  • Content marketing

    Content marketing is attracting buyers by publishing useful material, such as articles, guides, videos and tools, instead of interrupting them with ads. It is the base that SEO, thought leadership and inbound marketing are built on.

  • Content pillar

    A content pillar is a broad theme a business commits to covering in depth, usually with one cornerstone page and many narrower articles that link back to it, so all the content builds one clear area of authority.

  • Content upgrade

    A content upgrade is a bonus resource, such as a checklist or template, offered inside one specific article in exchange for an email address, matched to the exact problem the reader is already trying to solve.

  • Context engineering

    Context engineering is the practice of deciding exactly what information an AI model sees for a task, including instructions, reference material, memory and tools, so its output rests on the right facts instead of guesses.

  • Context window

    A context window is the limit on how much text an AI model can take in and produce in one go, counted in tokens. Anything beyond it is cut off or forgotten, so the model behaves as if it never saw it.

  • Contribution Margin

    Contribution margin is what is left from the price of a sale after subtracting the variable costs that sale causes, such as delivery, payment fees and commission. It is what each sale contributes towards fixed costs and profit.

  • Control group

    A control group is the set of people in a test who do not get the change being tested. Comparing them with the group that does isolates the effect of that one change from everything else happening at the same time.

  • Conversion rate

    Conversion rate is the share of people who complete a chosen step out of everyone who had the chance to, such as the visitors who sign up. It is the most basic measure of how well a funnel works.

  • Conversion tracking

    Conversion tracking is the setup that records when a visitor completes a valuable action, such as a download, demo request or purchase, and links it to the channel and campaign that brought them there.

  • Conversion window

    A conversion window is the fixed period during which a result is counted as a conversion, for example thirty days from a sign-up or an ad click. Anything that happens after the window closes is left out.

  • Cookie

    A cookie is a small text file that a website asks a visitor's browser to store, so the site can recognise that browser on a later visit and remember things such as a login, a basket or a preference.

  • Cost per click (CPC)

    Cost per click, or CPC, is the amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks a paid ad, worked out as total spend divided by total clicks. It is the basic cost unit of paid search.

  • Cost-per-X

    Cost-per-X is the family of metrics that divide advertising spend by one counted event, such as an impression, a click, a lead or a customer won, so different channels can be compared on the same footing.

  • CRM

    A CRM, or customer relationship management system, is software that stores contacts, companies and deals, and records every interaction with them. It is the central record that sales, marketing and customer success work from.

  • Cron job

    A cron job is a task that runs automatically on a fixed schedule, such as every night at 02:00 or every Monday morning. It is the simplest and oldest form of automation.

  • Cross-sell

    A cross-sell is selling an existing customer an additional, different product or service that goes with what they already buy. Along with the upsell, it is a main source of expansion revenue.

  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

    Customer acquisition cost, or CAC, is the average cost of winning one paying customer: total sales and marketing spend over a period divided by the number of new customers won in that period.

  • Customer data platform

    A customer data platform, or CDP, collects customer data from every tool a company uses, merges it into one profile per person or account, and sends that profile back out to the tools that act on it.

  • Customer journey

    A "customer journey" is the whole path a person takes from first hearing about a business to deciding, buying, using the product and eventually renewing or leaving, seen from the customer's side rather than the company's.

  • Customer Lifetime

    Customer lifetime is the average length of time a customer keeps paying before they churn, usually counted in months. It is one of the two multipliers inside lifetime value.

  • Customer satisfaction (CSAT)

    Customer satisfaction, or CSAT, is a score from a short survey asking how satisfied someone was with one specific moment, such as a support reply, a feature or onboarding, usually on a scale of one to five.

  • Customer success

    Customer success is the function that helps customers reach the outcome they bought a product for, which is separate from selling it and from fixing it when it breaks.

  • Cycle Time

    Cycle time is how long the actual work on a task takes from the moment someone starts it to the moment it is finished, leaving out any time the task spent waiting in a queue first.

D

  • Dashboard

    A dashboard is a single screen that shows the numbers a team needs to watch, usually as charts, tables and totals. It is only useful when built around decisions someone has to make, not around every metric available.

  • Data enrichment

    Data enrichment is the process of adding missing facts to a record, such as a company's size, industry or a contact's job title, from other sources. It gives lead scoring and routing the details they need to work.

  • Data Hygiene

    Data hygiene is the ongoing discipline of keeping business records clean: no duplicates, no stale or missing fields and no dead entries left behind, so people and automations can trust what they read.

  • Data modelling

    Data modelling is the work of turning messy raw data into a small set of clean, defined tables that carry one agreed meaning, so every report and tool reads the same answer.

  • Data pipeline

    A data pipeline is an automated route that moves data from where it is created, such as a payment tool or website, to where it is used, such as a spreadsheet or warehouse, cleaning it on the way.

  • Data warehouse

    A data warehouse is a central database built for analysis, where copies of data from every business system are combined so they can be queried together.

  • Database migration

    A database migration is a scripted, ordered change to the structure of a database, such as adding a table or a column, applied the same way in every environment so that no records are lost.

  • Database schema

    A database schema is the blueprint of a database: the list of tables, the fields each table holds, the type of data allowed in each field and how the tables relate to each other.

  • Deal stage

    A deal stage is a labelled step in the sales process, from first contact to signed contract, that shows how far a specific prospect has progressed and what has to happen next.

  • Deep Work

    Deep work is professional effort done in a state of uninterrupted concentration, on tasks that stretch your ability and are hard to replace, as opposed to shallow work such as email and admin.

  • Default alive

    Default alive describes a company whose current revenue growth and spending, if left unchanged, would reach profitability before its cash runs out. If not, it is default dead.

  • Delegation

    Delegation is handing ownership of a task or outcome to another person or system, together with the authority to finish it, so it gets done well without you doing it yourself.

  • Demand generation

    Demand generation is the marketing work of building awareness and interest in a problem and a product before buyers are ready to talk to sales. It differs from lead generation, which captures contact details.

  • Dependency

    A dependency is code written by someone else, usually a free package or library, that a product relies on to work. Each one adds update and security work, and AI tools add them freely.

  • Deployment

    Deployment is the act of moving a tested change from where it was built into the live environment, so that real customers or real automations start using it.

  • Dilution

    Dilution is the drop in an existing owner's percentage of a company when new shares are issued, for example to investors who put in money or to employees who receive stock options.

  • Discovery call

    A discovery call is the first structured conversation with a prospect, used to understand their situation, problem and buying process, and to decide whether there is a fit, before any pitch or demo.

  • Display network

    A display network is a collection of third-party websites, apps and videos where an ad platform shows banner or image ads to people who are reading or watching something else, not searching.

  • Distribution-first

    Distribution-first means deciding how you will reach customers before you decide what to build, then shaping the product to fit that channel.

  • DNS

    DNS, the Domain Name System, is the internet's address book. It translates a domain name such as example.com into the server that hosts the site, and it also holds the records that control where email goes.

  • Domain authority

    Domain authority is a score from 1 to 100, created by the software company Moz, that predicts how well a whole website is likely to rank in search results compared with others.

  • Domain reputation

    Domain reputation is the trust score that inbox providers such as Gmail and Outlook quietly build for your sending domain, based on its history of bounces, spam complaints and how recipients treat its email.

  • Down round

    A down round is a funding round in which a company sells new shares at a lower valuation than in its previous round, so the new price per share is below what earlier investors paid.

  • Drip campaign

    A drip campaign is a series of automated emails sent at planned intervals once a trigger, such as a signup or download, starts it, keeping a prospect in touch for weeks without anyone sending by hand.

E

  • Economic buyer

    The economic buyer is the person with final authority over the budget for a purchase, who can approve the spend and say yes when everyone else can only recommend or say no.

  • Edge case

    An edge case is a rare or extreme situation that sits outside the normal path most users take, such as an empty account, a very long name or a payment that fails halfway through.

  • EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)

    EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, the criteria Google's quality raters use to judge whether a page deserves trust, especially on topics that affect health or money.

  • Eisenhower Matrix

    The Eisenhower Matrix is a simple grid that sorts tasks by urgency and importance into four boxes, so time goes first to what matters rather than to whatever shouts loudest.

  • Email deliverability

    Email deliverability is the likelihood that an email you send reaches the recipient's main inbox, rather than being rejected on the way or filtered into the spam folder.

  • Email open rate

    Email open rate is the percentage of delivered emails that were opened, usually measured by a tiny hidden image that loads when the message is displayed.

  • Email sequence

    An email sequence is a short, tightly aimed run of emails to one person, each written to follow the last, designed to move them one step further towards a single action such as booking a call.

  • Embedding

    An embedding is a long list of numbers that captures the meaning of a piece of text, so items with similar meaning end up with similar numbers. It lets software search by meaning instead of exact words.

  • End-to-end test

    An end-to-end test is an automatic test that clicks through the product like a real user, from first screen to final result. It confirms that sign-up, checkout or booking still works after changes.

  • Engagement

    Engagement is any measurable action someone takes with your content, emails, website or product beyond simply seeing it, such as opening, clicking, replying, downloading or logging in.

  • Engagement rate

    Engagement rate is the share of visits in which people actually engaged with a site, meaning they stayed for a set time, viewed more than one page or completed a key action.

  • Enterprise value

    Enterprise value, or EV, is the price of a whole business regardless of how it is financed: broadly the value of its shares plus its debt, minus the cash it holds.

  • Entity (SEO)

    An entity is a distinct thing, such as a company, person, product, place or idea, that a search or AI engine recognises and reasons about as one item, independently of the exact words on a page.

  • Environment variable

    An environment variable is a named setting or secret, such as a database address or an API key, kept outside the code and supplied to the app when it runs. The same code can then work in different places without exposing secrets.

  • EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System)

    EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, is a framework for running a smaller company, built around six components: vision, people, data, issues, process and traction.

  • ETL / ELT

    ETL and ELT are two ways of moving data from the tools where it is created into a warehouse. ETL transforms the data before it is stored, while ELT stores it raw and transforms it afterwards.

  • Event tracking

    Event tracking is recording each specific action a person takes on a site or in a product, such as a page view, a click, a form submission or a feature used, as a separate event with a name, a time and details.

  • Expansion Revenue

    Expansion revenue is the extra recurring revenue a business earns from customers it already has, through upgrades, add-ons, extra seats or growing usage, on top of what they already pay.

F

  • Feature flag

    A feature flag is a switch in the code that turns a feature on or off without a new deployment, so a team controls who sees it and when.

  • Featured snippet

    A featured snippet is the boxed answer Google shows above the normal results for some searches, taken from a page that already ranks well and shown with a link to it.

  • First revenue

    First revenue is the first real payment a customer makes for what a business sells, the moment an idea is tested by someone handing over money instead of only saying it sounds good.

  • First-party data

    First-party data is information a business collects directly from its own customers, visitors and users, with their consent, through its own site, product, emails and conversations.

  • First-touch attribution

    First-touch attribution is a measurement model that gives all the credit for a sale to the very first interaction a person had with the business, such as the ad, article or referral that introduced them.

  • Fixed and Variable Costs

    Fixed costs stay the same however much a business sells, such as rent and salaries, while variable costs rise and fall with every sale, such as payment fees, materials and delivery.

  • Forecast Accuracy

    Forecast accuracy is how closely the revenue you predicted for a period matches what you actually closed, shown as the percentage gap between the two.

  • Founder-led growth

    "Founder-led growth" means the founder personally wins the first customers through their own name, network and story, before sales hires or paid channels take over.

  • Founder-market fit

    Founder-market fit is the match between a founder's own skills, experience and network and the market they have chosen to serve, which gives them an edge over other people building in the same space.

  • Framework

    A framework is a prebuilt structure for building apps and websites. It supplies the common parts, such as page routing, data handling and security basics, so they need not be written again. The choice shapes the code AI tools produce.

  • Freemium

    Freemium is a pricing model where the core product is free to use for as long as someone likes, and money comes from paid features, higher limits or extra team seats.

  • Frontend

    The frontend is the part of a website or app that people see and use in their browser or on their phone: pages, buttons, forms and layout. It runs on the visitor's own device and asks the backend for any data it needs.

  • Function calling

    Function calling is how an AI model asks real software to act, such as looking up an order or updating a record, by naming a function and the inputs to give it. Vendors also call it tool use.

  • Funnel analysis

    Funnel analysis tracks how many people move through each step on the way to an outcome you care about, such as a signup or a sale, and shows where they drop off.

G

  • Gated content

    Gated content is anything valuable you put behind a form, so a visitor trades their email address for a report, template, calculator, webinar or guide.

  • GDPR

    The GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, is the European Union law that governs how organisations collect, use, store and share personal data about people in the EU. It applies to email outreach, tracking and any AI tool that processes customer data.

  • Git

    Git is the free tool that does version control. It tracks every change to a project's files, lets many people work in parallel, and makes it possible to return to any earlier state.

  • Go-to-market strategy

    A go-to-market strategy is the plan for who you sell to, how you reach them and how a deal turns into revenue.

  • Goodhart's Law

    Goodhart's Law says that when a measure becomes a target, people optimise the number instead of the outcome it was meant to represent, and the two drift apart.

  • Gross Dollar Retention

    Gross dollar retention is the share of a group of customers' starting recurring revenue still there a year later, counting only cancellations and downgrades and ignoring upgrades.

  • Gross Margin

    Gross margin is the share of revenue left after subtracting the direct cost of delivering the product or service, before overheads such as marketing, salaries elsewhere in the business and rent.

  • Growth drivers

    Growth drivers are the few activities, channels or customer behaviours that actually cause a business to grow, as distinct from the long list of things it does that merely feel productive.

  • Growth engine

    A growth engine is a repeatable part of the business, such as outbound, search or referrals, that turns effort into leads or revenue by the same steps each time, so each extra unit of input costs less manual push.

  • Growth hacking

    Growth hacking is running many small, cheap experiments across a product and its marketing channels to find the few that reliably increase acquisition, activation or revenue, and dropping the rest quickly.

  • Growth lever

    A growth lever is a single improvement that lifts the whole business when you pull it, because it sits on a mechanism that compounds, such as retention, conversion at a key step or the speed of a sales cycle.

  • Growth Loop

    A growth loop is a self-reinforcing cycle in which the output of one round of growth becomes the input of the next, so each new customer or piece of content helps bring in the following one.

  • Growth marketing

    Growth marketing is a discipline of running small, measured experiments across the whole customer path, from first visit to renewal and referral, instead of putting the effort into one large campaign.

  • Growth mindset

    A growth mindset is the belief that ability improves through practice, feedback and repetition, so a setback is information for the next attempt rather than a verdict on the person or the idea.

  • Growth plateau

    A growth plateau is the point at which key numbers such as leads, revenue or users stop climbing, however much of the same activity is added, because the tactics behind earlier growth have reached their ceiling.

  • Guardrails

    Guardrails are the rules and checks that keep an AI agent inside safe limits: what it may say, what it may do, and the points where it must stop and ask a person before going further.

H

  • Hallucination

    A hallucination is when an AI model states something false with complete confidence, such as an invented statistic, a citation to a source that does not exist or a policy detail that was never real.

  • Handoff

    A handoff is the moment work passes from one person, team, tool or AI agent to another, which is one of the most fragile points in any process because context and ownership can be lost in the transfer.

  • Health score

    A health score is a single number, usually from zero to a hundred, that blends a customer account's usage, adoption and support signals to show how likely it is to renew, grow or leave.

  • Heatmap

    A heatmap is a visual overlay on a web page that uses colour to show where visitors click, move their cursor and scroll, so the busiest and the ignored areas stand out at a glance.

  • Hero section

    A hero section is the large block at the top of a web page, usually a headline, a short supporting line, a visual and a main button, that a visitor sees before they scroll.

  • Human-in-the-loop

    Human-in-the-loop means a person reviews, approves or corrects an AI agent's work at the steps that matter, before the result goes live or takes effect.

  • Hypothesis testing

    Hypothesis testing is the practice of stating a specific prediction before an experiment, then using the results to decide whether the evidence supports it or whether chance could explain the difference.

I

  • Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

    An ideal customer profile, or ICP, is a precise description of the type of company, and the person inside it, that a business is best placed to win, serve well and keep as a customer.

  • IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve)

    IDS is a three-step method for working through a problem in a meeting: identify the real issue, discuss it once, then solve it with a named owner and a deadline.

  • Impressions

    Impressions count how many times a piece of content, an ad or a search listing is shown to someone, including repeat views by the same person, whether or not anyone clicks.

  • Inbound Marketing

    Inbound marketing is the practice of attracting buyers with useful content that answers their questions, so they find the business themselves instead of being chased with outbound pitches.

  • Inbox zero

    Inbox zero is the habit of emptying an email inbox of unprocessed messages by deciding what to do with each one, instead of leaving it there as a pile of half-made decisions.

  • Indie hacker

    An indie hacker is a founder who builds and runs a small product alone or in a tiny team, paying for it with customer revenue rather than investor money.

  • Integration

    An integration is a connection between two pieces of software that lets data or actions pass between them automatically, so nobody has to copy information by hand. Most are built on an API.

  • Internal linking

    Internal linking is the practice of connecting the pages of one website with links, so search engines can find and rank them and visitors are guided from one page to the next.

  • Invoices / contract

    Invoices per contract is the average number of invoices one customer contract produces, found by dividing total invoices raised by total contracts. It shows how long customers stay and how their billing is structured.

  • Invoicing

    Invoicing is the process of billing a customer for goods or services, turning agreed work into a formal request for payment with an amount, a due date and the details the customer needs to pay it.

J

  • Jobs to be done

    Jobs to be done is the idea that people do not buy products but hire them to make progress in a specific situation, so the useful thing to understand is the progress wanted, not the features on offer.

  • JSON

    JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a plain text format for writing structured data as labelled values. It is the common language tools use to send information to each other.

K

  • Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

    A KPI, or key performance indicator, is one of a small set of numbers chosen to show whether a business is hitting a specific goal, tracked often enough to catch problems while they are still cheap to fix.

  • Keyword research

    Keyword research is finding the words and phrases real people type into a search box when they look for what a business sells or for help with the problem it solves, and judging which are worth targeting.

  • Kill criteria

    Kill criteria are conditions, set in advance, that trigger shutting down a project, product or experiment if they are met, decided before emotional and financial investment makes an honest call harder.

  • Knowledge base

    A knowledge base is an organised collection of a company's answers, policies and documents, kept in one place so people can search it. For an AI agent it is the trusted source to draw answers from instead of guessing.

  • Knowledge Graph

    A knowledge graph is a structured map of things, such as people, companies and products, and the relationships between them, which search and AI engines use to understand and describe a business accurately.

L

  • Landing page

    A landing page is a standalone page built around one offer and one action, with the distractions of a homepage removed, so that visitors from a specific ad, email or search have a single clear next step.

  • Large language model

    A large language model, or LLM, is an AI system trained on very large amounts of text to predict and generate language. It is the engine behind chat assistants and AI agents, and it works by producing the most plausible next words.

  • Last-touch attribution

    Last-touch attribution is a measurement model that gives all the credit for a sale or signup to the final interaction a person had before converting, such as the last ad clicked or email opened.

  • Lead

    A lead is a person or company that has shown interest in what a business offers and shared contact details that can be used lawfully, so they can be reached by name and through a known channel.

  • Lead capture rate

    Lead capture rate is the share of engaged visitors to a page or channel who hand over their details and become a lead, found by dividing form submissions by engaged sessions.

  • Lead generation

    Lead generation is the work of creating interest from potential customers and capturing their contact details so sales can follow up. It covers most marketing activity aimed at producing new enquiries.

  • Lead scoring

    Lead scoring is a method of giving each lead points for how well they fit the ideal customer and how they behave, so sales knows who to contact first. A higher score means a lead is more likely to buy.

  • Lead Time

    Lead time is the total elapsed time from a customer's request to delivery of the result, including every queue and handoff on the way, so it measures the wait the customer actually experiences.

  • Lead velocity rate

    Lead velocity rate, or LVR, is the percentage change in qualified leads from one month to the next, an early signal of future revenue that moves well before deals close or stall.

  • Leading vs lagging indicators

    A "leading" indicator is a number that moves before a result changes and so helps predict it, while a lagging indicator, such as revenue or churn, only confirms the result after it has happened.

  • Level 10 Meeting (L10)

    The Level 10 Meeting, or L10, is the fixed ninety-minute weekly leadership meeting in EOS, run to the same agenda every week: check-in, scorecard, priorities, headlines, to-dos and issue solving.

  • Lifetime Value (LTV)

    Lifetime value, or LTV, is the total profit a company expects to earn from one customer across the whole relationship, usually worked out as margin per period multiplied by how long the customer stays.

  • Linting

    Linting is the automatic checking of code for style problems and likely mistakes before it runs. It is one of the cheapest checks for catching errors in code written by an AI tool.

  • Liquidation preference

    A liquidation preference is the clause in an investment deal that decides who is paid first, and how much, when a company is sold or wound up, before the remaining proceeds are shared.

  • List hygiene

    List hygiene is the routine of removing invalid, inactive and unwanted addresses from an email list so that messages keep reaching real inboxes and the list is worth paying to send to.

  • llms.txt

    llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file, placed at the root of a website, that gives large language models a short, curated guide to the site's most important pages, written in markdown.

  • Localhost

    Localhost is the address a computer uses to refer to itself, and it means running a product on your own machine before publishing it. Something that works on localhost is visible only to you and is not yet live.

  • Logging

    Logging is recording what a product or an AI agent did, step by step, as timestamped lines in a log. When something breaks, the log is the first place to look, because it shows what happened and in what order.

  • Lookalike audience

    A lookalike audience is a new group of people that an ad platform builds by finding users who resemble a source list of your existing best customers.

  • LTV to CAC Ratio

    The LTV to CAC ratio divides a customer's lifetime value by what it cost to win them, showing whether acquisition spend earns back more than it costs.

M

  • Magic Number

    The magic number is a SaaS efficiency ratio that compares the extra revenue a company adds in a quarter with what it spent on sales and marketing in the quarter before.

  • Maker schedule

    A maker schedule is a working day arranged in long, uninterrupted blocks, because building something complex needs hours of unbroken focus, unlike a manager's day of short meetings.

  • Markdown

    Markdown is a way of formatting text using plain symbols, such as a hash for a heading and an asterisk for emphasis. It is the default format for AI instructions, notes and documentation.

  • Marketing Automation

    Marketing automation is software that sends a set message or takes a set action when a lead's behaviour meets a rule you defined, so that follow-up happens without anyone doing it by hand.

  • Marketing stack

    A marketing stack is the set of software tools a business uses to attract leads, follow up with them and measure which activity brings in revenue. It only works as a stack when the tools share data.

  • MCP (Model Context Protocol)

    MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open standard that lets an AI assistant connect to external tools and data through one common interface, so each system needs connecting only once instead of once per assistant.

  • MCP server

    An MCP server is a small program that exposes one tool, dataset or action to an AI assistant through the Model Context Protocol, so the assistant can read or act on a real system in a standard way.

  • MEDDIC

    MEDDIC is a six-part checklist for qualifying a complex sale: Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain and Champion. A deal counts as real only when each part has a verified answer.

  • Merge

    To merge is to fold the changes from one branch into another, usually into the main code, so that the work becomes part of the product. A merge conflict arises when two branches changed the same lines.

  • Micro-SaaS

    A micro-SaaS is a small subscription software product run by one person or a very small team, built for a narrow group of customers and a specific problem, and usually funded from its own revenue.

  • Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

    A minimum viable product is the smallest working version of a product that real customers can use, built to learn whether the core idea is wanted before time and money go into everything else.

  • Minimum viable test

    A minimum viable test is the cheapest, fastest experiment that can show whether a key assumption about an idea, offer or price is true, run before building the real thing.

  • Mobile responsive

    Mobile responsive describes a website built as one page that rearranges its layout to suit the screen it is viewed on, from a large monitor to a phone, so every visitor gets a usable page.

  • Monorepo

    A monorepo, short for monolithic repository, is a single repository that holds several apps or packages, such as a marketing site and a product, so they share code, tools and rules in one place.

  • Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

    Monthly recurring revenue, or MRR, is the predictable revenue a subscription business earns each month from active subscriptions, with one-off fees left out. It is the main measure of a subscription business's size and direction.

  • MQL

    An MQL, or marketing qualified lead, is a lead whose fit and behaviour meet a threshold that marketing and sales agreed in advance, the point at which a sales follow-up becomes worthwhile.

  • Multi-agent system

    A multi-agent system is a set of AI agents, each with its own role and tools, that work together on one task by passing work between them instead of one agent doing everything.

  • Multi-touch attribution

    Multi-touch attribution is a way of crediting a sale by sharing the credit across every marketing interaction a buyer had along the way, instead of giving all of it to the first or last one.

  • Multithreading

    Multithreading is building working relationships with several people inside one customer account, so a deal does not depend on a single contact who might leave, go quiet or turn out to lack authority.

  • Mutual close plan

    A mutual close plan is a shared document, agreed with the buyer, that lists every step both sides must complete before signing, each with an owner and a date, working backwards from the date the buyer wants to go live.

N

  • Negative Churn

    Negative churn is when the extra revenue existing customers add through upgrades, more seats or more usage is larger than the revenue lost to cancellations and downgrades in the same period, so the customer base grows without any new customers.

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS)

    Net Promoter Score, or NPS, comes from one question, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague, answered from 0 to 10. The score is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, from -100 to +100.

  • Net Revenue Retention (NRR)

    Net revenue retention, or NRR, is the share of revenue kept from a group of existing customers after a period, counting upgrades, downgrades and cancellations but excluding new customers. Above 100 per cent, existing customers alone grow revenue.

  • No-code

    No-code means building software, automations or websites by arranging visual blocks and filling in settings instead of writing code. Low-code is the close cousin that allows a little code for the parts the visual tool cannot do.

  • Non-disclosure agreement

    A non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, is a contract that keeps shared information confidential. It is often requested before sharing business data with vendors, partners or AI services.

  • North Star Metric

    A North Star metric is the single number that best captures the value customers get from a business and best predicts its long-term success, so every team can see whether its work is moving the company the right way.

O

  • OAuth

    OAuth is an open standard that lets a person give one app limited access to their account in another service, such as HubSpot or Google, without sharing their password. The app receives a revocable token instead.

  • Objection handling

    Objection handling is finding out what a prospect is actually worried about when they push back, then answering that concern with evidence instead of arguing with the words they used.

  • Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

    OKRs, or objectives and key results, are a goal-setting method that pairs one ambitious objective with three to five measurable key results that show whether it was reached, usually reviewed every quarter.

  • Observability

    Observability is the ability to see what a running product or agent is doing, through logs, metrics and alerts, so failures are found and explained quickly, ideally before a customer reports them.

  • Offer

    An offer is the full proposition put in front of a buyer: what they get, the price, the terms, any bonuses and the guarantee. It is the whole package that is accepted or declined, not just the product.

  • OMTM (One Metric That Matters)

    OMTM, or One Metric That Matters, is the single number a business focuses on at its current stage, chosen so that every team pulls towards one goal instead of several competing ones.

  • On-page SEO

    On-page SEO is the work done on a single web page so search engines understand it and show it for the right searches. It covers the title, headings, content, URL, internal links and images.

  • On-target earnings (OTE)

    On-target earnings, or OTE, is a salesperson's expected total pay in a year when they hit their sales target exactly: base salary plus the commission earned at 100 per cent of quota.

  • Onboarding Funnel

    An onboarding funnel is the sequence of steps a new user takes from signing up to getting their first real result from a product, together with the share of people who drop out at each step.

  • One-pager

    A one-pager is a single page that explains a product, service or proposal clearly enough for a stranger to understand it, and act on it, in about the time it takes to scan.

  • Open source

    Open source describes software whose code is published for anyone to read, use, change and share under a licence that sets the conditions. Much of what modern apps and AI tools are built on, from databases to web frameworks, is open source.

  • Operating Cadence

    An operating cadence is the fixed rhythm of recurring meetings and reviews, such as daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly, that makes sure a company looks at the right numbers and decisions at the right time.

  • Operating Expenses (OpEx)

    Operating expenses, or OpEx, are the ongoing costs of running a business that are not tied to producing each unit sold, such as salaries, rent, software, marketing and insurance.

  • Orchestrator agent

    An orchestrator agent is the lead AI agent in a multi-agent setup. It splits a large task into smaller jobs, hands each to a specialist agent, checks the results and combines them into one answer.

P

  • P-value

    A p-value is the probability of seeing a result at least as extreme as the one observed if the change being tested actually did nothing. A small p-value suggests the result is unlikely to be chance alone.

  • Package manager

    A package manager is a tool that downloads, installs and updates the ready-made code libraries a project depends on, and records exactly which versions it uses. The common ones for web projects are npm, pnpm and yarn.

  • Page speed

    Page speed is how quickly a web page loads and becomes usable. Slow pages lose visitors before they act, hurt conversion and can lower search rankings.

  • Paid search

    Paid search is advertising that appears alongside search engine results for chosen keywords, where the advertiser pays each time someone clicks. It reaches people at the moment they are actively looking for a solution.

  • Paid social advertising

    Paid social advertising is paying a social network, such as LinkedIn, Meta or TikTok, to show your message to chosen groups of people who were not searching for you and are browsing their feed.

  • Pain point

    A pain point is a specific problem a customer already feels, costing them money, time or peace of mind, that they would pay to be rid of.

  • Pareto Principle

    The Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, is the observation that a small share of causes, often around 20 per cent, produces most of the results, often around 80 per cent, so effort is rarely worth spreading evenly.

  • Partner-led growth

    Partner-led growth is a way of growing in which other companies, such as consultancies, agencies or software vendors, recommend, resell or deliver your product to their own customers in return for a share of the value.

  • Personal brand

    A personal brand is the reputation a person builds in public for a specific viewpoint or skill, so that people already have an opinion of them before they ever speak.

  • Pipeline coverage

    Pipeline coverage is the ratio of the value of open, qualified deals to the sales target still to be hit in a period. A ratio of 3 means three pounds of pipeline for every pound still needed.

  • Pirate metrics

    Pirate metrics, or AARRR, is a framework from investor Dave McClure that follows customers through five stages, acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue, so you can see which stage is leaking.

  • Pivot

    A pivot is a deliberate change of direction in a company's customer, product or approach, made on evidence, that keeps what has already been learned and drops the part of the plan that is not working.

  • Portfolio model

    A portfolio model runs several small, independent bets side by side instead of one large bet, so that a few winners can fund the rest and one failure cannot sink the business.

  • Positioning statement

    A positioning statement is a short internal sentence naming the target customer, the problem solved and the difference from alternatives, so that sales, marketing and product all tell the same story.

  • Preview deployment

    A preview deployment is a temporary live copy of a change, published at its own web address, so that it can be opened and checked in a browser before it reaches the real site.

  • Pricing strategy

    A pricing strategy is the set of deliberate choices behind what a business charges, to whom, in what structure, and how that price changes as a customer grows or buys more.

  • Prioritisation

    Prioritisation is ranking ideas, projects and experiments by expected impact and then deliberately declining or delaying everything below the cut, so limited time goes to the work that matters most.

  • Process Mapping

    Process mapping is writing down how a piece of work actually flows, step by step, from the trigger that starts it to the finished outcome, including who does each step and which tools they use.

  • Product-led growth

    Product-led growth, or PLG, is a growth model in which the product itself attracts, converts and expands customers: people sign up, reach value on their own and upgrade without needing a salesperson.

  • Product-Led Sales

    Product-led sales is a hybrid model in which the product drives self-serve adoption and a salesperson steps in only when usage shows a larger opportunity, such as a team reaching a seat limit.

  • Product-market fit

    Product-market fit is the point at which a product solves an urgent problem for a defined group of buyers who actively want it, so demand pulls the product along instead of the company pushing it.

  • Product-Qualified Lead (PQL)

    A product-qualified lead, or PQL, is someone on a free plan or trial whose actions inside the product show they have reached real value and are likely to buy. The product's own usage data does the qualifying.

  • Production environment

    The production environment is the live version of a product that real customers use, with real data and real consequences. Changes are tested in other copies first so that mistakes never reach it.

  • Profit and Loss Statement (P&L)

    A profit and loss statement, or P&L, lists a business's revenue and costs over a period, such as a month or a year, and shows whether the result was a profit or a loss.

  • Profit Margin

    Profit margin is the share of revenue a business keeps as profit after costs are subtracted, shown as a percentage. A business with a 15 per cent margin keeps 15p of every pound it earns.

  • Programmatic SEO

    Programmatic SEO is creating many search-optimised pages at scale from a structured dataset and one template, instead of writing each page by hand, so each row of data becomes a page that can rank.

  • Progressive profiling

    Progressive profiling is collecting a lead's details a little at a time over several interactions, asking one or two new questions each visit, instead of putting every field in one long form.

  • Prompt

    A prompt is the text given to an AI model to tell it what to do: the question, the background and the format wanted back. The quality of the prompt largely sets the quality of the answer.

  • Prompt engineering

    Prompt engineering is the craft of writing an instruction to an AI model, with the right goal, context, format and examples, so it reliably produces the result you actually want.

  • Prompt injection

    Prompt injection is an attack where hidden instructions in content an AI reads, such as an email or web page, try to steer it. It is the main security risk of agents with real access.

  • Prompt-Level Ranking

    Prompt-level ranking is tracking how a brand appears for each individual question put to AI engines such as ChatGPT or Perplexity, the AI-search counterpart of tracking a ranking for each keyword.

  • Proposal rate

    Proposal rate is the percentage of qualified opportunities that receive a formal proposal, calculated as proposals sent divided by qualified opportunities in the same period.

  • Prototype

    A prototype is a quick, disposable version of an idea, such as a clickable mockup or a rough working demo, built to answer one specific question before committing to the real build.

  • Pull request

    A pull request, or PR, is a proposal to merge a set of code changes into the main codebase, shown as a side-by-side comparison so a person or automated checks can review it first.

Q

  • Qualification rate

    Qualification rate is the percentage of discovery calls that end with the prospect confirmed as a genuine fit, calculated as qualified opportunities divided by completed calls.

  • Queue

    A queue is a waiting line of tasks that are processed one at a time or in small groups. It stops work being lost or the system being overloaded when many events arrive at once.

  • Quick Ratio (SaaS)

    The SaaS quick ratio divides new plus expansion recurring revenue by lost plus downgraded recurring revenue in a period, showing how much growth a subscription business gains for every unit it loses.

  • Quota

    A quota is the revenue or deal target a salesperson or sales team must hit in a set period, usually a month, quarter or year, and it is the yardstick their performance and commission are measured against.

  • Quote

    A quote is the document that states exactly what a prospect is buying, what it costs and on what terms, so they can accept it and the deal can move to signature or invoice.

R

  • RACI

    RACI is a grid that tags who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted or Informed for each task or decision, with exactly one person Accountable, so ownership is explicit and nothing falls between people.

  • Ramp time

    Ramp time is how long a new salesperson takes to reach full productivity, meaning they consistently hit quota rather than still learning the product, the market and the sales process.

  • Refactoring

    Refactoring is restructuring existing code so it behaves exactly the same but is easier to understand and safer to change, without adding a feature or fixing a bug.

  • Referral marketing

    Referral marketing is turning satisfied customers and contacts into a steady source of warm introductions to new business, usually by asking at the right moment and making the introduction easy.

  • Regression

    A regression is when a change breaks something that used to work, often in a part of the product that looks unrelated to what was actually changed.

  • Renewal rate

    Renewal rate is the share of customers, or contracts, due for renewal in a period that actually renew, and it is the mirror image of churn for businesses that sell on fixed terms.

  • Reply rate

    Reply rate is the share of outreach messages that receive an actual written response, calculated as replies divided by messages sent or delivered, and a more honest signal than opens or clicks.

  • Repository

    A repository, or repo, is the project folder tracked by version control. It holds all the code and files together with the complete history of every change made to them.

  • Retargeting

    Retargeting is showing ads to people who already visited your site or engaged with you but did not convert, so a message reaches them again while they are still deciding.

  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)

    Retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, is a technique where a system first retrieves relevant documents and then has an AI model write its answer from that material, often citing the source.

  • Return on investment

    Return on investment, or ROI, is the profit gained from a spend, shown as a share of what was spent. It is the simple test for any tool, campaign or hire: did it earn back more than it cost.

  • Revenue Churn

    Revenue churn is the share of recurring revenue lost to cancellations and downgrades over a period, measured in money rather than in number of accounts.

  • Reverse ETL

    Reverse ETL is the practice of copying data out of a data warehouse and into the tools a team works in every day, such as a CRM, an email platform or a support desk, so the numbers drive action.

  • RevOps (Revenue Operations)

    RevOps, or revenue operations, is the work of running marketing, sales and customer success on one set of systems, data and processes, so the whole path from lead to renewal is managed as a single revenue engine.

  • ROAS

    ROAS, or return on ad spend, is the revenue generated for each unit spent on advertising. It is the main quick check for paid ads, but because it ignores margin it does not show whether the ads made a profit.

  • Rocks (Quarterly Priorities)

    Rocks are the three to seven most important things a company or a person commits to finishing in the next ninety days, each with one owner and a clear finished-or-not test. The term comes from the EOS operating system.

  • Rollback

    A rollback is the act of returning a system to its previous working version after a new release causes a problem, so customers get a working product back while the cause is investigated.

  • Row level security

    Row level security, or RLS, is a database feature that decides, row by row, which records each user may read or change. It keeps one customer's data hidden from another even when both use the same tables.

  • Rule of 40

    The rule of 40 says a healthy software business should have its annual growth rate plus its profit margin add up to at least forty per cent, showing that growth is not being bought with unsustainable losses.

  • Rules file

    A rules file is a document that an AI coding agent reads at the start of every task, stating the conventions to follow, the stack in use and the things it must never do.

  • Runbook

    A runbook is a step-by-step guide for handling one specific, urgent situation, such as a failed payment sync, written so that anyone on the team can follow it under pressure.

  • Runway

    Runway is the number of months a business can keep operating at its current rate of spending before its cash runs out, found by dividing cash in the bank by the monthly net burn.

S

  • SaaS

    SaaS, or software as a service, is software that customers use online and pay for by subscription instead of buying and installing it once. It is the model behind most revenue metrics used in this glossary, such as MRR and churn.

  • SAFE

    A SAFE, or simple agreement for future equity, is a contract in which an investor pays money now in return for shares later, converting at the next priced funding round without setting a valuation today.

  • Sales cadence

    A sales cadence is a planned sequence of touchpoints, such as emails, calls and messages, timed and ordered to move one prospect forward, so follow-up does not depend on memory or mood.

  • Sales cycle

    The sales cycle is the time a deal takes to travel from first contact to closed, usually measured in days and broken into stages such as discovery, demo, proposal and negotiation.

  • Sales deck

    A sales deck is the set of slides used to walk a prospect through the problem, the solution, the proof and the next step, so the buyer can decide whether the product is worth buying.

  • Sales engagement

    Sales engagement is the planned set of contacts a seller makes with a prospect across email, phone, LinkedIn and other channels, plus the software category that schedules and tracks them.

  • Sales methodology

    A sales methodology is a written, shared way of running a deal, covering what to ask, what to confirm and when a deal may move forward, so every seller qualifies and sells in the same way.

  • Sales pipeline

    A sales pipeline is the list of deals in progress, grouped by the stage each has reached. It is the basis for forecasting revenue and for seeing where deals stall.

  • Sales qualified lead velocity

    Sales qualified lead velocity is how many leads that sales has accepted as a real opportunity arrive in a set period, usually a week. It shows how fast the pipeline is being refilled.

  • Sales tech stack

    A sales tech stack is the set of connected tools a sales team uses to find prospects, contact them, book meetings, record calls and track deals, usually built around a CRM.

  • Sales velocity

    Sales velocity is the revenue a pipeline produces per day, calculated as open opportunities times average deal value times win rate, divided by the length of the sales cycle in days.

  • Sales-led growth

    Sales-led growth is a growth model where people, not the product or the website, win customers: reps find prospects, run conversations and close deals, which suits complex or high-value products.

  • Sample size

    Sample size is the number of observations, such as emails sent, visitors or deals, that a result is based on. The smaller it is, the more a result can be down to chance.

  • Sandbox

    A sandbox is an isolated space where code or an AI agent can run and make mistakes without touching real customer data, live systems or company accounts. It is one of the main safety measures for agents.

  • Scope creep

    Scope creep is the gradual growth of a project beyond what was agreed, through many small additions that each seem reasonable, until the timeline and effort are far larger than planned.

  • Scorecard (Weekly Metrics)

    A scorecard is a one-page weekly list of five to fifteen numbers, each with an owner and a target, reviewed at the same time each week to show early whether the business is on track.

  • SDK

    An SDK, or software development kit, is a ready-made package of code, documentation and examples that makes it easier to use a service from your own software. Instead of building requests by hand, you call simple functions the vendor has already written.

  • Search intent

    Search intent is the goal behind a search query, such as learning something, finding a site, comparing options or buying. Content ranks and converts best when its format matches that goal.

  • Seat-based pricing

    Seat-based pricing means charging customers a fixed price for each person who uses the product. A seat is one user licence, so a team of ten pays for ten seats.

  • Self-serve analytics

    Self-serve analytics lets people across a business answer their own data questions through trusted dashboards and tools, without asking a data specialist or developer to run a query each time.

  • Self-Serve Motion

    A self-serve motion is a way of selling where customers find, try, buy and start using a product on their own, through the website and the product itself, without talking to a salesperson.

  • SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

    SEM, or search engine marketing, is the practice of buying visibility on search engines, mostly through paid ads that appear above and beside the organic results. Some people use the term more widely to cover organic search too.

  • SEO

    SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the work of making a page the best answer to a search query and helping search engines see that, through useful content, clear structure, trust signals and a technically healthy site.

  • SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

    A SERP, or search engine results page, is the full page a search engine returns for a query. It mixes organic listings, paid ads, featured snippets, AI overviews, maps and other formats that compete for the click.

  • Serverless

    Serverless is a way of hosting where your code runs only when something calls it and you pay only for that use. The servers still exist, but the provider manages them, so the team does not.

  • Service level agreement

    A service level agreement, or SLA, is a written promise in a contract about how a service will perform, such as 99.9 per cent uptime or a four-hour reply to urgent issues, and what the vendor owes the customer if it falls short.

  • Session

    A session is one continuous visit by a user to a website or app, grouping everything they do until they leave or stay inactive long enough for the visit to be counted as over.

  • Share of Voice in AI

    Share of voice in AI is the share of relevant AI-generated answers that mention or cite a brand, measured across a fixed set of prompts that buyers are likely to ask.

  • Single customer view

    A single customer view is one unified record per customer that combines their product usage, billing, support and marketing history, so any team can see the whole relationship in one place.

  • Single sign-on

    Single sign-on, or SSO, lets people use one company login to open many tools, so each employee has one identity that the company controls. A central identity provider checks the login instead of each tool.

  • Single Source of Truth

    A single source of truth is one authoritative place where each fact lives, so every report, person and automation reads it from there instead of from a copy that may have gone out of date.

  • Social proof

    Social proof is evidence that other people already trust and use what a business sells, such as testimonials, case studies, customer logos, ratings and reference calls, which lowers a buyer's perceived risk.

  • Social selling

    Social selling is using your own social media profile, rather than the company page, to build relationships and trust with prospects before ever pitching to them, mainly on LinkedIn for business buyers.

  • Spam score

    A spam score is a number estimating how likely an email is to be treated as junk and delivered to the spam folder instead of the inbox, based on its content, sender setup and sending behaviour.

  • Spec-driven development

    Spec-driven development is writing down exactly what is being built, including its scope, states and data, before any code is written, so the spec becomes the contract that the build and its checks follow.

  • SPIN Selling

    SPIN Selling is a questioning method for complex B2B sales that moves through situation, problem, implication and need-payoff questions, so the buyer states the cost of the problem and the value of solving it.

  • SQL

    An SQL, or sales qualified lead, is a contact that sales has checked and accepted as a real buying opportunity, usually after a conversation, and moved into the pipeline as a deal.

  • Stages of awareness

    Stages of awareness is a model of how much a buyer already knows, from not knowing they have a problem to being ready to buy, and it decides which message will land with them.

  • Staging environment

    A staging environment is a private copy of a live product, set up to mirror production as closely as possible, where changes are tested before any customer sees them.

  • Stakeholder Management

    Stakeholder management is the habit of keeping the people who can help or block a piece of work informed, involved and confident about it, without waiting for them to ask.

  • Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)

    A standard operating procedure, or SOP, is a written, repeatable set of steps for a recurring task, so the result stays the same no matter who carries it out.

  • Statistical power

    Statistical power is the probability that a test will detect a real effect when one exists, so a low-power test can miss a genuine winner and report that nothing happened.

  • Statistical significance

    Statistical significance is the judgement that a difference between two results is large enough, given the sample size, to be unlikely to come from random chance alone.

  • Structured Data

    Structured data is machine-readable markup, usually in the schema.org vocabulary, added to a web page to state exactly what its content is, instead of leaving a search or AI engine to guess from the prose.

  • Stub

    A stub is a placeholder in code that stands in for something not built yet, such as a button that does nothing or a function that returns made-up data.

  • Subagent

    A subagent is a smaller AI agent started by another agent to handle one job in its own separate context. It returns a short result, so the main agent's working memory stays uncluttered.

  • System prompt

    A system prompt is the standing instruction given to an AI model before any conversation starts, setting its role, tone, boundaries and rules for every reply it gives.

T

  • TAM SAM SOM

    TAM SAM SOM is a three-layer way to size a market: everyone who could ever buy, the part you can reach with your product, and the share you can realistically win.

  • Tech stack

    A tech stack is the set of technologies a product or business runs on, such as the framework, the database, the hosting and the services connected to them.

  • Technical debt

    Technical debt is the accumulated cost of shortcuts left in a codebase, such as a quick hack or a half-finished migration, that makes every later change slower and riskier until the shortcut is paid down.

  • Technical SEO

    Technical SEO is the work that makes a website easy for search engines to crawl, understand and index, covering page speed, mobile layout, site structure and the signals that tell a crawler which page is the real one.

  • Term sheet

    A term sheet is a short, largely non-binding document that sets out the main terms of a proposed investment, such as valuation, amount, control rights and investor protections, before the full legal agreements are written.

  • Terminal

    A terminal is a text window on a computer where you type commands and read the replies. It is where AI coding tools run, so non-engineers meet it early when they start building with AI.

  • Test coverage

    Test coverage is the share of a product's code that runs when its automated tests run, a rough guide to how much is checked every time something changes. High coverage does not prove the tests check the right things.

  • Testimonial

    A testimonial is a statement from a real customer, in their own words, about the result they got from your product or service. Buyers trust it more than your own claims because the customer has nothing to gain from making it.

  • Theory of Constraints

    The Theory of Constraints is a management method which holds that every process is limited by one step at a time, so improving that single step raises output more than improving anything else.

  • Thought leadership

    Thought leadership is publishing an original, well-evidenced point of view on a topic your buyers care about, steadily enough that they come to trust you understand it better than most.

  • Throughput

    Throughput is the amount of finished work a process produces in a set period, such as orders shipped or tickets resolved per week. It counts what crosses the finish line, not how busy people look.

  • Time blocking

    Time blocking is giving each piece of work a fixed slot in your calendar, so focused tasks have a protected appointment instead of being fitted in between meetings and messages.

  • Time-to-Value (TTV)

    Time-to-value (TTV) is how long it takes a new customer to get the first real benefit the product promised, measured from the moment they sign up or buy.

  • Token

    A token is the small chunk of text an AI model reads and writes, often a short word or part of a longer one. Tokens are the unit that AI usage is priced and limited in.

  • Topical authority

    Topical authority is the trust a search engine places in a site as a source on one subject, built by covering that subject thoroughly and credibly across many connected pages rather than on a single one.

  • Total Addressable Market (TAM)

    Total addressable market, or TAM, is the total yearly revenue available if every possible customer in a clearly defined market bought from you. It is a ceiling used to judge whether a market is big enough, not a forecast of what you will win.

  • Total cost of ownership

    Total cost of ownership, or TCO, is the full cost of owning something over its whole life: the price plus setup, training, running effort, upgrades and the cost of leaving. It shows what a purchase really costs, not what the invoice says.

  • Tracking plan

    A tracking plan is a single document that lists every event a business tracks in its product or site: what each event is called, when it fires, and what details it carries. It keeps analytics consistent as the product changes.

  • Trigger

    A trigger is the event that starts an automated action without a person in the loop, such as a form submission, a page visit or a change in a record. It lets a response fire at the moment something happens.

  • Trust signals

    A trust signal is anything on a website or in a sales process that shows a buyer you are reliable before they have to take your word for it, such as reviews, customer logos, certifications or guarantees.

  • Two-factor authentication

    Two-factor authentication, or 2FA, asks for a second proof of identity on top of a password, such as a code from a phone app. A stolen password alone then no longer lets someone in.

  • Type checking

    Type checking is the automatic verification that each piece of data in code is used as the kind it is meant to be, such as a number or a date. It catches a class of AI mistakes before release.

U

  • Unit economics

    Unit economics asks whether a business makes money on a single customer once everything spent to win and serve them is counted. It compares what one customer costs to acquire with what that customer is worth over time.

  • Unit test

    A unit test is a small automatic test that checks one piece of code does what it should, for example that a discount calculation returns the right price. It is the main safety net when an AI agent changes a product.

  • Units per invoice

    Units per invoice is the total number of units sold divided by the number of invoices in a period. It shows the average volume of seats, hours or items on each bill, and signals whether accounts are growing or shrinking.

  • Unsubscribe rate

    Unsubscribe rate is the share of people who opt out after an email send, calculated as unsubscribes divided by emails delivered. It shows whether an audience still finds the emails worth receiving.

  • Upsell

    An upsell is selling an existing customer a higher plan, a larger version or an added level of the same product. It is one of the two main sources of expansion revenue, next to the cross-sell.

  • Usability testing

    Usability testing is watching real people try to complete tasks with a product and noting exactly where they hesitate, misunderstand or get stuck. It shows why people struggle, which analytics alone cannot.

  • Usage metrics

    Usage metrics are measures of how often and how deeply people use a product, such as logins, features used and time in key workflows, rather than how many signed up. They are the best early warning of churn and expansion.

  • Usage-Based Pricing

    Usage-based pricing charges customers according to how much of a product they consume, such as records processed, messages sent or hours used, rather than a fixed fee regardless of use. Price rises and falls with the value received.

  • User interview

    A user interview is a structured one-on-one conversation with a real customer or prospect, used to learn how they actually work, what frustrates them and how they decide. It reveals reasons that numbers cannot.

  • User story

    A user story is a one-sentence description of a feature from the point of view of the person using it: who they are, what they want to do, and the result that shows it worked.

  • UTMs

    UTMs are short labels added to the end of a link, such as source, medium and campaign, so that analytics can show exactly which email, post or ad sent each visitor.

V

  • Validation

    Validation is collecting real evidence, ideally involving money or commitment, that people want what you plan to build before you spend months building it.

  • Value proposition

    A value proposition is a clear statement of the specific outcome a customer gets by choosing your product over doing nothing, building it themselves or picking a rival.

  • Value Stream

    A value stream is the full sequence of steps, including every wait and handoff, that carries a request from the first ask to value delivered to the customer.

  • Vector database

    A vector database stores embeddings and quickly finds the ones closest to a given query. It is the usual storage behind AI search over a company's own documents, emails and support history.

  • Vendor lock-in

    Vendor lock-in is the state of being unable to leave a tool or supplier without major cost, effort or lost data. The more of your data, automations and habits sit inside one product, the higher the price of switching.

  • Version control

    Version control is a system that records every change to a set of files over time, so any mistake can be traced to its cause and undone. Git is the most common tool for it.

  • Vesting

    Vesting is the schedule on which founders and employees earn their equity over time, instead of owning all of it from day one. Unvested shares are lost or bought back if the person leaves early.

  • Vibe coding

    Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want in plain language and letting an AI write the code, while you steer, test and correct instead of typing every line.

  • Viral Coefficient (K-factor)

    The viral coefficient, or K-factor, is the number of new users each existing user brings in. It is found by multiplying invites sent per user by the share of invites that convert.

  • Voice of customer

    Voice of customer is the practice of capturing the exact words customers use about their problems and needs, then feeding those words back into the product and the messaging.

W

  • Warm-up

    Warm-up is the practice of gradually increasing how many emails a new domain or mailbox sends, so inbox providers learn to trust it before it sends at full volume.

  • Webhook

    A webhook is a way for one service to notify another the moment something happens, by sending a message to a web address that the receiving service controls.

  • Wedge

    A wedge is the narrow, sharp entry point used to break into a market: one acute problem for one specific group of customers, solved better than anyone else solves it.

  • Win rate

    Win rate is the share of proposals sent that turn into paying customers, calculated as deals won divided by proposals sent over a set period.

  • Workflow automation

    Workflow automation is setting up software so that one event automatically triggers the next step, across the tools a business already uses, without a person doing each step by hand.

Z

  • Zero-click search

    A zero-click search is a search where the person gets the answer on the results page itself, through a snippet, panel or AI summary, and never clicks through to any website.

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