Starting Companies: The language and terms you'll need
The vocabulary guide I wish I had, no MBA required.
Hello! It’s been a week.
Last Tuesday, I was out running and went to change a song. The next thing I knew, I was yardsaling through the air, and so was my phone. When I got up, my hand was a little bloody, and then I picked up my phone to see it turning light green with a bunch of little lines. I have never experienced the “green screen of death,” but it is a phenomenon, and I had a dream about this exact event occurring 2 weeks earlier, minus the yardsale flight. Go figure.
Ordering a new phone took a minute. I’d been wanting time offline, specifically off social, but I was not succeeding. I’d go for a day, then get roped back in..addiction is real. So on the same day Uranus stationed direct (planet of loud disruptions) I received the cue to shake things up that felt stagnant in my life, loud and clear. Thank you for not being subtle, Universe.
I don’t recommend flying through the air and dropping your phone, but I have not been able to take this kind of break from my phone since..well..Midwifery (although we had flip phones back then). I did go onto IG from my laptop after the Benito Bowl. I wanted to see how people were reacting to the performance. Both Bad Bunny’s performance and the vibrations afterwards are proof to me that joy, culture, diversity, and resistance will win. With that, I’ll leave this right here.
Now, back to why I am writing to you.
I was woken up early last Tuesday with a download. The instruction was to make a list of all the knowledge and terms I had to learn after leaving clinical care and entering the business world. The download was loud, and I even said, “I don’t want to turn on the light and write it down..” Then I heard, “Do it.” So I grumbled, rolled over, turned the light on softly, wrote crooked and sideways, then rolled back to sleep.
Y’all, these downloads can be demanding.
I don't have an MBA. I'm also newly anti-perfectionism and pro-rebellious entrepreneurship, so this feels right. I learned business language the hard way—sitting in investor meetings, not knowing what “dilution” meant; on sales calls when someone asked about our “unit economics”; in board meetings when the CFO talked about “accrual accounting” and I nodded like I understood until I actually understood.
It was literally like learning a new foreign language. Except there’s no Duolingo for startup vocabulary, and most people assume you already know it.
So you take notes, google everything later, and hope nobody notices you’re translating in real time.
This is the list I wish I had in 2014. Every term here is something I had to learn—not in business school, but in the actual work of building companies, pitching investors and C-suite teams of large health systems, on teams, participating in accelerators, pitch competitions, seeking loans from banks, and trying not to look lost in rooms where everyone else seemed fluent.
You don’t need to memorize all 116 terms today. You’ll know and integrate them over time. You do need to know they exist so that when someone uses one in a meeting, you can look it up instead of pretending you know what they mean.
How to use this list:
Bookmark it for when you’re in a meeting and hear something unfamiliar
Review it before investor conversations or board meetings
Share it with your team so you’re all speaking the same language
Learn as you go—you’ll internalize these faster when you’re actually using them
Add what you know and is missing on this list in the comments! Please. We make it better, together.
This isn’t gatekeeping.
This is the vocabulary I had to learn to lead with confidence. Now you have it too.
CEO (Chief Executive Officer)
The vocabulary of vision, strategy, fundraising, and final decisions:
Burn Rate
Runway
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
LTV (Lifetime Value)
Pivot
Product-Market Fit (PMF)
Board Meeting
Cap Table (Capitalization Table)
Dilution
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)
ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)
Revenue Multiples
COO (Chief Operating Officer)
The vocabulary of execution, systems, and making things run:
SOP (Standard Operating Procedure)
KPI (Key Performance Indicator)
Bottleneck
Throughput
WIP (Work in Progress)
Capacity Planning
Process Mapping
Root Cause Analysis
Utilization Rate
Run Rate
Chief Creative Officer
The vocabulary of brand, design, and creative strategy:
Brand Guidelines
Creative Brief
Mood Board
Style Guide
Design Iteration
Creative Direction
User Flow
A/B Testing (Split Testing)
Design Debt
Creative Asset Library
CFO (Chief Financial Officer)
The vocabulary of money, forecasting, and financial strategy:
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization)
Cash Flow Statement
Gross Margin
COGS (Cost of Goods Sold)
Unit Economics
Accrual Accounting
Forecasting
Budget Variance
Break-Even Analysis
Valuation
P&L (Profit & Loss Statement)
Revenue (Top Line)
Monthly Financial Close
Head of Production/Manufacturing/Supply Chain
The vocabulary of making, sourcing, and delivering products:
Lead Time
MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity)
SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)
Just-In-Time (JIT) Inventory
Quality Control (QC)
Bill of Materials (BOM)
Inventory Turnover
Yield Rate
Freight Terms (FOB, CIF, DDP)
Demand Forecasting
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
The vocabulary of brand, positioning, and customer acquisition:
Positioning
ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
Funnel (Marketing Funnel)
Attribution
Conversion Rate
Messaging Framework
Content Calendar
MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)
Channel Mix
Brand Awareness
Head of Product
The vocabulary of building what customers need:
Product Roadmap
User Story
MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
Feature Prioritization
Backlog
Sprint
Product-Led Growth (PLG)
Churn Rate
User Research
North Star Metric
Note: If you’re building consumer tech, social apps, or mobile products, you’ll also need to learn DAU (Daily Active Users), MAU (Monthly Active Users), and WAU (Weekly Active Users). These are less relevant for B2B SaaS, physical products, or service businesses—every industry has its own specific metrics.
Head of Sales
The vocabulary of revenue, deals, and closing:
Pipeline
Qualified Lead
Discovery Call
Close Rate
ACV (Annual Contract Value)
Sales Cycle
Commission Structure
Quota
Objection Handling
Upsell/Cross-sell
Head of Biz Dev/Strategy
The vocabulary of partnerships, markets, and competitive strategy:
Partnership
Channel Partner
Strategic Alignment
TAM (Total Addressable Market)
Competitive Landscape
White Space Analysis
Go-to-Market Strategy (GTM)
Moat
Letter of Intent (LOI)
M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions)
Head of Growth Marketing
The vocabulary of scalable acquisition and retention:
Growth Loop
Activation Rate
Retention Cohorts
Viral Coefficient (K-Factor)
Experiment Velocity
AARRR (Pirate Metrics)
Product-Market Fit Score
Referral Program
Payback Period
Engagement Score
Negotiation (Essential for Everyone)
The vocabulary of deals, persuasion, and getting to yes—applicable across all roles, and your personal life (buy a car, negotiate expenses and bills, mortgage/rent, etc.):
Mirroring
Labeling
Calibrated Questions
BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement)
Anchoring
No-Oriented Question
Accusation Audit
Tactical Empathy
Bargaining Range
Loss Aversion
What to Do With This List
If you’re a founder or creator wearing all these hats: Start with CEO and your primary function (product, marketing, operations). Learn the rest as you hire.
If you’re joining an early-stage team: Focus on your role first, then learn adjacent roles you’ll collaborate with most.
If you’re fundraising or building partnerships: Know CEO, CFO, and Growth Marketing terms cold. These come up in every funding conversation.
If you’re starting your first company: You don’t need to know all 116 terms on day one. You need to know what you don’t know so you can look it up when it matters.
The vocabulary isn't the barrier to entry—it's a tool so you're not constantly translating in your head. It keeps your brain from getting exhausted trying to keep up, so you can focus on the actual work.
I also built a cheat sheet with full definitions—get Coach Speak with ‘in practice’ examples for every term.
Question for you: What term is missing from this list? Help me make this better—drop suggestions in the comments and share this with someone who's thinking about starting, or a founder who needs it right now.
K, take good care. See you soon!
xx,
Becca
Want help applying this list? The Coach framework walks you through starting a company using these concepts in practice.
