How to be an entrepreneur: the

jargon buster you’ll need to

succeed

From the initial pitch all the way through to the eventual
launch on the stock market, any budding Mark Zuckerberg will
have to be fluent in startup jargon if they want to impress
investors. Here’s how to keep up from the start

Congratulations. You’ve proved you know your market, your

startup is a viable idea and it’s time to think about expanding.
But now you’re faced with a new world where it can feel like
everyone is speaking a different language: what’s the
difference between a gazelle, a unicorn and an angel? And do
you know your EBITDA from your EOP? This handy list of
essential business acronyms and jargon could help you
translate what your new contacts are talking about …

Game changer – you, your company and your product, right?

Walk tall.

Bootstrapping – funding your company with your personal

resources or the company’s own revenue.

Cocktail pitch – AKA a one liner: your concept and business

model in a single sentence designed to inform and intrigue
investors – as well as your …

Elevator pitch – delivered succinctly enough for you to deliver

it in the time it takes to ride a lift. In practice, these tend to
run a little longer, but it’s bad form to still be delivering it 15
minutes later.

Swot analysis – Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats.

Shows what’s great about your product, what’s wrong with
your product, where and how you can sell your product and
who’s going to try and stop you. Better than a …

Sniff test – or quick assessment of your MVP.

MVP – Minimum Viable Product. The quickest possible product

you can produce to see if there’s a demand.

PMF – Product Market Fit. When you have enough paying

customers that your revenue exceeds your expenses. Then
you can …

Scale – literally, size. Practically, whatever you have that’s …

Scaleable – the inherent potential in your product that can be

rapidly repeated almost anywhere and satisfy a huge demand.

Scale up – taking your great idea, gathering investment and

expanding your business. However, only small companies
expanding quickly get to call themselves a Scaleup.

Angels – an old Broadway term now referring to early stage

investors using their own money as opposed to …

Venture capital (VC) funds – which are investment funds that

manage the money of private investors who seek equity in
high-growth potential businesses.

ROI – what Angels want from you: a Return on Investment

further down the line in exchange for their risky early
investment.

Gazelle – investor slang for a high-growth company with

revenues growing at least 20% annually, typically for four
years or more. As in leaping like a gazelle. If things go well,
you’ll grow into a …

Unicorn – a company valued at more than $1bn, and

theoretically as rare as a mythical beast.

Decacorns – companies valued at more than $10bn including

Uber and Snapchat, whose recent performance suggests their
investors might be happier with a …
Dragon – rarer than unicorns, no matter what the fairy tales
say. A dragon is a company that grows so successfully it
returns all investors money. Stats suggest only one in four
unicorns are dragons, which explains the old Silicon Valley
saying: “Unicorns are for show. Dragons are for dough.”

Burn Rate – the speed at which a company spends cash,

usually over a month. Ideally not too fast and not too slow.
One way to reduce your burn is through …

Sweat equity – shares in your company given to employees or

investors for work done rather than cash invested – slightly
different to your …

ESOP – or Employee Stock Option Plan, which offers shares in

your company to employees to incentivise staff to stay with
the company.

Vest – how the options in your ESOP gain value over a pre-
determined amount of time.

Pivot – what happens when you realise that the small wooden
office message board with a spring loaded paper holder you
spent so long perfecting would sell much faster as a
mousetrap. Recognising potential failure and adjusting to
create success, in other words.

Acceptable ways to measure success include:

ARR – Annual Recurring Revenue … when you look back at

your Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) over the Last Twelve
Months (LTM).

EBITDA – Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and

Amortisation … essentially a measure of profits. First coined in
the 1980s by city firms mounting buyout bids through heavy
borrowing. Strips out expenses that can muddy a company’s
day-to-day performance. Now used by investors as a measure
of how much money a young company is making. Handle with
care – it can make your company look cheaper than it really is.
Avoid vanity metrics – measuring your success with data that
validates your personal decisions but offers no solid business
insights, such as quoting huge growth percentages without
offering any context.

GAAP – Generally Accepted Accounting Practice. Shorthand

for the rules on what’s needed in your company’s published
accounts – as set by the UK’s FRC or Financial Reporting
Council. The only way to communicate real success.

Hockey stick – the shape of the growth curve VCs dream of,

as it describes a company that doubles sales every year,
leading to an …

Exit – whether you sell, IPO (Initial Public Offering/floating on

the stock market) LBO(Leveraged Buy Out, where someone
borrows money in a takeover bid) or any other way out, there
are really only two exits: a good one and a bad one. Finding
the right advice at the right stage is the best way to secure a
…

Home run – when your company has an exit that returns 20 or

more times investors’ initial capital. Game changed.

Whether your business is a gazelle or a unicorn, Barclays

understands the challenges and opportunities for
entrepreneurs and high-growth businesses. To find out how
Barclays supports entrepreneurs, visit  Barclays High Growth &
Entrepreneurs