In small-business circles, special terms and epithets are often quickly exchanged for easy communication between savvy players of the game.
You might call it vocabulary of entrepreneur taxonomy. For the unseasoned and unjargonized, however, events involving vets effortlessly ping ponging such terms back and forth can be discomfiting. After all, smiling and nodding can only contribute so much to a good time.
Office Divvy’s “Entrepreneur Night,” (where Startup-founders, business-people, aspiring entrepreneurs, investors, and folks in services and other supportive roles to entrepreneurs gather once a month) is an example of one such event that takes place at the local level (Though it’s a pretty understanding crowd). Though it should be said that Entrepreneur Night is a great opportunity to level up your game. Nonetheless, to give a leg up to all those newbies of this world, we defined some entrepreneur/business terms to keep at your disposal not only so you can keep up but also so you can impress. Let us issue just one warning, though: No one likes a “know-it-all.” So exercise a little restraint. 🙂
Here they are:
Angel Investor: An accredited investor who provides financial backing for small Startups or entrepreneurs and who typically is less aggressive and more entrepreneur friendly and a Venture Capitalist.
Baseline: A minimum or starting point used for comparisons.
Bootstrapping: The methodology of being scrappy through self-funding and resourcefulness in the startup phase.
Boutique: A small firm that provides specialized services for a particular segment of the market.
Brick and mortar: Brick and mortar is a traditional street-side business dealing with its customers face to face in-office or store that the business owns or rents.
Business Incubator: A company that helps new and startup companies develop by providing services such as management training or office space.
Capital outlay: Money spent to acquire, maintain, repair, or upgrade capital assets such as machinery, land, and other business necessities.
Cash Flow: The channeling of cash into or out of an account, business or investment. Cash flow is used to pay creditors, employees, suppliers and the business owner(s) themselves. Cash flow is what keeps said owners’ world afloat. Usually cash flow is broken down into three categories: operational; investment; and financing.
Cluster: A network of connected businesses, suppliers, and associates in a specific field that are all located in the same geographical area to help increase efficiency and productivity.
Coworking: Working independently, alongside others in a communal space.
CRM: Customer Relationship Management: a strategy for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with your customers and potential customers. The term usually refers to software service, i.e: Salesforce.
Crowdfunding: The practice of funding a project or venture by raising money through a series of small donations or pre-sales from a large number of people, usually via the Internet, i.e: Kickstarter.
Crowdsourcing: The practice of engaging a ‘crowd’ or group for a common goal — often innovation, problem solving, or efficiency.
Early Seed phase: Stage in a business before one has customers or revenue.
eCommerce: Commercial transactions conducted electronically on the Internet.
Exit: The planned point at which an investor sells his or her stake in a firm to realize his gains (or losses).
Freelancer: A person who is self-employed and is not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Contractors and consultants fall into this category.
Ideapreneur: An entrepreneur who is good at creating new, innovative ideas, with the vision to realize it. The ability to move an idea from ideation to execution is essential to being an ideapreneur. Without that, an individual is more accurately classified as a “wannapreneur” or “ideawannapreneur.”
Inbound Sales: Sales that occur when a customer comes to a business either by phone, in-person or online because of your marketing strategy or any other reason.
Intercompany: Activities conducted between two or more affiliates or business units belonging to the same parent company.
Intrapreneur: An employee or an executive of a corporation who thinks, acts, and operates with entrepreneurial spirit. An intrapreneur takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation. The word derives from intracorporate entrepreneur. Spencer Silver and Art Fry-–the folks who made the Post-It Notes happen at 3M–make for good examples of intrapreneurship.
Liquidity: Refers to the ease with which a business or company is able to convert assets into cash, which is, itself, the most liquid asset.
Mompreneur: A female entrepreneur actively juggling the role of mom and entrepreneur on a daily basis.
Outbound Sales: Sales that occur when a business reaches out to a customer either by phone, in-person or online.
Overhead: An accounting term referring to all ongoing business expenses not including or related to direct labor, direct materials or third-party expenses billed directly to customers.
Pain-point: A problem, real or perceived, that entrepreneurs can create solutions for.
Pre-Seed phase: “Pre-seed” investing refers to a round of pre-funding during the conceptual stage, and is an alternative method of raising money to financing from friends and family or investor checks.
Revenue: The total amount of money received by the company for goods sold or services provided during a certain time periods.
Scale: Adding revenue at an exponential rate while only adding resources at an incremental rate.
Silverpreneur: An entrepreneur who is starting a business later in life (typically 55+) .
Solopreneur: An entrepreneur who works alone, (hence “solo”) and runs his or her business as a one-person-show. A solopreneur may subcontract individuals and consultants, yet must bear the full responsibility of running an entire business without an operational team. Because of the internet, there are many thriving, successful solopreneurs.
Soulpreneur: An entrepreneur who has turned his or her passion into a business, and runs it from the heart. Alternatively, the term can apply to folks who are in the business of meditation, yoga, massage therapy, life coaching, etc.
Startup Accelerator: Fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components and culminate in a public pitch event or demo day.
Startup company: A young company that is just beginning to take form that is initially financed and operated by a handful of founders or just one individual. These companies offer a product or service not currently being offered elsewhere in the market, or that the founders believe is being offered in an inferior manner.
Wannapreneur: A person who talks about (and even actually comes up with) ideas for business, talks about owning and running a business enterprise, but never takes the step to do so. A wannapreneur may behave like an entrepreneur, attend entrepreneur events, talk to others about his or her ideas, follow and share entrepreneur news, but can’t bring his-or-herself to take the actual risk associated with with being an entrepreneur. They remain stuck in ideation stage, waiting for everything to take care of itself.
Workflow: The sequence through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion.
VC (venture capital): A capital fund used to finance a Startup or Project frequently in exchange for equity and a board seat on behalf of the financier–a venture capitalist.
Venture Capitalist: An investor who either provides capital to startup ventures or supports small companies wishing to expand but don’t have access to equity markets.
Youngpreneur: A school-age (middle school, high school or college age) entrepreneur is often referred to as a youngpreneur-–but it can refer to anyone under the age of 21. Youngpreneurs maybe inexperienced, likely trying to get their first fledgling business off the ground or, on the other hand, may already be the owners of a multi-million business already.