Glossary

An acquisition is when one company purchases most or all of another company's shares to gain control of that company.

An angel investor (also known as a private investor, seed investor or angel funder) is a high net worth individual who provides financial backing for small startups or entrepreneurs, typically in exchange for ownership equity in the company.

B2B or business-to-business refers to business that is conducted between companies, rather than between a company and individual consumer.

The term B2C or business-to-consumer refers to the process of selling products and services directly between a business and consumers who are the end-users of its products or services.

A short and rigorous training program.

Capital is a sum of money provided to a company to further its business objectives.

A capitalization table, also known as a cap table, is a spreadsheet or table that shows all the company’s equity ownership capital, such as common equity shares, preferred equity shares, warrants, and convertible equity for a company.

Chief Financial Officer.

Cost of goods sold or COGS refers to the direct costs of producing the goods sold by a company. This amount includes the cost of the materials and labor directly used to create the good.

Crowdfunding is the use of small amounts of capital from a large number of individuals to finance a new business venture.

Debt financing occurs when a firm raises money for working capital or capital expenditures by selling debt instruments in return the company promises that the principal and interest on the debt will be repaid.

A business or organization.

Equity is typically referred to as shareholder equity (also known as shareholders' equity or owners equity), which represents the amount of money that would be returned to a company’s shareholders if all of the assets were liquidated and all of the company's debt was paid off.

Impacting investing aims to generate specific beneficial social or environmental effects in addition to financial gains.

An incubator is an organization engaged in the business of fostering early-stage companies through the different developmental phases until the companies have sufficient financial, human, and physical resources to function on their own.

A makerspace is a collaborative work space inside a school, library or separate public/private facility for making, learning, exploring and sharing that uses high tech to no tech tools.

Pre-seed funding, is a funding stage that typically refers to the period in which a company's founders are first getting their operations off the ground. The most common pre-seed funders are the founders themselves, as well as close friends, supporters, and family.

A secondary is a transaction involving the sale of equity or a company by investors.

Seed capital is the initial funding used to begin creating a business or a new product.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization aims to draw the greatest amount of traffic possible to a website by bringing it to the top of a search engine's results.

A startup studio is a structure whose aim is to repeatedly build companies. Thanks to its infrastructure and resources, startup studios increase a startup’s chance of success and optimize its creation and growth.

Upskilling provides (someone, such as an employee) with more advanced skills through additional education and training.

A venture capitalist or VC is a private equity investor that provides capital to companies exhibiting high growth potential in exchange for an equity stake.

VC (Institutional) is a type of funding includes venture capital from professionally managed funds that have between $25 million and $1 billion to invest in emerging growth companies.