Title: Entrepreneurship Startups Online Business — LearnCoachAssist

Q: What is entrepreneurship?
A: The process of designing, launching, and running a new business, typically starting as a small business offering a product, process, or service for sale or hire.

Q: What is a startup?
A: A young company founded to develop a unique product or service, bring it to market, and make it irresistible and irreplaceable for customers, often characterized by high growth potential.

Q: What is a business model?
A: A plan for how a company will generate revenue and make a profit, identifying products/services, target market, and anticipated expenses.

Q: What is bootstrapping in business?
A: Funding a startup using personal savings, revenue from the business, or minimal outside investment, without relying on venture capital or large loans.

Q: What is a value proposition?
A: A statement that explains how a product or service solves a problem, delivers benefits, and why customers should buy from you rather than competitors.

Q: What is MVP (Minimum Viable Product)?
A: The simplest version of a product that can be released to test a business hypothesis and gather validated learning from early customers with minimum effort.

Q: What is product-market fit?
A: The degree to which a product satisfies strong market demand, meaning you have found a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

Q: What is a pivot in startup terminology?
A: A fundamental change in business strategy when a company realizes its current products or services aren't meeting market needs, while keeping one foot rooted in what has been learned.

Q: What is venture capital (VC)?
A: A form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startups and early-stage companies deemed to have high growth potential in exchange for equity.

Q: What is an angel investor?
A: A high-net-worth individual who provides financial backing for small startups or entrepreneurs, typically in exchange for ownership equity or convertible debt.

Q: What is a pitch deck?
A: A brief presentation (typically 10-20 slides) used by entrepreneurs to provide a quick overview of their business plan to potential investors.

Q: What is burn rate?
A: The rate at which a startup spends its venture capital to finance overhead before generating positive cash flow, typically expressed as cash spent per month.

Q: What is runway in startup finance?
A: The amount of time a startup can continue operating before running out of money, calculated by dividing cash on hand by monthly burn rate.

Q: What is a unicorn startup?
A: A privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion, coined by Aileen Lee in 2013.

Q: What is a decacorn?
A: A startup company valued at over $10 billion.

Q: What is equity in a startup?
A: Ownership interest in the company, typically represented as shares of stock, which can be distributed among founders, investors, and employees.

Q: What is a cap table?
A: A capitalization table that lists all the securities a company has issued (stocks, options, warrants) and who owns them, tracking ownership percentages.

Q: What is vesting in startups?
A: The process by which an employee earns equity over time, typically over a 4-year period with a 1-year cliff, to incentivize long-term commitment.

Q: What is a 1-year cliff in vesting?
A: A provision where an employee must work for at least one year before any equity vests, after which a portion (usually 25%) vests immediately.

Q: What is dilution in startup equity?
A: The reduction in ownership percentage that occurs when a company issues new shares, typically during fundraising rounds.

Q: What is a term sheet?
A: A non-binding agreement outlining the basic terms and conditions of an investment, serving as a template for developing more detailed legal documents.

Q: What is due diligence in investing?
A: A comprehensive appraisal of a business undertaken by a prospective investor to evaluate its commercial potential, assets, liabilities, and risks before finalizing an investment.

Q: What is a Series A funding round?
A: The first significant round of venture capital financing, typically following seed funding, where the startup has developed a track record and is ready to scale.

Q: What is seed funding?
A: The initial capital used to start a business, often coming from founders, friends, family, or angel investors, used to prove a concept and attract further investment.

Q: What is pre-seed funding?
A: The earliest stage of funding, often used by founders to develop an idea, build a prototype, or conduct initial market research before seeking seed investment.

Q: What is a convertible note?
A: A short-term debt instrument that converts into equity, typically at a discount, during a future financing round, commonly used in early-stage startup funding.

Q: What is a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity)?
A: An investment contract created by Y Combinator that gives investors the right to receive equity in a future priced round, simpler than convertible notes.

Q: What is a pre-money valuation?
A: The value of a company before it receives external funding or the latest round of financing.

Q: What is a post-money valuation?
A: The value of a company after external funding and/or capital injections are added to its balance sheet (pre-money valuation + new investment).

Q: What is customer acquisition cost (CAC)?
A: The total cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing expenses, sales costs, and any other costs directly related to gaining a new customer.

Q: What is customer lifetime value (CLV or LTV)?
A: The predicted net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer, representing the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account.

Q: What is the ideal LTV to CAC ratio?
A: 3:1 or higher, meaning the lifetime value of a customer should be at least three times the cost of acquiring them.

Q: What is churn rate?
A: The percentage of customers who stop using a product or service during a given time period, a critical metric for subscription-based businesses.

Q: What is monthly recurring revenue (MRR)?
A: The predictable total revenue generated by a business from all active subscriptions in a particular month, a key metric for SaaS companies.

Q: What is annual recurring revenue (ARR)?
A: The value of recurring revenue normalized to a one-year period, calculated as MRR × 12, used to measure the predictable revenue of subscription businesses.

Q: What is SaaS (Software as a Service)?
A: A software distribution model where applications are hosted by a provider and made available to customers over the internet, typically via subscription.

Q: What is PaaS (Platform as a Service)?
A: A cloud computing model that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications without dealing with infrastructure complexity.

Q: What is IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)?
A: A cloud computing model that provides virtualized computing resources over the internet, such as servers, storage, and networking.

Q: What is a freemium model?
A: A pricing strategy where a basic product or service is provided free of charge while more advanced features require payment.

Q: What is a subscription business model?
A: A business model where customers pay a recurring fee (monthly or annually) to access a product or service.

Q: What is a marketplace business model?
A: A platform that connects buyers and sellers, earning revenue through commissions, listing fees, or transaction fees (e.g., eBay, Airbnb, Uber).

Q: What is the razor and blades business model?
A: A strategy where a base product is sold at a low price (or given away) while consumable parts required for use are sold at a premium (e.g., printers and ink).

Q: What is a franchise business model?
A: A business model where the franchisor licenses its brand, business model, and operational processes to franchisees in exchange for fees and royalties.

Q: What is dropshipping?
A: An e-commerce fulfillment method where a store doesn't keep products in stock but instead transfers customer orders to a third-party supplier who ships directly to the customer.

Q: What is print on demand (POD)?
A: A business model where products (T-shirts, mugs, books) are only printed and shipped after a customer places an order, eliminating inventory risk.

Q: What is affiliate marketing?
A: A performance-based marketing strategy where a business rewards affiliates for each customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts, typically through tracked links.

Q: What is an online course business?
A: A business model where creators develop and sell educational content in structured formats (video, text, quizzes) through platforms like Udemy, Teachable, or self-hosted sites.

Q: What is a digital product business?
A: A business that creates and sells non-physical goods such as eBooks, templates, software, music, or digital art that can be distributed electronically.

Q: What is a membership site?
A: An online business that charges recurring fees for access to exclusive content, community, tools, or resources behind a paywall.

Q: What is content marketing?
A: A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and drive profitable customer action.

Q: What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
A: The practice of optimizing a website's content and structure to rank higher in search engine results pages, increasing organic (non-paid) traffic.

Q: What is SEM (Search Engine Marketing)?
A: A digital marketing strategy used to increase visibility in search engine results pages through paid advertising (e.g., Google Ads) and SEO.

Q: What is PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising?
A: An online advertising model where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their ads, commonly used on search engines and social media platforms.

Q: What is conversion rate?
A: The percentage of visitors to a website or landing page who complete a desired action (purchase, sign-up, download) out of total visitors.

Q: What is a landing page?
A: A standalone web page created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign, designed to direct visitors toward a single call to action.

Q: What is A/B testing?
A: A method of comparing two versions of a webpage, email, or other marketing asset to determine which one performs better based on a specific metric.

Q: What is a sales funnel?
A: The journey a potential customer goes through from first awareness of a product to making a purchase, typically visualized as stages: awareness, interest, decision, action.

Q: What is the AIDA model?
A: A marketing model describing the stages a customer goes through: Attention (awareness), Interest, Desire, and Action (purchase).

Q: What is lean startup methodology?
A: An approach to building businesses and products that emphasizes rapid iteration, validated learning, and experimentation over elaborate planning.

Q: Who developed the Lean Startup methodology?
A: Eric Ries, described in his 2011 book "The Lean Startup."

Q: What is the Build-Measure-Learn loop?
A: The core component of lean startup methodology: build a minimum viable product, measure its effectiveness with real customers, and learn whether to pivot or persevere.

Q: What is validated learning?
A: A process in which a startup tests its hypotheses by running experiments with real customers, using empirical data to validate or invalidate business assumptions.

Q: What is the Business Model Canvas?
A: A strategic management template with nine building blocks for developing new or documenting existing business models, created by Alexander Osterwalder.

Q: Name the 9 building blocks of the Business Model Canvas.
A: 1) Customer Segments, 2) Value Propositions, 3) Channels, 4) Customer Relationships, 5) Revenue Streams, 6) Key Resources, 7) Key Activities, 8) Key Partnerships, 9) Cost Structure.

Q: What is the Lean Canvas?
A: An adaptation of the Business Model Canvas by Ash Maurya, tailored for startups, replacing some blocks with Problem, Solution, Key Metrics, and Unfair Advantage.

Q: What is design thinking?
A: A human-centered approach to innovation that integrates the needs of people, possibilities of technology, and requirements for business success through empathy, ideation, and prototyping.

Q: What are the 5 stages of design thinking?
A: 1) Empathize, 2) Define, 3) Ideate, 4) Prototype, 5) Test.

Q: What is the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework?
A: A theory that customers "hire" products to get specific jobs done, focusing on the underlying motivation rather than the product itself to drive innovation.

Q: What is a competitive advantage?
A: A condition or circumstance that puts a company in a favorable business position, making it difficult for competitors to replicate (e.g., lower costs, unique technology, brand loyalty).

Q: What is a moat in business?
A: A sustainable competitive advantage that protects a company from competitors, analogous to a moat protecting a castle (term popularized by Warren Buffett).

Q: What are the types of business moats?
A: Network effects, switching costs, economies of scale, brand, intellectual property, regulatory advantages, and cost advantages.

Q: What is a network effect?
A: A phenomenon where a product or service becomes more valuable as more people use it (e.g., social networks, marketplaces, communication platforms).

Q: What is first-mover advantage?
A: The competitive advantage gained by the first significant company to move into a new market, though it can also bring first-mover disadvantages.

Q: What is a go-to-market (GTM) strategy?
A: A plan that details how a company will launch a product to market, reach target customers, and achieve competitive advantage, including pricing, distribution, and marketing strategies.

Q: What is product-led growth (PLG)?
A: A business methodology where user acquisition, expansion, conversion, and retention are driven primarily by the product itself rather than traditional sales teams.

Q: What is growth hacking?
A: A marketing strategy focused on rapid experimentation across channels and product development to identify the most effective ways to grow a business quickly.

Q: What is viral coefficient (K-factor)?
A: A metric that measures the number of new users each existing user generates, indicating whether a product has viral growth potential (K > 1 means viral growth).

Q: What is the hockey stick growth curve?
A: A pattern of growth where a business experiences a long period of flat or slow growth followed by a sudden and dramatic increase, resembling a hockey stick shape.

Q: What is the J-curve in startups?
A: The pattern where a startup's returns initially dip negative (investment/losses phase) before rising sharply as the company gains traction and profitability.

Q: What is a business incubator?
A: An organization designed to accelerate the growth and success of entrepreneurial companies through mentorship, resources, and services, typically for early-stage startups.

Q: What is a business accelerator?
A: A fixed-term, cohort-based program that provides startups with mentorship, education, and sometimes funding in exchange for equity, designed to accelerate growth (e.g., Y Combinator, Techstars).

Q: What is Y Combinator?
A: One of the most prestigious startup accelerators, founded in 2005, which has funded over 4,000 startups including Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, and Reddit.

Q: What is an exit strategy?
A: A planned approach to transitioning ownership of a company, such as an IPO, acquisition, merger, or management buyout, to realize the value of the investment.

Q: What is an IPO (Initial Public Offering)?
A: The process by which a private company offers shares to the public for the first time on a stock exchange to raise capital.

Q: What is an acquisition in business?
A: When one company purchases most or all of another company's shares or assets to gain control, often used as an exit strategy for startups.

Q: What is an acqui-hire?
A: An acquisition made primarily to recruit the target company's employees rather than to gain its products or services.

Q: What is a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company)?
A: A shell company formed to raise capital through an IPO for the purpose of acquiring an existing company, providing an alternative path to going public.

Q: What is a lifestyle business?
A: A business set up and run by its founders primarily to sustain a particular level of income and personal lifestyle rather than to maximize growth or revenue.

Q: What is a solopreneur?
A: An entrepreneur who runs their business single-handedly, handling all aspects of operations without partners or employees.

Q: What is a side hustle?
A: A secondary job or business pursued alongside one's primary employment, often used to explore entrepreneurial ideas or earn additional income.

Q: What is passive income?
A: Income that requires minimal ongoing effort to earn, such as rental income, royalties, dividends, or revenue from automated online businesses.

Q: What is an e-commerce store?
A: An online retail business that sells products or services over the internet, using platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, or custom-built websites.

Q: What is Shopify?
A: A leading e-commerce platform that allows entrepreneurs to create online stores, manage products, process payments, and handle shipping with minimal technical knowledge.

Q: What is WooCommerce?
A: A free, open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress that enables businesses to turn their WordPress site into a fully functional online store.

Q: What is Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon)?
A: A service where sellers send products to Amazon's fulfillment centers, and Amazon handles storage, packaging, shipping, customer service, and returns.

Q: What is private labeling?
A: The practice of selling products manufactured by a third party under your own brand name, common in e-commerce and retail.

Q: What is white labeling?
A: A product or service produced by one company that other companies rebrand to make it appear as if they had made it, sold under the reseller's brand.

Q: What is a niche market?
A: A specific, defined segment of the market focused on a particular product, service, or audience with unique needs and preferences.

Q: What is market segmentation?
A: The process of dividing a broad target market into subsets of consumers who have common needs, characteristics, or behaviors.

Q: What are the four types of market segmentation?
A: 1) Demographic (age, gender, income), 2) Geographic (location), 3) Psychographic (lifestyle, values), 4) Behavioral (usage patterns, brand loyalty).

Q: What is a target market?
A: A specific group of consumers most likely to want a product or service, defined by demographics, interests, and buying behavior.

Q: What is a buyer persona?
A: A semi-fictional representation of an ideal customer based on market research and real data about existing customers, including demographics, behavior, motivations, and goals.

Q: What is TAM (Total Addressable Market)?
A: The total revenue opportunity available for a product or service if 100% market share was achieved, representing the maximum potential market.

Q: What is SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market)?
A: The segment of TAM targeted by your products and services that is within your geographical reach.

Q: What is SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market)?
A: The portion of SAM that you can realistically capture, considering competition and your company's capabilities.

Q: What is a blue ocean strategy?
A: A business strategy that creates new market space (blue ocean) rather than competing in existing markets (red ocean), making competition irrelevant.

Q: What is a red ocean strategy?
A: Competing in existing market spaces where industry boundaries are defined and competitors try to outperform each other for greater market share.

Q: What is disruptive innovation?
A: An innovation that creates a new market and value network, eventually displacing established market-leading firms and products, coined by Clayton Christensen.

Q: What is the innovator's dilemma?
A: The challenge that established companies face when disruptive technologies emerge — they focus on improving existing products for current customers rather than adopting new technologies.

Q: What is a lean business?
A: A business that minimizes waste and maximizes value by focusing only on activities that directly create value for customers.

Q: What is agile methodology in business?
A: An iterative approach to project management and product development that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, customer feedback, and rapid delivery of working products.

Q: What is a sprint in agile?
A: A fixed time period (usually 1-4 weeks) during which a specific set of work must be completed and made ready for review.

Q: What is a scrum in business?
A: An agile framework for managing work, with emphasis on teamwork, accountability, and iterative progress toward a well-defined goal.

Q: What is OKR (Objectives and Key Results)?
A: A goal-setting framework used to define and track objectives and their measurable outcomes, popularized by Intel and Google.

Q: What is a KPI (Key Performance Indicator)?
A: A measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives.

Q: What are North Star Metrics?
A: The single metric that best captures the core value a product delivers to customers, used to guide a company's long-term growth strategy.

Q: What is unit economics?
A: The direct revenues and costs associated with a particular business model, expressed on a per-unit basis (per customer, per product, per transaction).

Q: What is gross margin?
A: The difference between revenue and cost of goods sold (COGS), expressed as a percentage of revenue, indicating how efficiently a company produces its goods.

Q: What is net profit margin?
A: The percentage of revenue remaining after all operating expenses, interest, taxes, and preferred stock dividends have been deducted.

Q: What is cash flow?
A: The net amount of cash being transferred into and out of a business, critical for day-to-day operations and long-term survival.

Q: What is the difference between revenue and profit?
A: Revenue is total income from sales before expenses; profit is what remains after subtracting all costs and expenses from revenue.

Q: What is break-even point?
A: The point at which total revenue equals total costs, meaning the business is neither making a profit nor a loss.

Q: What is a P&L statement (Profit and Loss)?
A: A financial statement that summarizes revenues, costs, and expenses incurred during a specific period, showing whether a company is profitable.

Q: What is a balance sheet?
A: A financial statement that reports a company's assets, liabilities, and shareholders' equity at a specific point in time.

Q: What is a cash flow statement?
A: A financial statement that shows how changes in balance sheet accounts and income affect cash, broken into operating, investing, and financing activities.

Q: What is accounts receivable?
A: Money owed to a business by its customers for goods or services delivered but not yet paid for.

Q: What is accounts payable?
A: Money a business owes to its suppliers for goods or services received but not yet paid for.

Q: What is working capital?
A: The difference between a company's current assets and current liabilities, measuring short-term liquidity and operational efficiency.

Q: What is EBITDA?
A: Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization — a measure of a company's overall financial performance used as an alternative to net income.

Q: What is a pro forma financial statement?
A: A projected financial statement based on assumptions about future events, used for business planning and fundraising.

Q: What is intellectual property (IP)?
A: Creations of the mind (inventions, designs, brand names, artistic works) that are legally protected through patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.

Q: What is a patent?
A: A government-granted exclusive right to an inventor to make, use, and sell an invention for a limited period (typically 20 years).

Q: What is a trademark?
A: A recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies and distinguishes products or services of a particular source from others.

Q: What is a copyright?
A: A legal right that gives the creator of an original work exclusive rights to use and distribute that work, typically for the creator's lifetime plus 70 years.

Q: What is a trade secret?
A: Confidential business information that provides a competitive advantage, such as formulas, processes, or customer lists, protected without formal registration.

Q: What is a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)?
A: A legal contract between parties that outlines confidential material they wish to share but restrict from wider use, protecting proprietary information.

Q: What is a non-compete agreement?
A: A contract where one party agrees not to enter into competition with the other party for a specified period and within a certain geographic area.

Q: What is a co-founder agreement?
A: A legal document outlining the roles, responsibilities, equity distribution, decision-making processes, and exit provisions between co-founders of a startup.

Q: What is an LLC (Limited Liability Company)?
A: A business structure that combines the pass-through taxation of a partnership with the limited liability of a corporation, protecting owners' personal assets.

Q: What is a C-Corporation?
A: A legal structure for a corporation where the owners or shareholders are taxed separately from the entity, the standard structure for VC-backed startups.

Q: What is an S-Corporation?
A: A special type of corporation that passes corporate income, losses, deductions, and credits through to shareholders for federal tax purposes, avoiding double taxation.

Q: What is a sole proprietorship?
A: The simplest business structure where one person owns and operates the business, with no legal distinction between the owner and the business.

Q: What is a B-Corporation (Benefit Corporation)?
A: A type of for-profit corporate entity that includes positive impact on society, workers, the community, and the environment in addition to profit as legally defined goals.

Q: What is a social enterprise?
A: A business that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being alongside financial returns.

Q: What is crowdfunding?
A: The practice of funding a project or venture by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via internet platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

Q: What is equity crowdfunding?
A: A form of crowdfunding where investors receive ownership stakes in the company in exchange for their investment, regulated by securities laws.

Q: What is reward-based crowdfunding?
A: A crowdfunding model where backers receive a non-financial reward (usually the product being developed) in exchange for their contribution.

Q: What is a grant for startups?
A: Non-repayable funds provided by government agencies, foundations, or organizations to support business development, innovation, or research without requiring equity.

Q: What is bootstrapping vs. VC funding?
A: Bootstrapping means self-funding with no external investors (retaining full control); VC funding means raising capital from investors in exchange for equity (faster growth but diluted ownership).

Q: What is a business plan?
A: A formal document outlining business goals, strategies, target market, financial projections, and operational plans, used to guide the business and attract investors.

Q: What is a lean business plan?
A: A simplified, one-page business plan focusing on key elements: strategy, tactics, business model, and schedule, designed to be a living document that evolves.

Q: What is the difference between B2B and B2C?
A: B2B (Business-to-Business) sells products/services to other businesses; B2C (Business-to-Consumer) sells directly to individual consumers.

Q: What is B2B2C?
A: A business model where a company sells to businesses who then sell to consumers, creating a chain that benefits all parties (e.g., Shopify enabling merchants to sell to consumers).

Q: What is D2C (Direct-to-Consumer)?
A: A business model where companies sell products directly to consumers, bypassing traditional retailers or middlemen (e.g., Warby Parker, Dollar Shave Club).

Q: What is a platform business model?
A: A business model that creates value by facilitating exchanges between two or more interdependent groups, usually consumers and producers (e.g., Uber, Airbnb).

Q: What is the sharing economy?
A: An economic system where assets or services are shared between private individuals, either for free or for a fee, typically through an online platform.

Q: What is the gig economy?
A: A labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs, often facilitated by digital platforms.

Q: What is a digital nomad?
A: A person who uses technology to work remotely while traveling, often running an online business or freelancing from various locations around the world.

Q: What is freelancing as a business?
A: Self-employment where individuals offer their skills and services (writing, design, development, consulting) to multiple clients without long-term employment commitments.

Q: What is consulting as a business model?
A: Providing expert advice and services in a particular field to businesses or individuals, typically charging hourly rates, project fees, or retainer fees.

Q: What is a coaching business?
A: A service-based business where a coach helps clients achieve specific personal or professional goals through structured sessions, accountability, and guidance.

Q: What is an agency business model?
A: A business that provides specialized services (marketing, design, development) to clients, typically with a team of professionals working on client projects.

Q: What is a productized service?
A: A service business that packages its offerings as standardized products with fixed scope, pricing, and deliverables, making services scalable and predictable.

Q: What is a newsletter business?
A: A content-based business model where creators build an email list and monetize through subscriptions, sponsorships, or affiliate marketing (e.g., Morning Brew, The Hustle).

Q: What is a podcast business?
A: A media business built around audio content, monetized through sponsorships, advertising, premium content, merchandise, or events.

Q: What is a YouTube channel as a business?
A: Creating video content on YouTube monetized through ad revenue (YouTube Partner Program), sponsorships, merchandise, memberships, and affiliate links.

Q: What is influencer marketing?
A: A marketing strategy that uses endorsements and product placements from individuals (influencers) who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts in their niche.

Q: What is a creator economy?
A: An economic ecosystem where individuals create content, products, or services and monetize their audience directly through platforms, subscriptions, and digital products.

Q: What is Patreon?
A: A membership platform that allows creators to earn a monthly income by providing exclusive rewards and content to their subscribers (patrons).

Q: What is Substack?
A: A platform that allows writers to publish newsletters and charge subscribers, keeping editorial independence while building a direct audience relationship.

Q: What is Gumroad?
A: An e-commerce platform designed for creators to sell digital products (eBooks, courses, software, art) directly to consumers with minimal setup.

Q: What is a white-label SaaS?
A: A software product created by one company that other companies rebrand and sell as their own, allowing businesses to offer software without building it from scratch.

Q: What is a micro-SaaS?
A: A small, niche SaaS product typically run by one person or a small team, targeting a specific problem with low overhead and sustainable recurring revenue.

Q: What is no-code development?
A: Building software applications using visual development platforms (e.g., Bubble, Webflow, Airtable) without writing traditional programming code.

Q: What is low-code development?
A: A software development approach that uses visual interfaces and pre-built components to minimize hand-coding, speeding up application delivery.

Q: What are no-code tools for building online businesses?
A: Platforms like Bubble (web apps), Webflow (websites), Zapier (automation), Airtable (databases), Shopify (e-commerce), and Notion (documentation).

Q: What is automation in online business?
A: Using tools and software (Zapier, Make, n8n) to automate repetitive tasks like email sequences, data entry, social posting, and customer onboarding.

Q: What is an email list in online business?
A: A collection of email addresses gathered from visitors/customers, considered one of the most valuable assets for marketing, engagement, and monetization.

Q: What is email marketing?
A: Using email to promote products/services, build relationships with customers, and drive conversions through newsletters, campaigns, and automated sequences.

Q: What is a lead magnet?
A: A free resource (eBook, checklist, template, webinar) offered in exchange for a visitor's email address, used to build an email list.

Q: What is a webinar funnel?
A: A marketing strategy that uses live or recorded online seminars to educate prospects and convert them into customers, often ending with a sales pitch.

Q: What is a tripwire offer?
A: A low-priced, high-value offer (typically $1-$20) designed to convert leads into customers, making them more likely to purchase higher-priced products later.

Q: What is upselling?
A: A sales technique where a seller encourages customers to purchase a more expensive item, an upgrade, or an add-on to increase the transaction value.

Q: What is cross-selling?
A: A strategy of selling complementary or related products to existing customers to increase revenue (e.g., "customers who bought X also bought Y").

Q: What is customer retention?
A: The ability of a company to retain its customers over a period of time, often more cost-effective than acquiring new customers (5-25x cheaper to retain than acquire).

Q: What is Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
A: A customer satisfaction metric measuring how likely customers are to recommend a company to others, scored from -100 to +100 based on a single survey question.

Q: What is product development lifecycle?
A: The process of bringing a new product to market, including stages: ideation, concept development, design, development, testing, launch, and iteration.

Q: What is the difference between a feature and a benefit?
A: A feature is what a product does (technical spec); a benefit is what the customer gains from using it (outcome/value), and benefits drive purchasing decisions.

Q: What is pricing strategy?
A: The method companies use to price their products or services, including cost-plus, value-based, competitive, penetration, skimming, and dynamic pricing.

Q: What is value-based pricing?
A: Setting a price based on the perceived value to the customer rather than on the cost of production, competitive prices, or market average.

Q: What is penetration pricing?
A: A strategy where a product is initially priced low to attract customers and gain market share quickly, with plans to increase the price later.

Q: What is price skimming?
A: Setting a high initial price for a new product and then gradually lowering it over time as competition increases and demand stabilizes.

Q: What is dynamic pricing?
A: A pricing strategy where prices are adjusted in real-time based on demand, competition, time, customer segment, or other factors (e.g., airline tickets, ride-sharing).

Q: What is tiered pricing in SaaS?
A: Offering multiple pricing tiers with different feature sets and usage limits, allowing customers to choose the plan that best fits their needs and budget.

Q: What is per-seat pricing?
A: A SaaS pricing model where the cost scales based on the number of users or seats, common in B2B software (e.g., Slack, Salesforce).

Q: What is usage-based pricing?
A: A pricing model where customers pay based on their actual usage of a product or service (e.g., API calls, storage, bandwidth).

Q: What is a loss leader strategy?
A: Pricing a product below cost to attract customers, hoping they will purchase other profitable products (e.g., Amazon selling Kindle devices at cost).

Q: What is the flywheel effect in business?
A: A concept where each part of the business reinforces the others, creating a self-sustaining loop of growth that gains momentum over time (popularized by Jim Collins and Amazon).

Q: What is a pivot vs. iteration?
A: A pivot is a fundamental change in strategy or direction; an iteration is a smaller adjustment or improvement within the existing strategy.

Q: What is the lean canvas Problem box?
A: The section identifying the top 1-3 problems your target customers face, which your product aims to solve.

Q: What is a problem-solution fit?
A: The stage where you have identified a real problem worth solving and have evidence that your proposed solution can address it effectively.

Q: What is customer discovery?
A: The process of testing business hypotheses about customers' problems, needs, and behaviors through direct conversations and observations, part of Steve Blank's methodology.

Q: What is customer development?
A: A four-step framework by Steve Blank: Customer Discovery, Customer Validation, Customer Creation, and Company Building, used to find and validate a business model.

Q: What is the "mom test" in customer interviews?
A: A set of rules for asking questions during customer interviews that even your mom can't lie about, focusing on past behavior rather than future intentions (from Rob Fitzpatrick's book).

Q: What is early adopter?
A: A customer who is among the first to use a new product or technology, willing to tolerate imperfections in exchange for being first to benefit.

Q: What is the technology adoption lifecycle?
A: The model showing how products are adopted: Innovators (2.5%), Early Adopters (13.5%), Early Majority (34%), Late Majority (34%), Laggards (16%).

Q: What is "crossing the chasm"?
A: Geoffrey Moore's concept about the gap between early adopters and the early majority, which startups must bridge to achieve mainstream market success.

Q: What is a beachhead market?
A: A small market segment that a startup targets first to gain initial traction before expanding to larger adjacent markets.

Q: What is the land-and-expand strategy?
A: Starting with a small initial deal or free offering within a target organization, then expanding usage and revenue within that account over time.

Q: What is bottom-up adoption?
A: A go-to-market strategy where individual users or teams adopt a product first, which then spreads throughout the organization (e.g., Slack, Notion).

Q: What is top-down sales?
A: A go-to-market strategy targeting executive decision-makers in an organization to sell enterprise-wide solutions.

Q: What is inbound marketing?
A: A strategy that attracts customers through relevant and helpful content, earning their attention rather than buying it (blogs, SEO, social media, lead magnets).

Q: What is outbound marketing?
A: Traditional marketing that pushes messages to potential customers through cold calls, cold emails, direct mail, TV/radio ads, and trade shows.

Q: What is guerrilla marketing?
A: Unconventional, low-cost marketing strategies that use creative, unexpected tactics to promote a product or service and generate buzz.

Q: What is viral marketing?
A: A marketing strategy that encourages individuals to share a marketing message, creating exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect.

Q: What is referral marketing?
A: A strategy that encourages existing customers to refer new customers through incentives like discounts, credits, or rewards for successful referrals.

Q: What is a referral program?
A: A systematic approach to generating word-of-mouth by offering rewards to customers who bring in new business (e.g., Dropbox's free storage for referrals).

Q: What is community-led growth?
A: A strategy where a company builds and nurtures a community around its product, leveraging community engagement to drive adoption, retention, and advocacy.

Q: What is a minimum lovable product (MLP)?
A: A product that goes beyond the MVP by not only solving a problem but also creating an emotional response that makes users love it and want to share it.

Q: What is a prototype?
A: An early model or sample of a product built to test a concept or process, ranging from paper sketches to functional digital prototypes.

Q: What is wireframing?
A: Creating a simplified visual representation of a product's layout and functionality, showing the structure without design details, used in early product development.

Q: What is user experience (UX)?
A: The overall experience a user has when interacting with a product, system, or service, encompassing usability, accessibility, and the pleasure provided.

Q: What is user interface (UI)?
A: The visual elements (buttons, menus, icons, layout) through which a user interacts with a software application or hardware device.

Q: What is technical debt?
A: The implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing a quick/easy solution now instead of a better approach that would take longer.

Q: What is scalability in business?
A: The ability of a business to grow and manage increased demand without suffering from a decline in performance or increased proportional costs.

Q: What is vertical scaling vs. horizontal scaling?
A: Vertical scaling adds more power to existing resources (bigger servers); horizontal scaling adds more resources (more servers), the latter being preferred for web applications.

Q: What is a tech stack?
A: The combination of programming languages, frameworks, databases, and tools used to build and run a software application.

Q: What is cloud computing?
A: The delivery of computing services (servers, storage, databases, networking, software) over the internet, enabling flexible resources and economies of scale.

Q: What is AWS (Amazon Web Services)?
A: Amazon's comprehensive cloud computing platform offering over 200 services including computing power, storage, databases, and machine learning.

Q: What is API (Application Programming Interface)?
A: A set of protocols and tools for building and integrating application software, allowing different systems to communicate with each other.

Q: What is an API-first business?
A: A company that builds its core product as an API, allowing other businesses to integrate its functionality into their own products (e.g., Stripe, Twilio, SendGrid).

Q: What is a data-driven business?
A: A company that makes strategic decisions based on data analysis and interpretation rather than intuition, using analytics to optimize operations and customer experience.

Q: What is analytics in online business?
A: The systematic collection, measurement, and analysis of website and marketing data to understand user behavior and optimize business performance.

Q: What is Google Analytics?
A: A free web analytics service by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, user behavior, and conversion data.

Q: What is cohort analysis?
A: A type of behavioral analytics that groups users by shared characteristics and analyzes their behavior over time to identify patterns in engagement and retention.

Q: What is a growth metric stack?
A: The set of key metrics a startup tracks to measure growth, typically including acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, and referral (AARRR framework).

Q: What is the AARRR framework (Pirate Metrics)?
A: A startup metrics model by Dave McClure: Acquisition (users find you), Activation (first great experience), Retention (users come back), Revenue (monetization), Referral (users tell others).

Q: What is activation rate?
A: The percentage of new users who complete a key action that indicates they have experienced the core value of a product (e.g., completing onboarding, first purchase).

Q: What is daily active users (DAU)?
A: The number of unique users who engage with a product on a given day, a key engagement metric for apps and platforms.

Q: What is monthly active users (MAU)?
A: The number of unique users who engage with a product within a 30-day period, used to measure the size and growth of a user base.

Q: What is the DAU/MAU ratio?
A: A stickiness metric showing what percentage of monthly users engage daily; a ratio above 20% is generally considered good for consumer apps.

Q: What is retention rate?
A: The percentage of customers who continue using a product or service over a specific period, the inverse of churn rate.

Q: What is a cohort retention curve?
A: A graph showing the percentage of users from a specific cohort who remain active over time, used to visualize and improve user retention.

Q: What is payback period in SaaS?
A: The time it takes to recover the cost of acquiring a customer (CAC), calculated as CAC divided by monthly gross margin per customer.

Q: What is the Rule of 40 in SaaS?
A: A principle stating that a healthy SaaS company's combined growth rate and profit margin should equal or exceed 40%.

Q: What is net revenue retention (NRR)?
A: The percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers including expansions, contractions, and churn, with >100% indicating growth from existing customers.

Q: What is gross revenue retention (GRR)?
A: The percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers excluding expansions, only accounting for contractions and churn, capped at 100%.

Q: What is expansion revenue?
A: Additional revenue generated from existing customers through upsells, cross-sells, or increased usage beyond their original purchase.

Q: What is negative churn?
A: When expansion revenue from existing customers exceeds the revenue lost from churned customers, resulting in net revenue growth from the existing customer base.

Q: What is a customer success team?
A: A team focused on helping customers achieve their desired outcomes while using the product, proactively ensuring satisfaction and reducing churn.

Q: What is onboarding in SaaS?
A: The process of guiding new users through initial setup and demonstrating product value, critical for activation and retention.

Q: What is a product tour?
A: An interactive guided experience within a software application that walks new users through key features and functionality during onboarding.

Q: What is feature flagging?
A: A technique that allows developers to enable or disable features for specific users without deploying new code, used for gradual rollouts and A/B testing.

Q: What is continuous deployment?
A: A software development practice where code changes are automatically tested and deployed to production, enabling rapid iteration.

Q: What is DevOps?
A: A set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the development lifecycle and deliver features frequently.

Q: What is a two-sided marketplace?
A: A platform that connects two distinct user groups who provide each other with network benefits, requiring solving the "chicken and egg" problem (e.g., Uber, Airbnb).

Q: How do you solve the chicken-and-egg problem in marketplaces?
A: Strategies include: subsidizing one side, building tools for one side first, seeding supply, geographic focus, single-player mode, and creating artificial demand.

Q: What is a managed marketplace?
A: A marketplace that actively manages transactions, quality control, pricing, and customer service rather than simply connecting buyers and sellers.

Q: What is take rate in marketplaces?
A: The percentage of each transaction that the marketplace platform retains as revenue, typically ranging from 5-30% depending on the industry.

Q: What is GMV (Gross Merchandise Value)?
A: The total value of merchandise sold over a given time period through a marketplace, before deducting fees, returns, and cancellations.

Q: What is domain authority?
A: A search engine ranking score (1-100) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages.

Q: What is backlinking?
A: The practice of getting other websites to link to your website, a key factor in SEO that signals credibility and authority to search engines.

Q: What is content SEO?
A: Optimizing website content (blog posts, pages) with relevant keywords, quality writing, and proper structure to improve organic search rankings.

Q: What is technical SEO?
A: Optimizing the technical aspects of a website (site speed, mobile-friendliness, crawlability, structured data) to improve search engine rankings.

Q: What is local SEO?
A: Optimizing a business's online presence to appear in local search results, particularly Google Maps and "near me" searches.

Q: What is social media marketing?
A: Using social media platforms to promote products, build brand awareness, engage with audiences, and drive website traffic.

Q: What is organic reach on social media?
A: The number of people who see your content without paid promotion, which has been declining on most platforms as algorithms prioritize paid content.

Q: What is paid social advertising?
A: Promoting content or products through paid placements on social media platforms (Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads, TikTok Ads).

Q: What is retargeting/remarketing?
A: Showing ads to people who have previously interacted with your website or content but didn't convert, keeping your brand top-of-mind.

Q: What is a pixel in digital marketing?
A: A small piece of code (like Facebook Pixel) placed on a website to track visitor behavior, enabling retargeting and conversion tracking.

Q: What is CRM (Customer Relationship Management)?
A: A system for managing all company interactions with current and potential customers, tracking communications, sales, and service history.

Q: What is a sales pipeline?
A: A visual representation of where potential customers are in the purchasing process, from initial contact through qualification, proposal, negotiation, to close.

Q: What is a marketing automation?
A: Using software to automate repetitive marketing tasks like emails, social media posting, ad campaigns, and lead nurturing based on triggers and workflows.

Q: What is a chatbot for business?
A: An AI-powered tool that simulates conversation with users on websites or messaging apps, handling customer inquiries, lead qualification, and support.

Q: What is AI in entrepreneurship?
A: Using artificial intelligence tools and technologies to automate tasks, generate content, analyze data, personalize experiences, and create new products/services.

Q: What is a digital transformation?
A: The integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers.

Q: What is a remote-first company?
A: A company designed from the ground up to have remote work as the default, with processes, tools, and culture built around distributed teams.

Q: What is async communication?
A: Communication that doesn't require all parties to be available at the same time (email, recorded video, project management tools), preferred in remote/distributed teams.

Q: What is the lean accounting approach for startups?
A: Focusing on innovation accounting metrics (actionable metrics over vanity metrics) to measure real progress toward building a sustainable business.

Q: What is vanity metrics vs. actionable metrics?
A: Vanity metrics look impressive but don't inform decisions (total page views); actionable metrics drive business decisions (conversion rate, CAC, retention).

Q: What is the ramen profitable stage?
A: A startup that generates just enough revenue to cover the founders' basic living expenses, coined by Paul Graham of Y Combinator.

Q: What is founder-market fit?
A: The alignment between founders' expertise, passion, and network with the market they're targeting, considered a strong predictor of startup success.

Q: What is the founding team composition?
A: The ideal startup founding team typically includes complementary skills: a hacker (technical), a hustler (business/sales), and a hipster (design/UX).

Q: What is a technical co-founder?
A: A co-founder who provides the technical expertise to build the product, typically a software engineer or developer responsible for the technology architecture.

Q: What is equity split among co-founders?
A: The division of ownership between co-founders, ideally decided early based on contributions, roles, and commitment, with vesting to protect all parties.

Q: What is a board of directors in a startup?
A: A group of individuals elected to represent shareholders and oversee the company's management, typically including founders, investors, and independent directors.

Q: What is an advisory board?
A: A group of external experts who provide strategic advice and industry connections to a startup, typically compensated with 0.25-1% equity.

Q: What is a startup ecosystem?
A: The network of interconnected organizations, resources, and stakeholders (investors, accelerators, mentors, universities, government) that support startup creation and growth.

Q: What is Silicon Valley?
A: A region in the San Francisco Bay Area known as the global center of technology innovation and venture capital, home to many of the world's largest tech companies.

Q: What is a startup hub?
A: A city or region with a concentration of startup activity, VC funding, talent, and support infrastructure (e.g., Silicon Valley, New York, London, Bangalore, Tel Aviv).

Q: What are the top reasons startups fail?
A: 1) No market need (42%), 2) Ran out of cash (29%), 3) Wrong team (23%), 4) Got outcompeted (19%), 5) Pricing/cost issues (18%), according to CB Insights research.

Q: What is the survival rate of startups?
A: Approximately 90% of startups fail, about 10% fail within the first year, and roughly 70% fail between years 2-5.

Q: What is a startup pitch?
A: A concise presentation to potential investors or partners explaining the problem, solution, market opportunity, business model, traction, team, and funding ask.

Q: What is the elevator pitch?
A: A brief, persuasive speech (30-60 seconds) used to spark interest in a business idea, named for the time it takes to ride an elevator.

Q: What is storytelling in entrepreneurship?
A: Using narrative techniques to communicate a business vision, connect emotionally with audiences, and make the brand memorable to customers and investors.

Q: What is a company culture?
A: The shared values, goals, attitudes, and practices that characterize an organization, crucial for attracting talent and driving business success.

Q: What is employer branding?
A: The process of promoting a company as an attractive employer to attract and retain talented employees, increasingly important for startups competing for talent.

Q: What is equity compensation?
A: Offering employees ownership stakes (stock options, RSUs) as part of their compensation package, common in startups that can't match large company salaries.

Q: What are stock options?
A: The right to buy company shares at a predetermined price (strike price) in the future, used as employee incentives in startups.

Q: What is an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan)?
A: A company-established benefit plan that allocates shares of the company's stock to employees, typically set at 10-20% of the total equity pool in startups.

Q: What is a value chain?
A: The full range of activities a business performs to deliver a product from conception to end use, including design, production, marketing, and distribution.

Q: What is vertical integration?
A: A strategy where a company owns or controls its suppliers, distributors, or retail locations to increase control over the value chain and reduce costs.

Q: What is horizontal integration?
A: A strategy where a company acquires or merges with competitors at the same level of the value chain to increase market share and reduce competition.

Q: What is a SWOT analysis?
A: A strategic planning framework evaluating Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats to help a business understand its competitive position.

Q: What is a PESTEL analysis?
A: A framework analyzing Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal factors that affect a business environment.

Q: What is Porter's Five Forces?
A: A framework analyzing five competitive forces: threat of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitutes, and industry rivalry.

Q: What is a core competency?
A: A unique capability or advantage that distinguishes a company from its competitors and is difficult to replicate, forming the foundation of competitive strategy.

Q: What is a mission statement?
A: A concise declaration of a company's purpose, defining why it exists, what it does, and who it serves.

Q: What is a vision statement?
A: A forward-looking declaration of a company's long-term aspirations, describing what the organization wants to become in the future.

Q: What is strategic planning?
A: The process of defining a company's direction and making decisions on allocating resources to pursue long-term goals and objectives.

Q: What is the Instagram pivot story?
A: Instagram started as Burbn, a location-based check-in app. The founders pivoted to focus solely on photo sharing after noticing that was the most popular feature.

Q: What is the Slack pivot story?
A: Slack was originally an internal communication tool built by a gaming company (Tiny Speck) that pivoted when the game failed but the chat tool proved valuable.

Q: What is the YouTube pivot story?
A: YouTube originally launched as a video dating site before pivoting to a general video-sharing platform when the dating concept failed to attract users.

Q: What is the Twitter pivot story?
A: Twitter evolved from Odeo, a podcasting platform that pivoted after Apple's iTunes made their product obsolete, leading to the microblogging concept.

Q: What is the Shopify pivot story?
A: Shopify started as an online snowboard store, but the founders built their own e-commerce platform and pivoted to selling that platform to other merchants.

Q: What is loss aversion in pricing?
A: The psychological tendency for people to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring equivalent gains, used in pricing strategies like free trials that convert to paid.

Q: What is anchoring in pricing?
A: A cognitive bias where people rely heavily on the first piece of information (the anchor) when making decisions, used to make prices seem more attractive.

Q: What is the decoy effect in pricing?
A: Adding a third, less attractive option to make one of the other two options seem like a better deal, nudging customers toward a target choice.

Q: What is psychological pricing?
A: Setting prices just below round numbers (e.g., $9.99 instead of $10) to make products appear cheaper due to left-digit bias.

Q: What is price elasticity of demand?
A: A measure of how sensitive customer demand is to a change in price; elastic demand changes significantly with price, inelastic demand does not.

Q: What is a razor-thin margin business?
A: A business operating on very low profit margins (1-5%), relying on high volume to generate significant total profit (e.g., grocery stores, Amazon retail).

Q: What is a high-margin business?
A: A business where the cost of delivering the product/service is low relative to the selling price (e.g., SaaS, consulting, digital products), typically 60-90% margins.

Q: What is operating leverage?
A: The degree to which a company can increase operating income by increasing revenue, higher in businesses with more fixed costs relative to variable costs.

Q: What is financial leverage?
A: Using borrowed capital to increase the potential return on investment, amplifying both gains and losses.

Q: What is bootstrapped profitability?
A: Achieving profitability without external funding by carefully managing costs and reinvesting revenue, allowing founders to retain full ownership.

Q: What does default alive vs. default dead mean?
A: Paul Graham's concept: a startup is 'default alive' if current revenue growth will exceed expenses before money runs out; 'default dead' if not.

Q: What is a zombie round?
A: A small funding round at flat or lower valuation that keeps a struggling startup alive but doesn't provide enough capital for meaningful growth.

Q: What is a wash-out round?
A: A financing round with extreme dilution that essentially wipes out the ownership of previous investors and founders.

Q: What is a flat round?
A: A funding round at the same valuation as the previous round, indicating the company hasn't grown in value but also hasn't declined.

Q: What is an inside round?
A: A funding round where only existing investors participate, often indicating difficulty attracting new investors.

Q: What is signaling risk in VC?
A: The negative signal sent when a startup's existing investors choose not to participate in a new funding round, suggesting they've lost confidence.

Q: What is a party round?
A: A funding round with many small investors but no lead investor, which can cause problems when no single investor has enough stake to provide meaningful guidance.

Q: What is a lead investor?
A: The primary investor in a funding round who typically negotiates terms, conducts due diligence, and often takes a board seat.

Q: What is syndicate investing?
A: A group of investors pooling capital together to invest in a startup, often organized by a lead investor or through platforms like AngelList.

Q: What is a venture studio?
A: An organization that builds startups in-house using its own ideas, resources, and team, rather than investing in external founders.

Q: What is an EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence)?
A: An experienced entrepreneur who joins a VC firm temporarily to develop new business ideas, evaluate deals, and potentially launch a new startup.

Q: What is the pivot-or-persevere decision?
A: A critical moment when founders must decide whether to change strategy (pivot) or continue with the current approach (persevere) based on validated learning.

Q: What is innovation accounting?
A: A method for startups to measure progress using actionable metrics, learning milestones, and validated learning rather than traditional financial accounting.

Q: What is a cohort-based course?
A: An online course where students learn together in a group with set start/end dates, combining self-paced content with live sessions and community interaction.

Q: What is an evergreen course?
A: An online course that is always available for purchase and self-paced, with no fixed start date, generating passive income continuously.

Q: What is knowledge commerce?
A: Monetizing expertise through digital products like online courses, workshops, eBooks, templates, and paid communities.

Q: What is a paid community business?
A: Building a membership community (via Circle, Discord, Mighty Networks) where members pay for access to exclusive discussions, networking, and content.

Q: What is a mastermind group?
A: A peer-to-peer mentoring group of entrepreneurs who meet regularly to support each other with advice, accountability, and collective problem-solving, often paid.

Q: What is a high-ticket coaching program?
A: A premium-priced coaching offer ($2,000-$50,000+) providing intensive, personalized guidance and transformation for clients.

Q: What is a group coaching program?
A: A coaching model serving multiple clients simultaneously in a structured program, more scalable than 1-on-1 coaching while maintaining personal interaction.

Q: What is a done-for-you (DFY) service?
A: A service where the provider handles everything for the client (e.g., website built for you, marketing managed for you), commanding premium prices.

Q: What is a done-with-you (DWY) service?
A: A service model between DIY and DFY where the provider works collaboratively with the client, offering guidance and templates while the client does some work.

Q: What is a template marketplace business?
A: An online business selling pre-made templates (Notion, Canva, Excel, website themes) that customers can customize, offering scalable passive income.

Q: What is a Notion template business?
A: Creating and selling pre-built Notion templates for productivity, project management, or specific workflows, sold through Gumroad or personal websites.

Q: What is a Canva template business?
A: Designing and selling social media templates, presentations, or marketing materials on Canva's marketplace or independent platforms.

Q: What is a prompt engineering business?
A: Creating and selling AI prompts, prompt libraries, or prompt-based tools that help users get better results from AI models like ChatGPT.

Q: What is an AI wrapper business?
A: Building a specialized application on top of AI APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic) that adds a user-friendly interface, specific workflows, or domain expertise.

Q: What is an AI automation agency?
A: A service business that helps companies implement AI tools and automations to streamline their operations, marketing, and customer service.

Q: What is a data-as-a-service (DaaS) business?
A: Collecting, processing, and selling access to specialized datasets or data feeds that businesses use for decision-making, research, or product development.

Q: What is a comparison/review website business?
A: Building a content site that reviews and compares products in a niche, monetized through affiliate commissions when visitors purchase through recommendation links.

Q: What is a lead generation business?
A: A business that generates and sells qualified leads to other businesses, using content marketing, advertising, and SEO to attract potential customers.

Q: What is an appointment setting business?
A: A service that books sales meetings for B2B companies by qualifying leads through cold outreach (email, LinkedIn, calls), paid per appointment or retainer.

Q: What is a virtual event business?
A: Organizing and hosting online conferences, summits, or workshops, monetized through ticket sales, sponsorships, and recordings.

Q: What is a job board business?
A: Creating a niche job board for a specific industry or role, monetized through employer listing fees, featured posts, and recruiter subscriptions.

Q: What is a directory business?
A: Building a curated list of businesses, tools, or resources in a niche, monetized through premium listings, advertising, and affiliate links.

Q: What is a Slack/Discord bot business?
A: Building bots that add functionality to communication platforms, monetized through subscriptions, per-workspace pricing, or freemium models.

Q: What is an API business model?
A: Building and selling access to an API that provides data, functionality, or integrations that other developers and businesses can plug into their products.

Q: What is a domain flipping business?
A: Buying undervalued domain names and reselling them at a profit, requiring knowledge of domain valuation, market trends, and branding potential.

Q: What is a website flipping business?
A: Buying, improving, and selling established websites for profit, similar to house flipping but with digital properties.

Q: What is Flippa?
A: A marketplace for buying and selling online businesses, websites, domains, and apps, commonly used for website flipping.

Q: What is Empire Flippers?
A: A curated marketplace for buying and selling established online businesses, typically in the $100K-$10M+ range, with a vetting process.

Q: What is a newsletter sponsorship model?
A: Monetizing a newsletter by selling ad placements or sponsored sections to businesses wanting to reach the newsletter's audience.

Q: What is CPM in newsletter advertising?
A: Cost per thousand subscribers who receive the email, typically ranging from $20-$80+ depending on niche quality and engagement rates.

Q: What is open rate in email marketing?
A: The percentage of email recipients who open a given email, with average rates typically between 15-25% depending on industry.

Q: What is click-through rate (CTR) in email?
A: The percentage of email recipients who click on one or more links within an email, typically 2-5% is considered good.

Q: What is email deliverability?
A: The ability to successfully deliver emails to subscribers' inboxes rather than spam folders, affected by sender reputation, content, and authentication.

Q: What is a double opt-in?
A: A two-step email subscription process where subscribers confirm their email address after initial signup, improving list quality and deliverability.

Q: What is an email drip campaign?
A: A series of automated emails sent on a predetermined schedule or triggered by user actions, used for onboarding, nurturing, and selling.

Q: What is a welcome email sequence?
A: An automated series of emails sent to new subscribers introducing your brand, delivering value, and guiding them toward a first purchase.

Q: What is an abandoned cart email?
A: An automated email sent to shoppers who add items to their cart but don't complete the purchase, recovering 5-15% of abandoned carts on average.

Q: What is segmentation in email marketing?
A: Dividing an email list into smaller groups based on criteria (behavior, demographics, purchase history) to send more relevant, targeted messages.

Q: What is personalization in marketing?
A: Tailoring marketing messages, product recommendations, and experiences to individual users based on their data, behavior, and preferences.

Q: What is behavioral targeting?
A: Using data about users' past behavior (browsing, purchases, clicks) to deliver more relevant advertisements and content.

Q: What is attribution modeling?
A: The process of determining which marketing channels and touchpoints contribute to conversions, helping allocate marketing budget effectively.

Q: What is multi-touch attribution?
A: An attribution model that gives credit to multiple touchpoints along the customer journey rather than just the first or last interaction.

Q: What is the marketing mix (4 Ps)?
A: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion — the four fundamental elements of a marketing strategy that businesses control to influence demand.

Q: What is the 7 Ps of marketing?
A: The extended marketing mix: Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process, and Physical evidence — adding service-oriented elements.

Q: What is brand positioning?
A: The process of positioning a brand in the mind of customers relative to competitors, defining what makes it unique and desirable.

Q: What is brand equity?
A: The commercial value derived from consumer perception of a brand name rather than the product itself, built through awareness, loyalty, and associations.

Q: What is a unique selling proposition (USP)?
A: The specific benefit that makes a product or service different from and better than the competition, the reason customers choose you.

Q: What is the difference between a tagline and a slogan?
A: A tagline is a permanent phrase associated with a brand (Nike's 'Just Do It'); a slogan is campaign-specific and may change.

Q: What is thought leadership?
A: Establishing oneself or a company as an authority in a specific field through content, speaking, and expertise, building trust and credibility.

Q: What is PR for startups?
A: Managing the spread of information between a startup and the public through media coverage, press releases, events, and storytelling to build brand awareness.

Q: What is a press release?
A: An official statement issued to media outlets announcing newsworthy events like product launches, funding rounds, or partnerships.

Q: What is earned media?
A: Free publicity gained through promotional efforts other than paid advertising, such as press coverage, social shares, reviews, and word-of-mouth.

Q: What is owned media?
A: Marketing channels a company controls, including its website, blog, email list, social media profiles, and mobile app.

Q: What is paid media?
A: Marketing channels where a company pays to reach audiences, including PPC ads, sponsored content, display advertising, and influencer partnerships.

Q: What is the earned-owned-paid media framework?
A: A marketing strategy framework that balances three types of media exposure to maximize reach, credibility, and efficiency.

Q: What is content repurposing?
A: Adapting existing content into different formats (blog post to video to podcast to social posts to newsletter) to maximize reach across multiple channels.

Q: What is the content pillar strategy?
A: Creating comprehensive cornerstone content pieces on key topics, then breaking them into smaller pieces distributed across multiple channels.

Q: What is evergreen content?
A: Content that remains relevant and valuable over time, continuing to attract traffic and engagement long after publication (e.g., how-to guides, tutorials).

Q: What is user-generated content (UGC)?
A: Content created by customers or users (reviews, photos, videos, testimonials) that a brand can leverage for authentic marketing.

Q: What is social proof in marketing?
A: The psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior, used through reviews, testimonials, and usage numbers.

Q: What are trust signals on a website?
A: Elements that build credibility: customer testimonials, security badges, money-back guarantees, press logos, case studies, and social proof indicators.

Q: What is a case study in B2B marketing?
A: A detailed account of how a customer successfully used a product or service, showcasing results and ROI to persuade potential buyers.

Q: What is a white paper in marketing?
A: An authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution, used in B2B marketing to generate leads.

Q: What is a product demo in sales?
A: A presentation showing how a product works and the value it provides, used in B2B sales to convert prospects into customers.

Q: What is a free trial conversion strategy?
A: Offering limited-time free access to a product, then converting users to paid plans through onboarding, value demonstration, and timely upgrade prompts.

Q: What is a reverse trial model?
A: Giving new users access to premium features for a limited time, then downgrading to a free plan, showing them what they'd lose by not upgrading.

Q: What is time-to-value (TTV)?
A: The time it takes for a new user to experience the core value of a product, with shorter TTV leading to better activation and retention.

Q: What is the 'aha moment' in products?
A: The point when a new user first realizes the value of a product, strongly correlated with long-term retention (e.g., Facebook's '7 friends in 10 days').

Q: What is feature adoption rate?
A: The percentage of users who use a specific feature, helping product teams understand which features drive value and which are underutilized.

Q: What is a feature request board?
A: A public or internal system where users can submit, vote on, and discuss product feature requests, helping prioritize the roadmap.

Q: What is a product roadmap?
A: A high-level visual summary of a product's vision, direction, priorities, and progress over time, communicating strategy to stakeholders.

Q: What is the RICE scoring model?
A: A prioritization framework scoring features by Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort to determine which to build first.

Q: What is the MoSCoW prioritization method?
A: A technique categorizing requirements as Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have this time, helping prioritize product features.

Q: What is a letter of intent (LOI)?
A: A document declaring the preliminary commitment of one party to do business with another, often used before formal agreements in partnerships or acquisitions.

Q: What is a service level agreement (SLA)?
A: A formal commitment between a service provider and customer defining expected service standards, responsibilities, and remedies for underperformance.

Q: What is scope creep?
A: The gradual expansion of a project's requirements beyond its original goals, often leading to delays, budget overruns, and reduced quality.

Q: What is Parkinson's Law in business?
A: The principle that work expands to fill the time available for its completion, suggesting shorter deadlines can increase productivity.

Q: What is the Eisenhower Matrix?
A: A time management tool categorizing tasks by urgency and importance into four quadrants: do, schedule, delegate, and eliminate.

Q: What is deep work?
A: Focused, uninterrupted cognitive work on high-value tasks, as described by Cal Newport, essential for entrepreneurs building complex products.

Q: What is time blocking?
A: Scheduling specific blocks of time for different tasks or categories of work, reducing context switching and improving productivity.

Q: What is the maker's schedule vs. manager's schedule?
A: Paul Graham's concept: makers (developers, writers) need long, uninterrupted blocks; managers work in 1-hour slots. Mixing them reduces maker productivity.

Q: What is decision fatigue?
A: The deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making, relevant for entrepreneurs who make countless daily decisions.

Q: What is analysis paralysis?
A: Over-analyzing or overthinking a situation so that no decision or action is taken, a common pitfall for entrepreneurs facing uncertainty.

Q: What is the sunk cost fallacy in business?
A: Continuing an endeavor because of previously invested resources (time, money, effort) rather than future value, leading to poor decisions.

Q: What is opportunity cost?
A: The potential benefit lost when choosing one alternative over another, critical for entrepreneurs with limited time and resources.

Q: What is effectuation theory?
A: A decision-making framework for entrepreneurs emphasizing what you can control (means, partnerships, affordable loss) rather than trying to predict the future.

Q: What is the affordable loss principle?
A: An effectuation principle where entrepreneurs decide what they're willing to lose rather than calculating expected returns, reducing downside risk.

Q: What is the bird-in-hand principle?
A: An effectuation principle that entrepreneurs should start with their existing means (who they are, what they know, who they know) rather than seeking ideal resources.

Q: What is a serial entrepreneur?
A: A person who starts multiple businesses over their career, often starting a new venture after exiting or stabilizing the previous one.

Q: What is intrapreneurship?
A: The practice of entrepreneurship within an existing organization, where employees innovate and develop new products or processes internally.

Q: What is corporate innovation?
A: Strategies and processes that large companies use to develop new products, services, or business models, often through internal labs or partnerships with startups.

Q: What is open innovation?
A: A paradigm where companies use external ideas and internal ideas to advance their technology, rather than relying solely on internal R&D.

Q: What is a hackathon for startups?
A: A time-limited event where participants collaborate intensively on software or hardware projects, often used to drive innovation and recruit talent.

Q: What is a minimum viable experiment (MVE)?
A: The smallest experiment that can be run to test a specific business hypothesis, cheaper and faster than building a full MVP.

Q: What is the ICE framework?
A: A prioritization method scoring growth experiments by Impact (potential outcome), Confidence (likelihood of success), and Ease (implementation effort).

Q: What is a North Star Framework?
A: A model for product-led growth companies built around a single North Star Metric and its input metrics that a team can directly influence.

Q: What is product analytics?
A: Tools and methods for understanding how users interact with a product, including user flows, feature usage, and conversion paths (e.g., Mixpanel, Amplitude).

Q: What is session recording in analytics?
A: A tool that captures user interactions on a website (clicks, scrolls, mouse movements) as video replays for UX analysis (e.g., Hotjar, FullStory).

Q: What is a heatmap in web analytics?
A: A visual representation showing where users click, move, and scroll on a webpage, helping identify areas of interest and friction.

Q: What is funnel analysis?
A: Analyzing the step-by-step conversion process users go through, identifying where they drop off and optimizing each stage to improve overall conversion.

Q: What is event tracking in analytics?
A: Recording specific user actions (button clicks, form submissions, page views) in analytics tools to understand behavior and measure feature engagement.

Q: What is business intelligence (BI)?
A: Technologies, practices, and strategies for collecting, integrating, analyzing, and presenting business data to support better decision-making.

Q: What is predictive analytics?
A: Using statistical algorithms and machine learning to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data.

Q: What is a customer data platform (CDP)?
A: A system that creates a unified, persistent customer database accessible to other systems, consolidating data from multiple sources.

Q: What is first-party data?
A: Data collected directly from your audience (website visitors, customers, email subscribers), increasingly valuable as third-party cookies are deprecated.

Q: What is zero-party data?
A: Data that a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand, such as preferences, purchase intentions, and feedback.

Q: What is GDPR compliance for online businesses?
A: Following the EU's General Data Protection Regulation requirements for handling personal data, including consent, data access rights, and breach notification.

Q: What is a privacy policy?
A: A legal document disclosing how a business collects, uses, shares, and protects customer data, required by law for most online businesses.

Q: What is terms of service (ToS)?
A: A legal agreement between a service provider and users outlining the rules, restrictions, and responsibilities for using the service.

Q: What is PCI DSS compliance?
A: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard — a set of security requirements for businesses that process, store, or transmit credit card data.

Q: What is a payment gateway?
A: A service that authorizes and processes credit card payments for online and physical stores (e.g., Stripe, PayPal, Square).

Q: What is Stripe for payments?
A: A technology company providing payment processing infrastructure for internet businesses, known for developer-friendly APIs and global payment support.

Q: What is recurring billing?
A: Automatically charging customers at regular intervals (monthly, annually) for subscription services, managed through payment processors like Stripe or Chargebee.

Q: What is dunning management?
A: The process of handling failed subscription payments through automated retry logic, reminder emails, and grace periods to reduce involuntary churn.

Q: What is involuntary churn?
A: Customer loss due to payment failures (expired cards, insufficient funds) rather than active cancellation, often preventable with dunning management.

Q: What is voluntary churn?
A: Customer loss due to active cancellation, driven by dissatisfaction, competitive alternatives, or no longer needing the product.

Q: What is a cancellation flow?
A: The user experience when a customer attempts to cancel a subscription, often including retention offers, feedback surveys, and pause options.

Q: What is revenue recovery?
A: Strategies to recapture lost revenue from failed payments, including smart retries, card updaters, and proactive customer outreach.

Q: What is annual billing discount?
A: Offering a reduced price (typically 15-20% off) for customers who pay annually instead of monthly, improving cash flow and reducing churn.

Q: What is consumption-based pricing?
A: Charging customers based on actual usage or consumption (API calls, storage, transactions) rather than flat subscription fees.

Q: What is hybrid pricing in SaaS?
A: A pricing model combining a base subscription fee with usage-based charges, offering predictability with flexibility.

Q: What is a pricing page best practice?
A: Show 3 tiers, highlight the recommended plan, use annual billing toggle, display social proof, include FAQ, and make CTAs prominent.

Q: What is the most common SaaS pricing mistake?
A: Underpricing — charging too little based on costs rather than value delivered, leaving significant revenue on the table.

Q: What is the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter?
A: A survey technique using four price-related questions to determine an acceptable price range for a product based on customer perceptions.

Q: What is value metric in SaaS pricing?
A: The unit of measurement that aligns pricing with value delivered (per user, per transaction, per GB), ensuring customers pay proportionally to value received.

Q: What is a freemium conversion rate benchmark?
A: Typical freemium-to-paid conversion rates range from 2-5% for consumer products and 5-15% for B2B SaaS products.

Q: What is a free trial conversion rate benchmark?
A: Typical free trial to paid conversion rates range from 15-25% for opt-in trials and 40-60% for trials requiring credit card upfront.

Q: What is a product-qualified lead (PQL)?
A: A user who has experienced meaningful value in a free product and is likely to convert to a paid customer, more valuable than traditional MQLs.

Q: What is a marketing-qualified lead (MQL)?
A: A lead who has shown interest through marketing interactions (content downloads, webinar attendance) and is ready for sales outreach.

Q: What is a sales-qualified lead (SQL)?
A: A prospective customer vetted by both marketing and sales teams as ready for a direct sales conversation based on fit and intent.

Q: What is lead scoring?
A: A methodology for ranking leads based on their perceived value to the organization, using demographic and behavioral data to prioritize sales efforts.

Q: What is account-based marketing (ABM)?
A: A B2B marketing strategy that concentrates resources on a set of target accounts, using personalized campaigns designed for each specific account.

Q: What is demand generation?
A: Marketing activities focused on creating awareness and interest in a company's products, building a predictable pipeline of qualified leads.

Q: What is programmatic SEO?
A: Creating large numbers of landing pages targeting long-tail keywords at scale using templates and databases (e.g., Zapier's app integration pages).

Q: What is topical authority in SEO?
A: Becoming the definitive source on a topic by creating comprehensive, interlinked content that covers all aspects of a subject area.

Q: What is link building in SEO?
A: The process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own, a crucial SEO factor for improving domain authority and search rankings.

Q: What is digital PR?
A: Using online public relations strategies (data studies, expert quotes, newsworthy content) to earn high-authority backlinks and media coverage.

Q: What is HARO (Help a Reporter Out)?
A: A platform connecting journalists with expert sources, used by entrepreneurs to earn media mentions and backlinks by responding to journalist queries.

Q: What is a strategic narrative?
A: A company's overarching story that explains why it exists, the change it's driving in the world, and why that matters, used to align teams and attract customers.

Q: What is founder-led sales?
A: The practice of founders personally handling sales in the early stages of a startup to deeply understand customer needs and refine the sales process.

Q: What is consultative selling?
A: A sales approach where the salesperson acts as an advisor, understanding the customer's problems first and then recommending tailored solutions.

Q: What is solution selling?
A: A sales methodology focusing on the customer's pain points and providing solutions rather than promoting specific product features.

Q: What is the Challenger Sale model?
A: A sales methodology where the salesperson teaches the customer something new, tailors the message, and takes control of the conversation.

Q: What is SPIN selling?
A: A sales technique using four types of questions: Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-payoff to uncover customer needs and close deals.

Q: What is MEDDIC sales qualification?
A: A B2B sales methodology: Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion — used to qualify enterprise deals.

Q: What is a champion in enterprise sales?
A: An internal advocate within the prospect's organization who supports your solution and helps navigate the buying process.

Q: What is a buying committee?
A: The group of stakeholders within an organization involved in a purchase decision, typically including end users, managers, procurement, and executives.

Q: What is sales enablement?
A: Providing the sales team with resources (content, tools, training, data) needed to effectively engage buyers and close deals.

Q: What is revenue operations (RevOps)?
A: Aligning marketing, sales, and customer success operations to drive full-funnel accountability and optimize the entire revenue engine.

Q: What is the flywheel vs. funnel model?
A: The funnel treats customers as outputs; the flywheel treats them as inputs that drive growth through referrals and advocacy, a shift in growth thinking.

Q: What is customer-led growth?
A: A strategy where satisfied customers drive growth through referrals, reviews, case studies, and word-of-mouth, reducing dependence on paid acquisition.

Q: What is a metered paywall?
A: A paywall that allows users to access a limited number of articles or content pieces for free before requiring payment (e.g., New York Times).

Q: What is mobile-first design?
A: Designing digital products and websites for mobile devices first, then scaling up for larger screens, reflecting mobile-dominant user behavior.

Q: What is responsive web design?
A: A design approach that makes web pages render well on all device sizes and screen resolutions through flexible layouts and media queries.

Q: What is page speed optimization?
A: Improving website loading times through image compression, caching, code minification, and CDN usage, directly impacting SEO and conversion rates.

Q: What are Core Web Vitals?
A: Google's set of metrics measuring real-world user experience: Largest Contentful Paint (loading), First Input Delay (interactivity), Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability).

Q: What is a CDN (Content Delivery Network)?
A: A distributed network of servers that delivers web content to users based on geographic proximity, improving speed and reducing latency.

Q: What is serverless computing?
A: A cloud execution model where the cloud provider manages server infrastructure and dynamically allocates resources, charging only for actual usage (e.g., AWS Lambda).

Q: What is a headless CMS?
A: A content management system that provides content via API without a front-end presentation layer, giving developers flexibility in how content is displayed.

Q: What is a progressive web app (PWA)?
A: A web application that uses modern web technologies to deliver app-like experiences, including offline functionality, push notifications, and home screen installation.

Q: What is technical due diligence?
A: An assessment of a company's technology stack, codebase, architecture, and technical team, typically conducted before investment or acquisition.

Q: What is a technology moat?
A: A competitive advantage derived from proprietary technology, algorithms, or data that is difficult for competitors to replicate.

Q: What is data network effects?
A: When a product becomes smarter and more valuable as it collects more data from users, creating a compounding advantage over competitors.

Q: What is a switching cost moat?
A: When it's expensive or difficult for customers to switch to a competitor (time, money, data migration, retraining), creating customer lock-in.

Q: What is a regulatory moat?
A: A competitive advantage gained through government regulations, licenses, or approvals that create barriers to entry for competitors.

Q: What is a brand moat?
A: A competitive advantage derived from strong brand recognition, trust, and loyalty that makes customers prefer your product over alternatives regardless of features.

Q: What is counter-positioning?
A: When a newcomer adopts a superior business model that an incumbent can't copy without damaging their existing business (concept from 7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer).

Q: What is the 7 Powers framework?
A: Hamilton Helmer's strategy framework identifying seven sources of durable competitive advantage: Scale Economies, Network Economies, Counter-Positioning, Switching Costs, Branding, Cornered Resource, Process Power.

Q: What is blitzscaling?
A: Reid Hoffman's concept of prioritizing speed over efficiency in the face of uncertainty, rapidly scaling to dominate a market before competitors.

Q: What is a winner-take-all market?
A: A market where the leading company captures the vast majority of value, driven by strong network effects or economies of scale (e.g., social networks, search).

Q: What is market timing for startups?
A: Launching when the market is ready — too early means educating customers at great cost, too late means facing established competition.

Q: What is the Bill Gross framework for startup success?
A: Five factors ranked by importance: 1) Timing (42%), 2) Team/Execution (32%), 3) Idea (28%), 4) Business Model (24%), 5) Funding (14%).

Q: What is Peter Thiel's 'secret' concept?
A: Thiel's belief that great businesses are built on secrets — important truths that few people agree with or know about, creating unique opportunities.

Q: What is zero-to-one innovation?
A: Peter Thiel's concept of creating something entirely new (going from nothing to something) rather than incremental improvement (going from 1 to n).

Q: What is the 10x improvement principle?
A: The idea that for a new product to displace an incumbent, it must be at least 10 times better in some meaningful dimension.

Q: What is sustaining innovation?
A: Improvements to existing products that serve current customers better, in contrast to disruptive innovations that create new markets.

Q: What is the technology S-curve?
A: A model showing how technology performance improves slowly at first, then rapidly during adoption, then plateaus as limits are reached.

Q: What is the Gartner Hype Cycle?
A: A model representing the maturity and adoption of technologies through five phases: Innovation Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment, Plateau of Productivity.

Q: What is category creation in startups?
A: The strategy of defining and owning a new market category rather than competing in an existing one, becoming the category king (e.g., Salesforce created cloud CRM).

Q: What is a category king?
A: The dominant company in a defined market category that captures 70-80% of the category's total value, benefiting from the winner-take-most dynamic.

Q: What is a Wardley Map?
A: A visual representation of a business landscape showing the value chain and the evolution of components, used for strategic planning and identifying opportunities.

Q: What is scenario planning?
A: A strategic planning method that creates multiple plausible future scenarios to help businesses prepare for uncertainty and make robust decisions.

Q: What is a pre-mortem analysis?
A: A technique where a team imagines a project has failed and works backward to identify what could go wrong, proactively addressing potential problems.

Q: What is a retrospective in agile?
A: A team meeting held after each sprint to reflect on the process, identify improvements, and plan changes for the next iteration.

Q: What is continuous improvement (Kaizen)?
A: A philosophy of making small, incremental improvements to processes, products, and services over time, originating from Japanese manufacturing.

Q: What is radical candor?
A: Kim Scott's framework for giving feedback that is both caring personally and challenging directly, avoiding ruinous empathy and obnoxious aggression.

Q: What is psychological safety in teams?
A: A shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking, where members feel comfortable speaking up, making mistakes, and being vulnerable.

Q: What is a high-performing team?
A: A team that consistently exceeds expectations through clear goals, trust, complementary skills, accountability, and effective communication.

Q: What is a contrarian bet in startups?
A: Pursuing an idea that most people believe is wrong but you believe is right, based on unique insight — successful contrarian bets create outsized returns.

Q: What is a content flywheel for SEO?
A: Creating content, ranking in search, driving traffic, generating leads/revenue, reinvesting in more content — compounding organic growth.

Q: What is a PLG flywheel?
A: Users discover product, experience value, adopt and expand usage, advocate to others, new users discover product — creating self-sustaining growth.

Q: What is the crazy quilt principle?
A: An effectuation principle where entrepreneurs build partnerships with self-selecting stakeholders who commit resources, co-creating the venture.

Q: What is a growth experiment?
A: A structured test designed to identify new growth opportunities, typically with a clear hypothesis, measurement plan, and success criteria.

Q: What is a weekly growth meeting?
A: A regular team meeting focused on reviewing growth metrics, analyzing experiment results, and prioritizing the next set of growth initiatives.

Q: What is a personal board of advisors?
A: A self-assembled group of mentors, peers, and experts who provide guidance, accountability, and diverse perspectives to an entrepreneur.

Q: What is reverse mentoring?
A: When younger or less experienced individuals mentor senior leaders, often on topics like technology, social media, or emerging trends.

Q: What is a parallel entrepreneur?
A: An entrepreneur who runs multiple businesses simultaneously, diversifying income streams and leveraging synergies between ventures.

Q: What is the Pomodoro Technique for entrepreneurs?
A: A time management method using 25-minute focused work intervals (pomodoros) separated by 5-minute breaks to improve productivity and reduce burnout.

Q: What is the minimum effective dose (MED) in business?
A: The smallest input needed to produce a desired outcome, applied to business by focusing on the most impactful actions with minimal waste.

Q: What is the 10x rule in entrepreneurship?
A: Grant Cardone's principle that you should set goals 10 times higher than what you think you want and take 10 times the action to achieve them.

Q: What is a feedback culture?
A: An organizational culture that encourages and normalizes regular, constructive feedback between all team members regardless of hierarchy.

Q: What is a sales playbook?
A: A documented guide outlining best practices, scripts, objection handling, and processes for sales teams to follow.

Q: What is a dashboard for business?
A: A visual display of the most important information needed to achieve business objectives, consolidated on a single screen for at-a-glance monitoring.

Q: What is real-time analytics?
A: The ability to analyze data as soon as it enters a system, enabling immediate insights and faster decision-making.

Q: What is a data warehouse?
A: A central repository that stores integrated data from multiple sources, used for reporting and analysis to inform business decisions.

Q: What is ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)?
A: The process of extracting data from sources, transforming it into a usable format, and loading it into a data warehouse for analysis.

Q: What is CCPA compliance?
A: Following the California Consumer Privacy Act requirements giving consumers rights over their personal data, including the right to know, delete, and opt-out.

Q: What is a cookie consent banner?
A: A notification on websites informing visitors about cookie usage and obtaining consent for data tracking, required under GDPR and similar regulations.

Q: What is SSL/TLS for e-commerce?
A: Encryption protocols that secure data transmission between a website and users' browsers, essential for protecting payment and personal information.

Q: What is a win-back offer strategy?
A: A special deal or incentive offered to churned customers to entice them to return, such as a discount, extended trial, or new feature announcement.

Q: What is a price increase strategy?
A: Gradually increasing prices for new customers (grandfather existing), communicating value delivered, and testing elasticity through cohort analysis.

Q: What is conjoint analysis for pricing?
A: A statistical technique that determines how people value different attributes (features, pricing) of a product to find the optimal configuration.

Q: What is a master service agreement (MSA)?
A: A contract between parties establishing the terms and conditions governing future transactions, simplifying future negotiations.

Q: What is the experiment board?
A: A visual tool for tracking lean experiments, documenting hypotheses, experiments, metrics, and results in a structured format.

Q: What is a post-mortem in business?
A: An analysis conducted after a project or event to evaluate what went well, what went wrong, and what can be improved for future efforts.

Q: What is a mentorship relationship?
A: A relationship where an experienced entrepreneur guides a less experienced one, sharing knowledge, connections, and lessons learned.

Q: What is a brand story?
A: The narrative of events that inspired the creation of a brand, crafted to engage emotions and connect with customers on a personal level.

Q: What is a webinar as a lead generation tool?
A: Using live or recorded online presentations to educate prospects, demonstrate expertise, and capture email addresses for follow-up marketing.

Q: What is marketing automation?
A: Using software to automate repetitive marketing tasks like emails, social media posting, ad campaigns, and lead nurturing based on triggers and workflows.

Q: What is a net dollar retention rate?
A: The percentage of revenue retained from existing customers over a period, including expansions and contractions, same as net revenue retention.

Q: What is a paywall strategy?
A: Restricting access to content behind a payment barrier, using models like hard paywall, metered paywall, or freemium to monetize content.

Q: What is in-app purchasing?
A: Allowing users to buy digital goods, subscriptions, or premium features within a mobile application.

Q: What is edge computing?
A: Processing data closer to the source of data generation rather than in a centralized data center, reducing latency and bandwidth use.

Q: What is a single-page application (SPA)?
A: A web application that dynamically rewrites the current page rather than loading entirely new pages, providing a smoother user experience.

Q: What is economies of scale moat?
A: Cost advantages gained from high production volume, allowing larger companies to operate more efficiently and price competitively.

Q: What is cornered resource?
A: A competitive advantage from having preferential access to a valuable resource (talent, patents, natural resources) that competitors cannot acquire.

Q: What is process power?
A: A competitive advantage from organizational processes built over time that enable lower costs or superior products, difficult for competitors to replicate.

Q: What is a winner-take-most market?
A: A market where the top player dominates but other companies can still build viable businesses serving niches or segments.

Q: What is the innovator's solution?
A: Clayton Christensen's framework for creating disruptive innovations by targeting non-consumers or overserved customers with simpler, more affordable solutions.

Q: What is a total addressable problem (TAP)?
A: Similar to TAM but focused on the scope of the problem being solved rather than the revenue opportunity, useful when creating new categories.

Q: What is the category design framework?
A: A strategic discipline from 'Play Bigger' for creating and developing new market categories, positioning a company as the category king.

Q: What is the strategy of pre-emption?
A: Securing a market position (customers, resources, territory) before competitors can, creating first-mover advantages that are difficult to overcome.

Q: What is a SaaS metrics dashboard?
A: A centralized display of key SaaS performance indicators including MRR, ARR, churn, CAC, LTV, NRR, and other critical business metrics.

Q: What is the magic number in SaaS?
A: A metric measuring sales efficiency: (current quarter revenue - previous quarter revenue) x 4 / previous quarter sales and marketing spend. Above 1.0 indicates efficient growth.

Q: What is the SaaS quick ratio?
A: A metric comparing revenue growth to revenue loss: (new MRR + expansion MRR) / (churned MRR + contraction MRR). A ratio above 4 is considered healthy.

Q: What is enterprise SaaS?
A: SaaS products designed for large organizations with complex requirements, longer sales cycles, higher contract values, and dedicated customer success teams.

Q: What is SMB SaaS?
A: SaaS products targeting small and medium-sized businesses, typically with self-serve onboarding, lower price points, and shorter sales cycles.

Q: What is self-serve SaaS?
A: A model where customers can sign up, onboard, and use the product without interacting with a sales team, relying on product experience and automated processes.

Q: What is sales-assisted SaaS?
A: A model combining self-serve functionality with human sales support for higher-value deals, demos, and enterprise customers.

Q: What is churn analysis?
A: The process of examining why customers leave, identifying patterns and risk factors, and developing strategies to reduce customer attrition.

Q: What is a win-back campaign?
A: A targeted marketing effort aimed at re-engaging lapsed customers and convincing them to return to using a product or service.

Q: What is a customer feedback loop?
A: A systematic process of collecting, analyzing, and acting on customer feedback to continuously improve products and services.

Q: What is the Net Revenue Retention benchmark for SaaS?
A: Best-in-class SaaS companies achieve NRR of 120-150%+, meaning they grow revenue from existing customers by 20-50% annually even without new customer acquisition.

Q: What is indie hacking?
A: Building and running small, independent software businesses (often solo or with a small team) without external funding, focusing on profitability over growth.

Q: What is MRR growth rate?
A: The month-over-month percentage increase in monthly recurring revenue, a key indicator of SaaS business health and trajectory.

Q: What is a business flywheel?
A: A self-reinforcing cycle where each component accelerates the others: e.g., great content leads to more traffic, more customers, more revenue, and more investment.

Q: What is the 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle) in business?
A: The principle that roughly 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes — e.g., 80% of revenue often comes from 20% of customers.

Q: What is co-marketing?
A: A collaborative marketing strategy where two or more brands work together on promotional efforts, sharing audiences, costs, and content.

Q: What is a subscription box business?
A: An e-commerce model that delivers curated products to subscribers on a regular schedule (monthly/quarterly), creating recurring revenue.

Q: What is an online education platform idea?
A: Building a platform offering courses, tutorials, or certifications in a specific niche, monetized through course sales, subscriptions, or enterprise training.

Q: What is a virtual assistant business?
A: Providing remote administrative, technical, or creative assistance to clients, typically on a freelance or contract basis, scalable by hiring subcontractors.

Q: What is a social media management business?
A: Managing social media accounts for businesses, including content creation, scheduling, engagement, and analytics, as a service-based business.

Q: What is a Chrome extension business?
A: Building browser extensions that solve specific problems, monetized through freemium pricing, subscriptions, or one-time purchases.

Q: What is a WordPress plugin/theme business?
A: Creating and selling WordPress plugins or themes that add functionality or design to WordPress websites, monetized through one-time sales or subscriptions.

Q: What is a personal brand business?
A: Building a business around an individual's expertise, reputation, and personality, monetizing through speaking, consulting, courses, books, and sponsorships.

Q: What is the creator flywheel?
A: Content creation leads to audience growth, then monetization, then reinvestment in better content, then more audience growth — a self-reinforcing growth cycle.

Q: What is a micro-startup?
A: A very small startup, often with 1-5 people, focused on building a profitable product with minimal investment, prioritizing sustainability over hypergrowth.

Q: What is a strategic partnership?
A: A formal alliance between two companies that combines resources, expertise, or capabilities to achieve mutual benefits without forming a new entity.

Q: What is licensing as a business model?
A: Allowing another company to use your intellectual property (patents, technology, brand) in exchange for royalty payments or licensing fees.