Glossary

Startup growth terms

Go-to-market, distribution and the metrics founders track after a launch, from MRR to activation.

Activation: Activation is the moment a new user first gets real value from a product, often called the "aha moment", such as sending the first invoice or publishing the first page. The activation rate is the share of sign-ups who reach it. It predicts retention better than sign-ups do.
Attribution: Attribution is deciding which marketing channels and touchpoints get credit for a conversion, such as a sign-up or sale. Models include first touch, last touch and multi-touch. Since buyers often see a product in several places before acting, no model is perfect; asking customers where they heard of you fills gaps.
Beta testers: Beta testers are people who use a product before its full release to find bugs, test whether it solves their problem and give feedback. For startups, the best beta testers match the ideal customer profile, use the product for real work and talk to the team directly.
Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping is building a company without outside investment, funding it from the founders' savings and the company's own revenue. Bootstrapped startups keep full ownership and control, grow at the pace revenue allows, and tend to favour cheap, compounding marketing over paid acquisition.
Build in public: Building in public means sharing a product's progress openly while you build it: revenue, metrics, decisions, mistakes and lessons, usually on X, LinkedIn, Indie Hackers or a blog. It builds an audience and trust before and after launch, and many indie founders use it as their main distribution.
Changelog: A changelog is a dated, public list of changes to a product: new features, improvements and fixes. For users it shows the product is alive; for marketing it's a steady source of small announcements, relaunch material and fresh content that search engines and directories can pick up.
Churn: Churn is the rate at which customers stop paying or using a product over a period. Customer churn counts lost customers; revenue churn counts lost revenue, and can be offset by expansion from remaining customers. For subscription businesses, low churn is often more valuable than fast acquisition.
Cold outreach: Cold outreach is contacting people who don't know you yet, by email, LinkedIn or direct message, to start a conversation about your product, a partnership, a link or coverage. It works when it's targeted, personal and short. In many countries, cold email to businesses is regulated by laws such as CAN-SPAM and GDPR.
Community-led growth: Community-led growth is growth driven by a community around a product or topic: users help each other, share what they built, recommend the product and give feedback. The community becomes a channel for acquisition and retention. Developer tools and creator products often grow this way.
Conversion rate: Conversion rate is the share of people who take a desired action out of everyone who could: visitors who sign up, sign-ups who start a trial, trials who pay. It's always relative to a step, so funnels have several conversion rates. Comparing them by traffic source shows which channels bring real customers.
Customer acquisition cost: Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the average cost of winning one new customer: total sales and marketing spend in a period divided by new customers gained. Compared with customer lifetime value, it shows whether growth is profitable. Channels like directories and SEO mostly cost time, which should be counted too.
Customer lifetime value: Customer lifetime value (LTV) is the total revenue or gross profit a business expects from one customer over the whole relationship. For subscriptions, a simple estimate is average monthly revenue per customer divided by monthly churn rate, often multiplied by gross margin. It sets how much you can spend to acquire a customer.
Distribution: In startups, distribution is how a product gets in front of the people who'll use and buy it: search, directories, communities, content, partnerships, app marketplaces, sales and word of mouth. A common saying is that most startups fail from poor distribution rather than poor products.
Early adopters: Early adopters are the first group of customers willing to try a new product before it's proven, often because they feel the problem strongly and enjoy discovering new tools. In Everett Rogers' diffusion of innovations model they come after innovators. Launch platforms and directories are full of them.
Go-to-market: Go-to-market (GTM) is the plan for how a product reaches and wins its customers: who it's for, what problem it solves, how it's priced, which channels bring buyers, and how they buy. A GTM strategy turns a finished product into a repeatable way of getting customers.
Ideal customer profile: An ideal customer profile (ICP) describes the kind of customer who gets the most value from your product and is most valuable to you: industry, size, role, problem, budget and buying behaviour. It guides who you target, where you launch, what you write and which directories you list on.
Indie hacker: An indie hacker is someone who builds and runs a profitable online business independently, usually alone or with a tiny team and without venture funding. The term was popularised by the Indie Hackers community. Typical products are small SaaS tools, templates, newsletters and directories.
Landing page: A landing page is the page a visitor arrives on from a link, ad, search or directory listing, built to get them to take one action: sign up, start a trial, join a waitlist or buy. For early startups it's often the homepage. It should say what the product does and for whom.
Launch email: A launch email announces a new product or major release to a list: waitlist sign-ups, existing users or newsletter subscribers. A good one is short, says what's new and why it matters to the reader, and has one clear call to action, such as trying the product or visiting the launch page.
Lifetime deal: A lifetime deal (LTD) is a one-time payment for permanent access to a software product, instead of a subscription. Startups use LTDs, often through marketplaces such as AppSumo, to raise cash and get early users quickly. The risk is serving lifetime customers forever without recurring revenue.
Micro-SaaS: Micro-SaaS is a small software-as-a-service business, usually run by one person or a tiny team, that serves a narrow niche with a focused product, low costs and modest revenue goals. Many are add-ons for bigger platforms such as Shopify, Notion or Slack.
Minimum viable product: A minimum viable product (MVP) is the simplest version of a product that lets a team test its main assumption with real users and learn, with the least effort. Eric Ries popularised the term in The Lean Startup. An MVP is about learning, not about shipping something unfinished to everyone.
Monthly recurring revenue: Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is the predictable subscription revenue a business earns each month, normalised to a monthly amount: yearly plans are divided by 12, and one-time fees are excluded. Annual recurring revenue (ARR) is MRR times 12. They're the headline growth numbers for SaaS.
North Star metric: A North Star metric is the single measure a company chooses as the best indicator of the value customers get, which, if it grows, drives long-term revenue. Examples are weekly active teams, invoices sent or listings published. It aligns product, marketing and growth work around one outcome.
Organic traffic: Organic traffic is visits that come from unpaid search results, on Google, Bing and other search engines, as opposed to paid ads. It's the main measure of SEO results. It grows slowly but compounds: pages that rank keep bringing visitors without ongoing spend, unlike paid traffic that stops when the budget does.
Positioning: Positioning is how a product is defined in customers' minds relative to alternatives: what category it's in, who it's for, and why it's the better choice for them. Good positioning makes a product easy to understand in one line and decides which directories, categories and comparisons it belongs in.
Press kit: A press kit is a page or download with everything journalists, directories and partners need to write about your product: a short description, logos, screenshots, founder bios and photos, key facts and contact details. It makes coverage and accurate listings easier, and keeps your facts consistent everywhere.
Product-led growth: Product-led growth (PLG) is a go-to-market approach where the product itself drives acquisition, conversion and expansion: people find it, sign up, get value and pay with little or no contact with sales. Free plans, free trials and in-product sharing are typical. Slack, Notion and Calendly grew this way.
Product-market fit: Product-market fit (PMF) is when a product satisfies a strong market demand: a specific group of customers wants it, uses it, pays for it and tells others. Marc Andreessen described it as being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. Before it, growth tactics rarely stick.
Reddit self-promotion rules: Reddit's self-promotion rules are the site-wide and subreddit rules that limit how much you can post about your own product. Reddit asks users to participate genuinely rather than only promote, and many subreddits ban self-promotion or allow it only in specific threads. Breaking them gets posts removed and accounts banned.
Referral traffic: Referral traffic is visits that arrive by clicking a link on another website, such as a directory listing, a blog post, a forum thread or an AI assistant's citation. Analytics tools identify it from the referring domain. Directory listings and launch platforms show up here, which makes it the place to measure them.
Review generation: Review generation is the work of getting customers to leave reviews on software review sites, app stores and marketplaces. Reviews drive rankings on those sites, build social proof and feed the comparisons AI assistants read. Platforms require reviews to be genuine; paying for positive reviews breaks their rules and consumer law.
Show HN: Show HN is a section of Hacker News where people share something they've made that others can try: a product, tool, library or project. Posts start with "Show HN:" and must be something people can use, not a landing page or signup wall. It reaches a large technical audience if it gains traction.
Social proof: Social proof is evidence that other people use, trust or recommend a product: customer logos, testimonials, reviews, user counts, ratings, press mentions and awards such as a Product of the Day badge. People look to others' choices when unsure, so social proof reduces the risk a new visitor feels.
Solopreneur: A solopreneur is a person who starts and runs a business entirely on their own, without co-founders or employees, often using contractors, software and AI tools for the rest. In software, solopreneurs commonly run micro-SaaS products, templates, newsletters and directories.
UTM parameters: UTM parameters are tags added to a link's URL, such as utm_source and utm_medium, that tell analytics tools where a visit came from. They let you see which directory, launch platform, email or post sent each visitor, even when the referrer is hidden, as with links marked noreferrer.
Value proposition: A value proposition is a clear statement of the benefit a product gives a specific customer and why it's better than the alternatives. It's usually the headline and subheadline on a landing page and the first line of a directory listing. Good ones are specific, believable and about the customer's result.
Vanity metrics: Vanity metrics are numbers that look impressive but don't help you decide anything or reflect real business progress: total sign-ups, page views, followers, upvotes or backlink counts on their own. Eric Ries contrasted them with actionable metrics that show cause and effect, like conversion and retention by cohort.
Waitlist: A waitlist is a list of people who signed up to be notified or get access when a product launches. It tests demand before building, gathers early adopters, and gives you an audience to email on launch day. Some waitlists add referral rewards so people move up by inviting others.

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