Startup & Venture Capital Glossary

The use of large language models and machine learning systems to evaluate and score startup pitch decks, automating the analytical work that venture analysts traditionally perform manually.

A high-net-worth individual who invests personal capital into early-stage startups, typically at pre-seed or seed stage, often providing both capital and mentorship.

The annualised value of a company's subscription or recurring revenue contracts, normalised to a 12-month period.

A capital efficiency metric that divides net cash burned by net new ARR added in the same period, measuring how much you spend to generate each dollar of recurring revenue.

The rate at which a company spends its cash reserves each month, either gross (total spend) or net (spend minus revenue).

The total cost of acquiring a single new customer, including all sales and marketing spend divided by the number of new customers acquired in the same period.

A spreadsheet or structured record that lists all holders of equity or equity-equivalent instruments in a company and the precise percentage each holds.

The percentage of customers or revenue that a company loses within a given period, the single most important indicator of product-market fit in subscription businesses.

A signal accompanying every NUVC score that indicates how much reliable input data was available when the score was computed — High, Medium, Low, or Uncertain.

A short-term debt instrument that converts into equity at a future priced round, typically including a discount rate and valuation cap to reward early investors.

One of five weighted evaluation dimensions NUVC uses to score a startup — Problem & Market, Differentiation & Moat, Execution & Leverage, Proof & Traction, and Risk & Fragility.

The reduction in an existing shareholder's ownership percentage that occurs when new shares are issued, typically during a funding round or option grant.

The systematic investigation an investor conducts into a startup's business, financials, legal structure, team, and technology before committing to an investment.

A numerical vector representation of text that captures semantic meaning, enabling AI systems to measure similarity between documents, investor theses, and startup descriptions.

A venture fund manager raising their first three or four funds, often differentiated by specialist domain expertise, unique sourcing networks, or underserved geographic focus.

An Australian government-regulated venture fund structure that provides significant tax benefits to fund managers and investors who back early-stage Australian businesses.

A private wealth management entity that manages the financial assets of a single ultra-high-net-worth family (single-family office) or multiple families (multi-family office), increasingly active in direct venture investments.

An investment vehicle that allocates capital across multiple underlying venture funds rather than directly into companies, providing diversification and access to top-performing managers.

The fund manager who raises and deploys venture capital on behalf of limited partners, bearing unlimited liability and earning management fees and carried interest.

A structured numeric rating that signals how prepared a startup is to enter a fundraising conversation with institutional investors.

A provision in preferred share agreements that gives investors the right to receive their money back (and sometimes a multiple) before common shareholders receive anything in a sale or wind-down.

An investor who commits capital to a venture fund managed by a General Partner, bearing limited liability and receiving returns proportional to their investment.

The total gross profit a company expects to generate from a single customer over the entire duration of their relationship.

The total predictable revenue a company generates from subscriptions in a single month, the building block of ARR.

The field of AI that enables computers to understand, extract meaning from, and generate human language — the foundational technology behind pitch deck analysis systems.

NUVC's proprietary 0–10 investment readiness score that evaluates a startup across five lenses calibrated on 180+ real VC investment memos.

A structured visual presentation — typically 10 to 20 slides — that a startup uses to communicate its business, opportunity, and funding ask to potential investors.

The earliest institutional funding stage, typically ranging from $250K to $2M, raised before a startup has meaningful revenue or product-market fit.

A contractual right allowing existing investors to maintain their ownership percentage in future funding rounds by investing proportionally alongside new investors.

A SaaS health benchmark that states a company's revenue growth rate plus profit margin should sum to at least 40%, balancing growth and efficiency.

The number of months a company can continue operating at its current burn rate before running out of cash.

A founder-friendly investment instrument that grants investors the right to receive equity at a future priced round, without accruing interest or carrying a maturity date.

A startup's first significant priced equity round, typically ranging from $1M to $5M, used to prove product-market fit and build initial go-to-market motion.

An AI technique that uses embedding similarity to match startup profiles with investor theses based on meaning rather than keyword overlap.

A startup's first major institutional venture round, typically $5M to $20M+, raised once product-market fit is established and the focus shifts to scaling.

A group of individual investors who co-invest in a single startup deal, typically organised by a lead who sources the deal and charges a carry on returns.

A non-binding agreement outlining the key economic and governance terms of a proposed investment, serving as the framework for the final legal documents.

A measure of how closely a startup's problem, market, stage, and geography match a specific investor's stated investment mandate.

The per-unit revenue and cost structure of a business — typically expressed as LTV:CAC ratio, CAC payback period, and gross margin — that determines whether the model is scalably profitable.

An institutional investment model where a fund manager raises capital from limited partners and deploys it into high-growth startups in exchange for equity, targeting outsized returns.