The startup world uses a lot of jargon. So, here is our startup acronyms 101 list for you to know what they mean:

ACV: Actual Cash Value or Annual Contract Value (mostly used for SaaS companies)
API: Application Programming Interface
ARPU: Average Revenue Per Unit
ARR: Annual Recurring Revenue
B2B: Business-to-Business
B2C: Business-to-Consumer
CAC: Customer Acquisition Cost
CAGR: Compound Annual Growth Rate
CCC: Cash Conversion Cycle
CRM: CRM means customer relationship management
CVC: Corporate Venture Capital
CX: Customer Experience
EBIT: Earnings before Interest and Taxes
EBITDA: Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization
ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integrates and manages business processes. Besides planning, purchasing inventory, sales, marketing, finances, and human resources, ERP software systems integrate many other functions.
FCA: Financial Conduct Authority (UK)
FINRA: The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority – is a government-authorized not-for-profit organization that oversees U.S. broker-dealers.
FTE: Full-Time Equivalent
GP: General Partner in a VC firm
GTM: Go-To-Market
HNWI: High Net Worth Individual
IPO: Initial Public Offering
IRR: Internal Rate of Return
IRS: Internal Revenue Service. Pay your taxes!
KPI: Key Performance Indicator
LP: Limited Partner for a VC firm
LTV: Life-Time-Value
MGA: Managing General Agent
ML: Machine Learning
MoM or WoW or YoY: Month-on-month, week-on-week or year-on-year. A period of time is used as a comparison group for growth. Month over Month. You should be so lucky to be able to do this week over week. Year over Year. MoM growth is your month over month growth.
MRR: Monthly Recurring Revenue
MSME: Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises
MVP: Minimum Viable Product – An early version of a product with just enough features for early customers to provide feedback on future versions.
NDR: Net Dollar Retention, is a churn metric that calculates the percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers over time
NFT: Non-Fungible Token – Data stored on a digital ledger that is unique and non-interchangeable. By using blockchain technology, NFTs can be used to represent easily reproducible items like photos, videos, audio files, and other types of digital files as unique items.
NIC: Network Interface Card
NPS: Net Promoter Score
OKR: Objectives and Key Results
PAM: Privileged Access Management
PMF: Product Market Fit
POS: Point of Sale
PMI: Purchasing Managers’ Index
ROI: Return on Investment
RFQ: Request for Quotation
SAM: Serviceable Addressable / Available Market
SOM: Serviceable Obtainable Market
SaaS: Software as a Service
SKU: Stock-Keeping Unit
SPACS: Special Purpose Acquisition Companies
TAM: Total Addressable / Available Market
TVPI: Total Value to Paid In, is the ratio of the current value of remaining investments within a fund, plus the total value of all distributions to date, relative to the total amount of capital paid into the fund to date.
UX: User Experience – UX is a user’s experience with a product. How they reached the checkout stage and what they had to do to get there could be described here.
UI: User Interface – UI refers to the aesthetics of a product. It could be anything from the app’s home screen to the buttons on its form.
VC: Venture Capital
WOM: Word of mouth marketing