Every founder term, defined properly.

TAM is the total annual revenue opportunity for a product if it captured 100% of its market.

SAM is the slice of TAM you can actually serve with your product, geography, language, and channel today.

SOM is the realistic slice of SAM you can win in the next 1–3 years given competition and go-to-market capacity.

CAC is the fully-loaded sales and marketing cost required to acquire one paying customer.

LTV is the total gross profit a customer will generate across their entire relationship with your company.

An MVP is the smallest product that lets you learn the most about customers with the least effort.

Product-Market Fit is the point where a product satisfies strong market demand, evidenced by retention, referral, and organic pull.

Burn rate is the monthly amount of cash a startup consumes before it becomes profitable.

Runway is the number of months a startup can operate before it runs out of cash at its current burn rate.

A pitch deck is a concise slide document (usually 10–15 slides) used to raise capital from investors.

Market validation is the process of testing whether a real customer group has a real, painful, willing-to-pay problem — before building the product.