From emerging regulation to deal mechanics, we write about the questions founders and investors actually ask — practical analysis you can put to work.
A market correction is a decline of 10-20% from a recent market peak — milder than a bear market (typically defined as 20%+ decline). Corrections occur roughly once every 12-24 months across major equity indices and are considered normal price discovery, not a structural break.
A hard landing describes the scenario where central-bank tightening to control inflation overshoots and induces a recession — typically marked by elevated unemployment (rising from 4% to 7%+), GDP contraction, credit stress, and deep equity-market declines.
A T-shaped product combines one area of deep specialised capability (the vertical stem of the T) with broad horizontal applicability across many use cases or customer segments (the horizontal top of the T).
The bowling pin strategy is Geoffrey Moore’s framework for sequenced niche expansion after a startup has won product-market fit in an initial segment.
Crossing the chasm is Geoffrey Moore’s framework for the discontinuous gap between selling to technology enthusiasts/early adopters (~16% of the market) and to mainstream pragmatist customers (~70% of the market).
The trough of sorrow is the discouraging mid-stage period for a startup — typically 3-12 months after launch — when initial product-launch enthusiasm has faded, organic press has dried up, and growth has stalled.
Contribution margin is the revenue from a single unit (customer, order, or subscription) minus the variable costs to deliver that unit — payment processing, server costs, customer support, shipping, etc. It excludes fixed costs (rent, salaries, R&D).
Blended CAC (Blended Customer Acquisition Cost) divides total customer-acquisition spend — paid + organic + brand + partnership — by total new customers in a period. It is the “all-in” CAC metric most often quoted in pitch decks and used in headline LTV:CAC ratios.
Organic CAC (Organic Customer Acquisition Cost) measures the cost to acquire a customer through unpaid channels — SEO, content marketing, referrals, word-of-mouth, brand-led discovery.
Paid CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost from paid channels) measures the cost to acquire a customer specifically through paid marketing — Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, paid search, paid social, and similar.
