A stakeholder is any party with an interest in the outcome or operations of a business — including shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, lenders, regulators, the community where the company operates, and increasingly the environment.

Scalability is the property of a business model under which output (revenue, customers served) grows faster than the inputs required to support it (cost, headcount, infrastructure).

Ramen profitable, a phrase popularised by Paul Graham, describes a startup that earns just enough revenue to cover the founders’ minimal living expenses — the metaphorical “instant noodles” cost of survival.

A prototype is an early, often deliberately incomplete version of a product built to test a specific hypothesis — about usability, technical feasibility, user value or commercial demand.

The subscription model is a business model in which customers pay a recurring fee at regular intervals (monthly, quarterly, annually) to access a product or service for the duration of the subscription.

Late stage describes companies in the period between achieving venture-scale market position and an exit — typically Series C onwards.

Early stage describes the period in a company’s life when the business model and product-market fit are still being validated — typically from idea through the first scalable acquisition channel. In venture taxonomy it spans pre-seed, seed and Series A.

An early adopter is the second segment in Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations curve — ~13.5% of a market who adopt a new product or technology after the initial 2.5% of innovators but well before the majority.

The customer life cycle is the end-to-end journey of a customer with a company — from first awareness through acquisition, activation, retention and either expansion or churn.

Customer segments are groups of customers who share enough common characteristics — needs, behaviours, willingness to pay, channel preferences — that a company can serve them with a tailored product, pricing or go-to-market motion.