Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) is the set of accounting standards, conventions and rules that public and many private companies in the United States must follow when preparing financial statements. U.S.

Present value (PV) is the current value of a future cash flow, discounted at a rate that reflects the time value of money and the risk of the cash flow.

Future value is what money today becomes at a future date under compounding: FV = PV × (1+r)^n. Worked example, where venture math uses it, and the inflation adjustment most models skip.

Forecasting is the disciplined practice of projecting future financial and operational outcomes — revenue, expenses, headcount, cash flow, and operating KPIs — based on a combination of historical data, leading indicators and explicit assumptions.

Variable costs are expenses that change in direct proportion to output or sales volume — raw materials, direct labour, payment-processing fees, cloud infrastructure that scales with users, sales commissions tied to revenue.

Fixed costs are expenses that do not vary with output or sales volume in the short run — rent, salaries of permanent staff, depreciation of long-lived assets, software subscriptions, insurance. They are incurred regardless of whether the business sold one unit or one million in the period.

Fixed assets (also called property, plant and equipment, or PP&E) are long-lived tangible assets a business uses to produce goods or deliver services — not for resale.

Expenses are the costs a business incurs to generate revenue — recognised on the income statement in the period in which they help produce the related revenue.

Double-entry bookkeeping is the system in which every financial transaction is recorded twice — once as a debit and once as a credit, in different accounts, with the totals equal.

Debt is borrowed capital that the company is contractually obligated to repay — typically with interest — over a defined period.