The startup glossary, written for founders.

Simple Agreement for Future Equity that fixes investor ownership immediately after the SAFE round converts.

Created by Y Combinator in 2018, the post-money SAFE calculates the investor ownership percentage solely based on the valuation cap, making founder dilution transparent and predictable before a priced Series A round.

A detailed breakdown of a startup ownership percentages, equity dilution, and value of equity in each round.

The cap table tracks common shares held by founders and employees, preferred shares held by venture investors, option pools (ESOP), SAFEs, warrants, and convertible notes.

The number of months a startup can survive before running out of cash at its current net burn rate.

Runway dictates hiring plans, product roadmap velocity, and fundraising timing. Standard best practice is to begin fundraising with at least 6 to 9 months of runway remaining.

Predictable, recurring revenue earned by a subscription SaaS business in a single month.

MRR excludes one-time consulting or setup fees. It is calculated by summing active monthly customer subscriptions and amortizing annual subscriptions across 12 months.

The ratio comparing the lifetime value of a customer to the cost of acquiring that customer.

A standard benchmark for high-performing SaaS companies is an LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1 or higher, with a CAC payback period under 12 months.

AI architecture that grounds Large Language Models with private workspace data and real-time context.

RAG fetches relevant vectors and structured context from company documents, CRM entries, and financial models before generating responses, preventing AI hallucinations and enabling true Chief of Staff task execution.

A safety architecture where autonomous AI agents draft actions but require explicit human verification before execution.

In the HelmOS Operating System, HITL ensures that no emails, contracts, investor updates, or wire transfers are triggered without the founder clicking Approve.

Tracking groups of users or startups that share a common characteristic over defined time intervals.

Used by accelerators to compare batch survival rates and by SaaS businesses to track retention curves over 30, 60, and 90 day windows.