The velocity with which a fledgling business incinerates investor capital while attempting to determine what its product actually is.
What they actually mean
"We are spending money like a lottery winner in a panic."
Heard in the wild
"Our burn rate is currently half a million a month, but we are confident we will find our market soon."
A euphemism for being drastically understaffed and poorly funded, successfully rebranded as an admirable display of agile discipline.
"We're running lean ahead of our Series A, so everyone is pitching in on customer support."
Translation
"We can't afford to pay you overtime, but we do have a ping-pong table."
A highly optimistic funding stage where an enterprise consists of nothing more than an ambitious slide deck, a shared workspace subscription, and a mountain of personal debt.
We are currently raising our pre-seed round to help us build the minimum viable prototype.
Translation
We have no product, no customers, and very little time before the rent is due.
A precarious structural vulnerability wherein an entire business model relies entirely on a single employee who is the only one who knows how the legacy spreadsheet works.
We have a slight key-person dependency on Barnaby, who is currently on a three-week tech detox in the Andes.
Translation
If Barnaby gets hit by a bus, we will have to wind up the company.