A semi-secret project team permitted to bypass corporate bureaucracy, usually resulting in a highly advanced product that the sales team has no idea how to sell.
What they actually mean
We hid three developers in a basement so they would actually get some work done.
Heard in the wild
"We’ve put together a skunkworks team to explore the next generation of our platform."
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.