Jargon Soup Glossary
Plain-English translations for business phrases that often make normal people wonder whether they have missed a meeting.
Agency
An outside business hired to do specialist work, such as marketing, design, recruitment or operations.
In plain English: people you pay to help, but still have to manage.
Watch out for: assuming an agency will understand your margins, customer promise or capacity without you explaining them.
Burn Rate
How quickly a business is spending cash.
In plain English: how fast the money is leaving.
Watch out for: measuring growth while ignoring whether cash runs out first.
Cash Flow
The movement of money in and out of the business.
In plain English: whether money arrives in time to pay what needs paying.
Watch out for: confusing profit on paper with cash in the bank.
Contribution Margin
The money left from a sale after the direct costs of making that sale.
In plain English: what each order actually contributes after obvious costs.
Watch out for: forgetting postage, payment fees, packaging, refunds or support time.
Customer Acquisition Cost
What it costs to win a customer.
In plain English: the money spent to get someone to buy.
Watch out for: counting ad spend but ignoring discounts, agency fees, returns or your own time.
Due Diligence
The checks a buyer, investor or lender makes before committing.
In plain English: someone looking under the bonnet before they hand over money.
Watch out for: messy records, unclear contracts, customer-data issues and work that only the founder understands.
Equity
Ownership in a business.
In plain English: a slice of the company.
Watch out for: giving away control, future value or decision rights too cheaply.
Founder Dependency
How much the business relies on the founder to make decisions, do work or hold knowledge.
In plain English: whether the business works when you are not in the room.
Watch out for: mistaking being needed for being scalable.
Gross Margin
Sales minus the direct cost of goods or services sold.
In plain English: what is left before all the other business costs arrive.
Watch out for: treating gross margin as actual profit.
Key Performance Indicator
A number used to track performance.
In plain English: a measure you watch because it should tell you something useful.
Watch out for: tracking numbers because they look professional rather than because they improve decisions.
Limited Company
A separate legal structure for a business.
In plain English: the business becomes its own legal thing, with admin and duties attached.
Watch out for: choosing it just because it sounds serious.
Minimum Viable Product
A simple version used to test whether customers care.
In plain English: the smallest credible thing you can learn from.
Watch out for: using “minimum” as an excuse for poor quality or “viable” as an excuse for overbuilding.
Optionality
Having useful choices available later.
In plain English: not trapping yourself too early.
Watch out for: paying too much today for imaginary flexibility you may never use.
Runway
How long the business can keep going before cash runs out.
In plain English: how many months you have before money becomes the loudest problem.
Watch out for: calculating runway from hopeful sales instead of committed costs.
Scale
Growing the business so it can handle more customers, sales or operations.
In plain English: getting bigger without breaking everything.
Watch out for: increasing demand before the business can deliver consistently.
Unit Economics
The financial reality of one sale, customer or order.
In plain English: whether the basic transaction works.
Watch out for: hoping volume will fix a sale that loses money every time.
VAT Threshold
The turnover point at which a business may need to register for VAT.
In plain English: the point where growth may create extra tax admin and pricing consequences.
Watch out for: noticing only after the business has already crossed it.