Non-participating preferred is the modern standard preferred-stock structure where investors choose between their liquidation preference or their as-converted share, but not both. The choice is between debt-like protection (preference, locks in downside) and equity-like upside (as-converted, captures growth), with investors choosing whichever is higher at the moment of exit. It is the default structure modern venture investors use and the structure founders should expect and insist on at every priced round.
The mechanics:
The choice:
Agile is an iterative software development philosophy formalized in the 2001 Agile Manifesto, emphasizing working software, customer collaboration, and responsiveness to change. It rejects rigid up-front planning, contract negotiation, and process compliance, implemented through frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), and at large-organization scale, SAFe and LeSS. It is the dominant operating philosophy of modern software product teams and the most-misunderstood word in the discipline.
The Agile Manifesto, written in February 2001 by 17 software practitioners at a ski lodge in Snowbird, Utah, states four values: individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working software over comprehensive documentation; ...
A Business Development Representative (BDR) is the outbound-focused sales rep responsible for cold-prospecting target accounts and booking qualified meetings for Account Executives to close. BDRs generate pipeline from scratch through cold email, cold calls, and LinkedIn outreach. The BDR role is distinct from the SDR (who typically works inbound marketing-qualified leads), although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably depending on the company. BDRs are essential when inbound lead flow is insufficient to feed the AE team, when targeting specific accounts (account-based marketing), or when entering new markets.
The BDR role specifics:
Owns: outbound prospecting, cold outreach, qualified meeti...
A business plan for investors is a document used to communicate a startup's market, model, traction, team, and capital ask to potential funders. It is most often delivered today as a 10 to 15 slide pitch deck plus a one-paragraph elevator narrative and (sometimes) a longer narrative memo, rather than as the traditional 30 to 40 page business plan document. It differs from the general-purpose business plan in audience and intent: this version is built to raise capital, not to align internal teams or satisfy a bank.
The components investors look for, in order of weight at early stage, are: the problem and the customer (specific, painful, big enough to matter); the solution and product (what you built, why it's diff...
Full-ratchet anti-dilution is the punitive flavor that resets the preferred conversion price to the new lower price in any down round, regardless of round size. It produces massive dilution of common stock and founders even for relatively small down-round capital, with modern usage largely limited to distressed financings, aggressive structured deals, and down rounds where the new investor has significant leverage. It is the term sheet flag founders should generally treat as a deal-breaker and only accept when the alternative is no deal at all.
The full-ratchet mechanic:
A product vision is a long-horizon (3 to 10 year) statement of what a product aspires to become and the world it creates for users. It is distinct from product strategy (the medium-term plan for how to win) and product roadmap (the near-term execution sequence), and used as the directional north for every strategy and roadmap decision underneath it. It is the part of product leadership that should change least frequently and that earns the most influence over how teams behave when nobody is watching.
The shape of a useful product vision: it describes the world the product creates for its users (what becomes possible that wasn't before), not the features the product has. Famous examples that have shaped behavior at scale: Goog...
Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) are a company promise to deliver common stock (or cash equivalent) to the employee on a future vesting or liquidity event. They are distinct from stock options (rights-to-buy at a strike price) and restricted stock (actual share ownership from grant), used heavily at late-stage private companies (often via double-trigger structure) and post-IPO public companies. It is the modern equity-compensation mechanic at companies past the seed stage where option grants would create immediate tax exposure for employees.
The mechanic of an RSU grant:
Articles of incorporation is the foundational legal document filed with a state's Secretary of State to formally create a corporation. Called a "certificate of incorporation" in Delaware and some other states (abbreviated COI or AOI), it brings the corporation into legal existence and gets amended every time the company's authorized share structure changes (typically at each financing round). The document establishes the entity's name, registered agent and address, business purpose (often deliberately broad: "any lawful business"), authorized share count, par value, basic capital structure, incorporator, and registered office.
The required and common contents of articles of incorporation: corporate name (must be un...
Founder departure is the exit of a co-founder from a startup before company exit (sale, IPO, or shutdown). The departure triggers vesting consequences for the departing founder's equity (unvested shares typically forfeited or repurchased; vested shares typically retained subject to transfer restrictions), team-morale impact (these are highly visible departures that affect employee perception of company health), operational rebalancing among remaining founders and leadership (someone has to absorb the departing founder's responsibilities), and often investor concern (founders are part of the investment thesis; departures raise questions). The way the departure is handled often matters more than the departure itself in terms...
Feature prioritization is the discipline of choosing what to build next from a backlog using structured frameworks rather than the loudest voice or gut feeling. Common frameworks include RICE, ICE, MoSCoW, Kano Model, Value vs Effort, Opportunity Scoring, Cost of Delay, and Weighted Shortest Job First. It is the single most-leveraged skill in product management because every other decision (what to design, what to build, what to ship, what to measure) flows from it.
The most-used frameworks in 2025: RICE (Reach × Impact × Confidence ÷ Effort, developed at Intercom; produces a numeric score that ranks initiatives; good for surfacing relative priority across a large backlog), ICE (Impact × Confidence × Ease, a simpler a...