The Voting Agreement is one of the three primary NVCA financing documents executed at a priced venture financing. It governs how founders and investors agree to vote on board composition (which directors get appointed by which parties) and on certain other major corporate actions, primarily controlling who sits on the board over time. Alongside the Investor Rights Agreement and the Right of First Refusal and Co-Sale Agreement, the Voting Agreement is one of the three "ancillary" documents that, together, implement the substantive terms agreed to in the term sheet.
The core mechanics: shareholders contractually agree to vote their shares in specific ways on specific matters. The most-important application is board compositio...
Pipeline coverage is the ratio of total qualified pipeline value to a rep's or team's quota for the same period, expressed as a multiple. It evaluates whether the rep or team has enough opportunities to realistically hit quota given typical close rates and sales cycle length. It's the most common early-warning metric for whether the quarter will be made or missed.
The math:
Pipeline coverage = Total qualified pipeline value ÷ Quota
If a rep has $1M quota and $3.5M in qualified pipeline, their coverage is 3.5x. The 3-4x benchmark exists because typical close rates on qualified pipeline are 25-35%, meaning $3-$4 in pipeline produces $1 in revenue.
Coverage benchmarks:
| Coverage ratio | Health signal |
|---|---|
| Under 2x | Critical - w... |
Equity crowdfunding is raising small equity investments from many non-accredited investors via SEC-regulated online platforms. Platforms include Wefunder, Republic, StartEngine, NetCapital, and Microventures, enabled by the 2012 JOBS Act and operationalized through Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF, effective 2016) and Regulation A+ (Reg A, expanded 2015). It is distinct from reward-based crowdfunding (Kickstarter, Indiegogo) where backers receive products rather than equity, and from donation-based crowdfunding where contributors receive nothing. It is the funding mechanism that lets startups raise from their customer base and the broader public without the wealth-gate restrictions of traditional accredited-investor offer...
A traction startup is one that has produced measurable, quantitative evidence that its product is being adopted, used, and valued by customers. The evidence shows up in metrics like revenue growth, paying users, retention, engagement, or specific conversion behaviors that prove the market wants what the company is offering. Traction is the precursor to product-market fit (PMF): the early signal, where PMF is the durable state when that signal becomes sustainable, accelerating demand.
Real traction is distinguished from vanity metrics by one test: does the number get bigger as the company stops pushing on it, or only when the company pushes? In a pitch deck, the underlying traction shows up as the [Traction Slide]. Press mentions, a...
A capital call is the mechanism by which a venture fund draws committed capital from its Limited Partners as needed for investments or expenses. Also called a "drawdown," it applies across PE funds, real estate funds, and other private investment vehicles, typically over the first 4-5 years of fund life, with strict legal obligations on LPs to fund each call within the defined window (typically 10-30 days) and serious consequences for failure to fund. It is the operational mechanic that connects LP capital commitments to actual deployed capital, and one of the most important fund-administration concepts to understand.
The mechanic: LPs commit capital at fund formation but don't fund the commitment immediately. Instead, the GP i...
A share buyback is a corporate action in which a company purchases its own shares from existing stockholders, reducing the outstanding share count. Also called share repurchase or stock buyback, the repurchased shares either become treasury stock or are canceled, used at public companies as a capital-return mechanism and at private companies as an employee/investor liquidity mechanism via tender offers. It is the corporate analog of an individual stockholder selling shares, with the company itself as the buyer.
The two main contexts:
Public-company buybacks:
Contribution margin is revenue minus all variable costs (COGS plus variable sales and marketing plus variable customer-success), expressed as a percentage of revenue. It provides a view of unit profitability that accounts for the full cost of serving each customer rather than just delivery costs (gross margin). The metric is particularly useful at marketplace and consumer companies where variable costs go well beyond COGS, and less commonly used at SaaS companies where most non-COGS costs are fixed at scale. Contribution margin is the deeper unit-economics view that gross margin alone can miss.
The calculation:
Basic formula:
Investor targeting is the process of identifying which venture firms and partners are the right fit for a round, done before any outreach happens. The work weighs the firm's stage focus, sector thesis, typical check size, recent portfolio investments, available capacity, and the individual partner's specific track record and known interests, tracked in a spreadsheet or CRM that runs the entire fundraise. It is the work that separates founders who pitch the right investors and close rounds from founders who pitch any willing investor and burn months getting filtered.
The firm-level criteria that matter: stage (seed funds invest at seed; growth funds don't invest at seed; targeting wrong-stage funds wastes everyone's time),...
An option pool is the block of startup equity reserved (but not granted) for stock options to current and future employees, advisors, and consultants. It is sized as a percentage of fully diluted shares and replenished at most priced rounds. It's created on the cap table as authorized-but-unissued shares within the [Equity Incentive Plan], and grants are pulled from it over time as the company hires.
Typical pool sizes by stage (2025 Carta and PitchBook benchmarks):
| Stage | Pool size (% of post-money) | What it has to cover |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-incorporation / formation | 10-15% | Founders + first 5-10 employees |
| Post pre-seed (SAFE) | 10-15% | First 10-15 hires |
| Post priced seed | 12-18% | Engineering team build-out, first sales hires |
| Post Series A | ...
Affiliate marketing is the pay-for-performance acquisition channel where third parties earn commission for driving qualifying actions, typically sales or signups. Affiliates promote the product through their channels (websites, content, social media, email lists) and receive a percentage of revenue or fixed fee per conversion generated, tracked through unique referral links or codes. It's the original performance-based marketing channel, predating digital advertising, and remains a significant acquisition source for many B2C and some B2B businesses.
How affiliate marketing works: