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Hey Fearless Friend!

Today on Stay Fearless or Die Trying:

1. The terms in business you MUST know to become successful

2. Fearless perks of the week!

3. Chief Swag Officer launched the official website and boy I’m so excited about it. You can visualize your product! You can shop us on Amazon right here, too!

4. P.S. if you want free swag, fill out the Chief Swag Officer affiliate program here.

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You can’t be a good founder or work for a startup without knowing these words.

Funny enough, when I was in Montana with my mom last week, I realized how oblivious most people are to the world of startups and business. Now, why do you need to know about this wild wild world if you never plan to work in it?

Never say never, my friends.

That’s why. You never want to be in an elevator with your dream boss or mentor to find out that you simply don’t have the skills to be your most fearless self in business because you didn’t take the time to learn.

Or read this newsletter.

Let’s get on with it. Shall we?

WORDS YOU NEED TO KNOW: fwd this email to your friends who should know better!

Bootstrapping: people like yours truly who live on the edge (lol) and decide to invest their own money into their ideas before taking outside capital.

People who do this are often the most fearless, slightly insane, riskiest people you’ll ever meet and when they fail, they bounce back like foam bounces back after it’s sat on by heavy objects

Angel investors: People who take a small, tiny percentage of your company in return for money. These people take riskier investments (they either believe deeply in you or are quite wealthy) with the expectation they’ll get money back as a return in the future, while knowing 99% of startups fail.

Cap table: A spreadsheet that outlines everything about your company, like money to date, money you plan to raise, investments, debts, and all the boring stuff like numbers.

Pitch deck: A deck people need to raise money from investors (Google AIRBNB pitch deck as a reference for how to raise money)

Friends + family rounds: Investments from friends and family whom may just believe in you/your ideas and give you money with nothing expected in return and no equity taken

Fundraise: Asking people for money

Unicorn companies: Companies like Flo (the period tracker app), Beehiiv, and Siete (who was just bought for $1.2B by Pepsi) are known as unicorn companies. They are the first in their field who have succeeded at such great lengths and completely won over any competition they had.

Seed round: The first baby round after a friends and family round that enables a founder to further prove their concept, hire critical team members, and scale fast

Series A, B, C: TBB. The big boys. You’re now raising millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars by scary people who will take large percentages of your company and whom you will have to answer to.

Exit: You won, you’re rich.

IPO: Also you won, you’re rich. And on the stock exchange. Bravo.

Acquisition: You were purchased by a big boy, like Pepsi & Co., or Unilever, or Ogilvy. There are also small acquisitions done quite frequently to eat up competition and scale faster (for example Beehiiv acquired Typedream, Small Girls PR was just acquired by another PR firm)

VC: venture capital.

Incubator: Techstars, Antler and YC (Y Combinator) are the most common incubator programs. People who enter these programs receive strong resources and investments, along with mentorship. YC is notorious for the biggest stamp of approval in Silicon Valley because Gary Tan is a powerhouse.

Stay fearless or die trying,

Alexa

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