# Terms

The plain-language terms on the Tulsa Ecosystem Map, A to Z: the words founders hear and what they mean.

- [301 redirect](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/redirect-301): An instruction that sends visitors and search engines from an old web address to a new one permanently, so old links keep working and…
- [409A valuation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/409a-valuation): An independent appraisal of what one share of a private company's common stock is worth.
- [501(c)(6)](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/501c6): A US tax-exempt category for business leagues, such as trade associations, chambers of commerce and professional associations.
- [83(b) election](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/83b-election): A notice sent to the US tax agency, the IRS, by a person who receives stock that vests over time.
- [Accelerator](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/accelerator): A program with a fixed length that helps a group of early companies grow faster through coaching, introductions and sometimes funding.
- [Access control](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/access-control): Rules about who can see or change what in a system.
- [Accounts receivable](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/accounts-receivable): Money customers owe you for work already delivered or goods already sold, but have not paid yet.
- [Accredited investor](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/accredited-investor): A person or organization that meets tests set by the US securities regulator, the SEC, based on income, net worth or professional…
- [Ad exchange](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ad-exchange): The digital marketplace where ad space from sellers is auctioned to advertisers in real time.
- [Advisor shares](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/advisor-shares): A small amount of equity a startup gives an advisor in return for ongoing help, usually as stock options that vest over the period of the…
- [Affiliate marketing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/affiliate-marketing): Paying partners a commission when people they refer, usually through a special link, make a purchase.
- [AFK](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/afk): Short for away from keyboard.
- [Agent environment](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/agent-environment): Everything outside the agent's own software that it can look at or change: your files, terminal, browser, databases and connected services.
- [Agent loop](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/agent-loop): The repeating cycle that makes an AI agent work: the model decides on a step, calls a tool, reads the result and decides the next step…
- [Agent mode](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/agent-mode): A named setting in a coding agent that changes how freely it acts.
- [Agent skills](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/agent-skills): A packaged set of instructions, sometimes with scripts, that an agent loads when a task calls for it, such as how to write a press release…
- [Agent swarm](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/agent-swarm): Many AI agents working on parts of a larger task at the same time, coordinated by software or by a lead agent.
- [AGENTS.md](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/agents-md): A plain text file in a project that many coding agents read automatically at the start of every session.
- [Aha moment](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/aha-moment): The point where a new user first feels the value of a product.
- [AI](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/terms/ai): Artificial intelligence.
- [AI addendum](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ai-addendum): An add-on to a software contract for a product that uses AI.
- [AI agent](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ai-agent): An AI tool that does more than answer a question.
- [AI chat assistant](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/chatbot): A finished app where a person types or talks to an AI model and gets replies in conversation.
- [AI literacy](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ai-literacy): Enough understanding of AI to use it well and safely: what it is good and bad at, how to write a prompt, how to check its work and what…
- [AI safety](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ai-safety): The work of making AI systems behave safely and of measuring how safe they are.
- [AI use policy](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ai-use-policy): An organization's rules for which AI tools its people may use and what information they may put into them.
- [Alignment](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/alignment): Work to make AI models pursue what people actually intend and behave according to agreed values, such as being honest and refusing harmful…
- [Alumni](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/alumni): The founders and companies that finished a program in the past.
- [AMA](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ama): Short for 'ask me anything'.
- [Angel group](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/angel-group): A group of angel investors who hear startup pitches together.
- [Angel investor](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/angel-investor): An individual who invests their own money in a very young company, usually in exchange for equity or through a SAFE or convertible note.
- [Answer engine optimization](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/answer-engine-optimization): Making your content easy for AI chat and AI search tools to find, understand and cite when they answer people's questions.
- [API](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/terms/api): Application programming interface.
- [API contract](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/api-contract): An agreement on exactly what requests an API accepts and what responses it returns.
- [API key](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/api-key): A secret code that identifies your app to another service so that service will answer its API requests.
- [APNG](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/apng): Animated PNG.
- [Apple Silicon](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/apple-silicon): Apple's own family of chips used in Mac computers and iPads.
- [Apprenticeship](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/apprenticeship): A paid job that includes structured training, so a person learns a trade or skill while working under experienced staff.
- [ARR](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/arr): Annual recurring revenue.
- [Atomic Design](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/atomic-design): A method for building design systems from small pieces up: basic elements (atoms) combine into components (molecules), sections…
- [Attention](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/attention): The part of a language model that decides, for each token, how much every other token in the input should shape its meaning.
- [Attention budget](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/attention-budget): A way of picturing attention as a fixed amount each token can spread across everything else in the input.
- [Attention degradation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/attention-degradation): The drop in an agent's sharpness as a session gets long.
- [Attention relationship](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/attention-relationship): The link between two tokens in the input, measured by how much one shapes the model's reading of the other.
- [Audio stem](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/audio-stem): One part of a song exported as its own audio file, such as only the drums or only the vocals, so others can remix or mix it.
- [Authentication](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/authentication): Checking that a person is who they say they are, usually with a login.
- [Autocompact](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/autocompact): Compaction that the agent's software starts on its own when the context window is nearly full.
- [Automated check](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/automated-check): A test or rule a computer runs to catch problems without a person looking, such as tests, type checkers and style checkers.
- [Automated review](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/automated-review): Having an AI model read and critique work, usually code, before a person does.
- [AX](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ax): Agent experience: how well a project is set up for an AI agent to do good work, with a clear structure, automated checks that catch…
- [B2B / B2C](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/b2b-b2c): Who you sell to.
- [Back end](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/back-end): The part of an app that runs out of sight on a server.
- [Backlog](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/backlog): The running list of new abilities, fixes and ideas waiting to be worked on, usually in order of priority.
- [Backpropagation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/backpropagation): The calculation that works out how much each weight in a neural network contributed to an error, layer by layer from the output back, so…
- [Backup](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/backup): A copy of data kept so it can be recovered if the original is lost or damaged.
- [Beachhead market](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/beachhead-market): A small, specific first market a startup aims to win completely before expanding to others.
- [Benchmark](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/benchmark): A shared, public test used to score different models on the same tasks so they can be compared.
- [Beta](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/beta): A version of the product released to a limited group of people so you can find problems before the full launch.
- [Bill of materials](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/bill-of-materials): A complete list of the parts, materials and quantities needed to build a product.
- [Bloom's Taxonomy](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/blooms-taxonomy): A framework from education that orders levels of learning from simpler to harder: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create.
- [Board of directors](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/board-of-directors): The group that a corporation's shareholders elect to oversee the company.
- [Bookings](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/bookings): The total value of the contracts customers signed in a period.
- [Bootstrapping](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/bootstrapping): Building a company with your own savings and the money customers pay you, instead of money from investors.
- [Brain drain](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/brain-drain): When skilled people leave a place for jobs elsewhere, so the place loses the talent it trained.
- [Branch](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/branch): A separate line of work inside a repository.
- [Breadcrumb navigation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/breadcrumb-navigation): A short trail of links near the top of a page showing where it sits in a site, such as Home \> Shoes \> Running.
- [Break-even](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/break-even): The point where the money coming in equals the money going out, so the business is no longer losing money.
- [Bug](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/bug): A mistake in software that makes it behave in a way nobody intended.
- [Burn rate](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/burn-rate): How fast your company is using up its cash, usually counted per month.
- [Business associate agreement](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/business-associate-agreement): A contract that US health privacy law (HIPAA) requires before a clinic, health plan or other covered organization lets an outside company…
- [Business model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/business-model): How your company makes money: who pays, what they pay for and how often.
- [Business process outsourcing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/business-process-outsourcing): Hiring an outside firm to run a business function, such as customer support, billing or data entry.
- [Bylaws](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/bylaws): The internal rules an organization, such as a nonprofit or corporation, adopts for how it is run: how the board is chosen, how votes…
- [C-corp](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/c-corp): C corporation.
- [CAC](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cac): Customer acquisition cost.
- [Cache tokens](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cache-tokens): Input tokens the provider did not need to process again because they matched the start of a recent request in its cache.
- [CAD](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cad): Computer-aided design.
- [Call to action](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/call-to-action): The one next step a page, email or ad asks the reader to take, such as 'Book a demo' or 'Start free trial'.
- [Campaign budget optimization](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/campaign-budget-optimization): An ad platform setting that shares one budget across several ad groups and moves money automatically toward whichever is performing best.
- [Cap table](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cap-table): Short for capitalization table.
- [Capital gains](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/capital-gains): The profit from selling an asset, such as stock or property, for more than it cost.
- [Cash flow](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cash-flow): The timing of money coming into and going out of a business.
- [CDFI](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cdfi): Short for community development financial institution.
- [CDN](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cdn): Content delivery network.
- [Chamber of commerce](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/chamber-of-commerce): A membership organization of businesses in one place or one community.
- [Change management](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/change-management): Planning and supporting the people side of a change, such as a new tool or process, so staff actually adopt it.
- [Chunking](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/chunking): Splitting long documents into smaller passages before creating embeddings, so a search can return just the relevant part instead of a…
- [Churn rate](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/churn-rate): The share of your customers who stop paying or stop using your product during a set period, such as a month.
- [CI/CD](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ci-cd): Continuous integration and continuous delivery: automation that runs the tests on every change pushed to the repository and, when they…
- [Civic tech](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/civic-tech): Technology built to serve the public good or improve how people interact with government, often by volunteers or nonprofits.
- [Clearing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/clearing): Ending a session and starting a completely empty one.
- [Cliff](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cliff): The first stretch of a vesting schedule, during which nothing vests.
- [Cloud](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/terms/cloud): Computers and storage that you rent over the internet from a large provider, instead of owning the machines yourself.
- [Cloud provider](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cloud-provider): A company that rents out computing services, such as servers, storage and databases, over the internet and on demand.
- [Cloud service agreement](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cloud-service-agreement): A contract between a company that sells cloud software and a business that buys it.
- [Code](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/code): Exact written instructions that tell a computer what to do, step by step.
- [Code editor](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/code-editor): The program a developer uses to read and write code.
- [Code of conduct](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/code-of-conduct): The written rules for how people in a community or at an event must treat each other, and what happens when someone breaks them.
- [Code signing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/code-signing): Attaching a digital signature to software so computers and app stores can confirm who made it and that it was not altered.
- [Coding agent](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/coding-agent): An AI agent that writes and changes code.
- [Coding bootcamp](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/coding-bootcamp): A short, intensive course that teaches people to write software, usually in months instead of the years a degree takes.
- [Cohort](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cohort): A group of founders or companies that go through a program together, on the same schedule.
- [Cold outreach](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cold-outreach): Contacting people who do not know you yet, by email, phone or message, to start a sales or partnership conversation.
- [Commission](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/commission): Pay that is a share of the sales a person brings in, rather than, or on top of, a fixed salary.
- [Commit](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/commit): One saved change in version control: a snapshot of the code with a short note saying what changed, who made it and when.
- [Compaction](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/compaction): Shrinking a long session by replacing its history with a summary and carrying on from that summary in a fresh context window.
- [Compliance](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/compliance): Meeting the laws, regulations and standards that apply to a company.
- [Container](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/container): A package that holds an app together with everything it needs to run, so it behaves the same on a laptop and on a server.
- [Content management system](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/content-management-system): Software that lets people create and edit a website's content, such as pages, posts and images, without writing code.
- [Context engineering](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/context-engineering): Deciding what information, instructions, examples and tools to put in front of an AI model for each task, and what to leave out.
- [Context pointer](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/context-pointer): A short mention in one document that tells an agent where to find more, such as 'deployment steps are in the deploy guide'.
- [Context window](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/context-window): How much text an LLM can take into account at one time.
- [Contextual knowledge](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/contextual-knowledge): Facts the model can read directly in front of it right now, such as documents you pasted, files the agent opened or search results.
- [Continuing professional education](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/continuing-professional-education): Ongoing training that licensed professionals, such as accountants, must complete each year to keep their license.
- [Contract amendment](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/contract-amendment): A short signed document that changes, adds to or clarifies the terms of a contract already in place, without replacing the whole contract.
- [Contractor vs employee](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/contractor-vs-employee): A contractor is an outside person or firm you pay for a defined piece of work, and they decide how to do it.
- [Conversion rate optimization](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/conversion-rate-optimization): Improving a website or app so a larger share of visitors take the action you want, such as signing up or buying, often by testing changes…
- [Convertible note](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/convertible-note): A loan from an investor that is meant to turn into shares later instead of being paid back in cash.
- [Cosine similarity](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cosine-similarity): A common way to measure how alike two vectors are by the angle between them.
- [Coworking space](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/coworking-space): A shared office where people from different companies rent a desk, a private office or a meeting room, often by the month or by the day.
- [CPM](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cpm): Cost per thousand impressions.
- [CRM](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/crm): Customer relationship management.
- [CSS](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/css): Cascading Style Sheets.
- [CTO](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cto): Chief technology officer.
- [Customer discovery](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/customer-discovery): Talking with possible customers to learn about their problems before you build, so that you build something they need.
- [Cyber liability insurance](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/cyber-liability-insurance): Insurance that helps pay the costs of a data breach or cyberattack, such as investigation, customer notification, legal costs and recovery.
- [Dark factory](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/dark-factory): Part of a product where agents write and ship code that no person ever reviews.
- [Dashboard](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/dashboard): A screen that shows the important numbers for a product or a business at a glance, usually as charts and totals that update on their own.
- [Data center](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-center): A building that houses the computers, storage and network equipment that run online services, along with the power and cooling they need.
- [Data governance](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-governance): The rules and responsibilities for how an organization's data is collected, stored, used and protected.
- [Data integrity](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-integrity): Whether data stays accurate, complete and consistent over time.
- [Data lineage](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-lineage): A record of where a piece of data came from and every step that changed it along the way.
- [Data literacy](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-literacy): The ability to read, question and use data: knowing what a field or number actually means, where it came from and what it can and cannot…
- [Data management platform](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-management-platform): Software that collects and organizes audience data, such as interests and past behavior, so advertisers can target groups of people.
- [Data model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-model): The plan for what information an app stores and how the pieces relate, such as customers, orders and products and which belongs to which.
- [Data normalization](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-normalization): Making records consistent so the same thing is always written the same way, and, in database design, storing each fact in only one place.
- [Data privacy](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-privacy): How a company collects, uses, stores and shares information about people.
- [Data processing agreement](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-processing-agreement): A contract that says how a service provider may handle personal data for its customer: what it may do with the data, how it keeps the data…
- [Data room](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-room): An organized online folder of a company's key documents, shared privately with investors or buyers so they can check the facts during due…
- [Data warehouse](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/data-warehouse): A central database that collects copies of data from many business systems so it can be analyzed and reported on in one place.
- [Database](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/database): Organized storage for your app's information, such as users, orders and messages, so it can be saved and looked up later.
- [DAU / MAU](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/dau-mau): Daily active users and monthly active users.
- [Deep learning](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/deep-learning): Machine learning using neural networks with many layers.
- [Deepfake](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/deepfake): Realistic fake video, audio or images of a real person made with AI, showing them saying or doing something they never did.
- [Default alive](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/default-alive): A phrase from investor Paul Graham.
- [Demand-side platform](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/demand-side-platform): Software that advertisers use to buy ad space across many websites and apps automatically, with targeting and budget rules.
- [Demo day](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/demo-day): The event at the end of an accelerator where each company in the cohort presents to an audience of investors.
- [Deployment](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/deployment): Putting the latest version of your app onto the live servers where real users can reach it.
- [Design concept](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/design-concept): The shared picture of what is being built, held by you and by the agent, separate from any document or code.
- [Design partner](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/design-partner): An early customer who works closely with a startup to shape a product, giving regular feedback in exchange for early access, a discount or…
- [Design system](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/design-system): A shared set of design rules and ready-made interface pieces, such as buttons, colors and type, so every screen looks and works…
- [Developer relations](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/developer-relations): A role, often at platform companies, that helps outside developers use the company's tools through docs, examples, talks and community…
- [DevOps](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/devops): The practice, and job, of combining software development with running it in production: automating builds, tests and deployments and…
- [Diffusion model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/diffusion-model): A kind of AI model that creates images, and sometimes audio or video, by starting from random noise and removing it step by step until a…
- [Digital audio workstation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/digital-audio-workstation): Software for recording, editing and mixing music and other audio.
- [Dilution](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/dilution): When the company creates new shares, each existing owner's percentage gets smaller, even though the number of shares they hold stays the…
- [Dimension](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/dimension): One number position in a vector, like one axis on a map.
- [Distillation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/distillation): Training a smaller model to copy the outputs of a larger one, so it keeps much of the quality while being cheaper and faster to run.
- [DNS](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/dns): Domain Name System.
- [DOM](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/dom): Document Object Model.
- [Domain](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/domain): The address people type to reach your site, such as example.com.
- [Due diligence](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/due-diligence): The checking an investor or buyer does before committing money: reviewing your finances, legal documents, product and the claims you have…
- [DX](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/dx): Developer experience: how easy and pleasant a tool, codebase or service is for the people who build with it, such as clear documentation…
- [EBITDA](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ebitda): Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
- [Ecommerce](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ecommerce): Selling products or services online, with a store website, a cart and online payments.
- [Economic development organization](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/economic-development-organization): An organization whose job is to grow the economy of a city, region or state.
- [Edge](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/edge): Running code and storing data in many locations close to users, instead of in one distant data center, mainly so responses arrive faster.
- [EdTech](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/edtech): Education technology: software and devices for teaching and learning, and the market of companies that build them.
- [Effort](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/effort): A setting that tells a reasoning model how much thinking to do before it answers.
- [Egress](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/egress): Data leaving a cloud provider's network, for example when a visitor downloads a file.
- [EIN](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ein): Employer Identification Number.
- [Email marketing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/email-marketing): Sending planned emails to a list of people who signed up, such as newsletters, announcements and offers.
- [Embedding](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/embedding): A way of turning a piece of text into a list of numbers that captures its meaning, so software can tell which pieces of text are about…
- [Encryption](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/encryption): Scrambling data with a key so only someone with the right key can read it.
- [Engagement letter](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/engagement-letter): A short contract that starts a professional services relationship.
- [Environment](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/environment): A separate copy of a system used for one purpose.
- [Equity](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/equity): Ownership in a company.
- [Equity vs cash compensation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/equity-vs-cash): The two main ways a startup pays people.
- [ERP](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/enterprise-resource-planning): Enterprise resource planning.
- [Evals](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/evals): Tests that check whether the outputs of a model or an AI product meet the criteria its builders set.
- [Event venue](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/event-venue): A place that can host a gathering, such as a meetup, talk, workshop or launch party.
- [Exit](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/exit): The moment when founders and investors can turn their shares into cash.
- [FAANG](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/faang): Shorthand for a handful of the largest US tech companies, originally Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google.
- [Feature flag](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/feature-flag): A switch in the code that turns a feature on or off without shipping new code.
- [Few-shot prompting](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/few-shot-prompting): Including a few worked examples in a prompt so the model copies the pattern.
- [Fiduciary duty](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fiduciary-duty): A legal duty to act in someone else's best interest and not your own.
- [Filesystem](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/filesystem): The files and folders on a computer.
- [Fine-tuning](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fine-tuning): Extra training of an existing model on a smaller, narrower set of examples, so it suits one task or style.
- [First-party tracking](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/first-party-tracking): Collecting analytics on your own website through your own systems, rather than sending visitor data to outside ad or analytics companies.
- [Fiscal sponsorship](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fiscal-sponsorship): An arrangement where an established nonprofit takes in grants and donations on behalf of a project that is not its own tax-exempt…
- [Fixed-price engagement](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fixed-price-engagement): A services deal where the client pays one agreed price for a defined result, no matter how many hours it takes.
- [Fork](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fork): A copy of someone else's repository under your own account, which you can change freely.
- [Founder](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/founder): A person who starts a company and owns part of it from the beginning.
- [Fractional CFO](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fractional-cfo): A part-time chief financial officer.
- [Fractional CISO](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fractional-ciso): A part-time security leader.
- [Fractional CMO](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fractional-cmo): A part-time chief marketing officer.
- [Fractional COO](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fractional-coo): A part-time chief operating officer.
- [Fractional CTO](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fractional-cto): A part-time chief technology officer.
- [Fractional executive](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fractional-executive): An experienced leader who works for several companies at once, each for part of the week, usually for a monthly fee.
- [Fractional head of product](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/fractional-product-leader): A part-time product leader.
- [Free tier](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/free-tier): The part of a paid service that costs nothing, within set limits.
- [Front end](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/front-end): The part of an app or website that people see and tap, running in their browser or on their phone.
- [Frontier model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/frontier-model): One of the most capable general-purpose AI models available at a given time.
- [Function coloring](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/function-coloring): A nickname for a problem in many programming languages: functions that wait on slow work (async) and functions that do not cannot be mixed…
- [Gamification](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/gamification): Adding game elements, such as points, badges, streaks or stamps, to a product or program to encourage people to come back and keep going.
- [General contractor](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/general-contractor): The company that manages a construction project and hires and coordinates the specialist subcontractors, such as electricians and plumbers.
- [Geotargeting](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/geotargeting): Showing ads or content only to people in a chosen place, such as a city or a few miles around a store.
- [Go-to-market](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/go-to-market): Your plan for reaching customers and getting them to buy: who you go after first, where you find them and how you sell.
- [Government contracting](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/government-contracting): Selling products or services to a government agency under a formal contract.
- [GPU](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/gpu): Graphics processing unit.
- [Graceful degradation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/graceful-degradation): Designing a system so that when one part fails, the rest keeps working in a simpler way instead of breaking completely.
- [Gradient descent](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/gradient-descent): The method used to train neural networks: measure how wrong the model is, work out which direction to nudge each weight to be less wrong…
- [Grant](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/grant): Money given for a stated purpose that does not have to be repaid and does not buy any ownership.
- [Grilling](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/grilling): Having an agent question you one decision at a time until the plan is clear, before any building starts.
- [Gross margin](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/gross-margin): The part of each sale you keep after paying the direct cost of making and delivering what you sold.
- [Ground truth](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ground-truth): The verified, correct answers or facts that an AI system's output is checked against.
- [Guardrails](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/guardrails): Checks and limits built around a model inside a product.
- [Hackathon](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/hackathon): An event, often a day or a weekend, where people form teams and build a working project from scratch, then show it at the end.
- [Hallucination](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/hallucination): When an AI model states something false or invented as though it were true.
- [Handoff](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/handoff): Passing work from one session to the next, or from one agent to another, so the new one can continue without the full history.
- [Handoff artifact](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/handoff-artifact): The written document that carries a handoff, produced by one session for another to read.
- [Haptic feedback](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/haptic-feedback): Small vibrations a device makes to confirm an action, such as a tap when a switch flips.
- [Hard tech](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/hard-tech): Companies whose product rests on physical engineering or new science, such as machines, materials or devices.
- [Harness](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/harness): The software wrapped around an AI model that turns it into a working agent.
- [Headless commerce](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/headless-commerce): Running a store's products, cart and checkout on one system while building the shopping screens separately.
- [Home repo](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/home-repo): One repository that acts as your base for working with agents.
- [Hosting](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/hosting): Renting space on a server so your site or app can be reached on the internet at all hours.
- [HTML](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/html): HyperText Markup Language.
- [HTML5](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/html5): The current version of HTML.
- [HTTPS](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/https): The secure version of the way browsers talk to websites.
- [Human in the loop](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/human-in-the-loop): Designing an AI process so a person reviews, approves or corrects the AI's work at key steps instead of letting it act alone.
- [Human Interface Guidelines](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/human-interface-guidelines): Apple's official design guidance for apps on its platforms.
- [Human review](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/human-review): A person reading and approving what an agent produced before it goes live.
- [Hybrid search](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/hybrid-search): Combining keyword search and similarity search, so results match both exact terms, such as product codes, and overall meaning.
- [Hyperscaler](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/hyperscaler): An informal name for the very largest cloud providers, which run huge fleets of data centers.
- [Incorporation in Delaware](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/delaware-incorporation): Forming a company as a corporation under the law of the state of Delaware.
- [Incubator](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/incubator): A program or shared space that supports very early companies, often with desks, mentoring and community.
- [Indie hacker](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/indie-hacker): Someone who builds and runs a small software business on their own or with a tiny team, usually without outside investors.
- [Inference](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/inference): An AI model producing an answer to a request.
- [Input tokens](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/input-tokens): The tokens an AI product sends to the model on each request: the instructions, the conversation so far, files and tool results.
- [Intellectual property](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/intellectual-property): Things you create that can be owned, such as code, designs, brand names and inventions.
- [Interim executive](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/interim-executive): A leader who fills a role full time for a limited period, for example after someone leaves and before a permanent hire.
- [Internet service provider](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/internet-service-provider): The company that provides an internet connection to a home, school or business.
- [Internship](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/internship): A short stint of work, usually paid, for a student or recent graduate, often over a summer.
- [Interpretability](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/interpretability): Research into what is happening inside an AI model: which internal patterns represent which ideas and how they lead to an output.
- [IRS Section 7216](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/irs-section-7216): A US tax rule that limits how tax return preparers may use or disclose clients' tax return information without the client's consent.
- [ISO/IEC 27001](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/iso-27001): An international standard for running an information security management system.
- [Job description](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/job-description): A short written summary of a role: what the person will do, the skills it needs, who they report to and how it is paid.
- [Join table](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/join-table): A database table whose only job is to connect two other tables when items on each side can link to many on the other.
- [Joint development agreement](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/joint-development-agreement): A contract between two organizations that build something together.
- [JSON](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/json): JavaScript Object Notation.
- [JSONC](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/jsonc): JSON with comments.
- [Key rotation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/key-rotation): Replacing passwords, API keys and other secrets on a schedule or after a possible leak, so an old stolen key stops working.
- [Knowledge cutoff](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/knowledge-cutoff): The date where a model's training data ends.
- [Knowledge graph](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/knowledge-graph): A way of storing information as things and the named connections between them, such as 'course A teaches skill B'.
- [KPI](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/kpi): Key performance indicator.
- [Latent space](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/latent-space): The internal map of numbers where a model places the things it reads.
- [Lead generation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/lead-generation): Finding and collecting contact details of people or companies who might buy, so sales can follow up.
- [Lead investor](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/lead-investor): The investor who negotiates the terms of a round with the founders and usually puts in the largest share of the money.
- [Lead magnet](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/lead-magnet): Something useful given away free, such as a guide or template, in exchange for a person's contact details.
- [Learning management system](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/learning-management-system): Software for delivering and tracking training or classes: lessons, quizzes, assignments and who has completed what.
- [Letter of intent](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/letter-of-intent): A short document that sets out what two parties intend to agree on, such as a purchase once a product exists.
- [Lexical search](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/lexical-search): Search that matches the exact words in a query.
- [Licensing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/licensing): Letting another party use something you own, such as software, a patent or a brand, in exchange for fees or royalties, while you keep…
- [Limited partner](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/limited-partner): An investor who puts money into a venture fund.
- [Liquid Glass](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/liquid-glass): Apple's design material, introduced in 2025, that looks like see-through glass, reflecting and bending what is behind it.
- [Liquidation preference](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/liquidation-preference): A term that sets who gets paid first, and how much, when a company is sold or shut down.
- [LLC](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/llc): Limited liability company.
- [LLM](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/llm): Large language model.
- [Local model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/local-model): A model that is downloaded and run on a person's own computer or a company's own servers, not on a provider's.
- [LoRA](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/lora): Low-rank adaptation.
- [Loss function](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/loss-function): A formula that scores how wrong a model's output is compared with the right answer.
- [LTV](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ltv): Lifetime value.
- [Makefile](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/makefile): A file that lists named shortcuts for a project's routine commands, run with a tool called make.
- [Makerspace](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/makerspace): A shared workshop with tools such as 3D printers, laser cutters and electronics benches that members can use.
- [Managed service](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/managed-service): A service where the provider handles the upkeep instead of the customer's own team.
- [Managed service provider](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/managed-service-provider): An outside company that runs part of another organization's technology for a monthly fee, such as its computers, network, security or help…
- [Management information systems](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/management-information-systems): A field of study, and a common university major in business schools, about how organizations use technology and data to run.
- [Markdown](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/markdown): A simple way to format plain text with symbols, such as # for a heading and \* for a bullet.
- [Master services agreement](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/master-services-agreement): A contract that sets the general terms between a client and a provider once (payment, ownership of the work, confidentiality, liability)…
- [MCP](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/terms/mcp): Model Context Protocol.
- [MediaStream Recording API](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/mediastream-recording-api): A browser feature that records audio or video from a microphone, camera or media element so a web app can save or process it.
- [Meetup](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/meetup): An informal, recurring gathering of people with a shared interest.
- [Memory system](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/memory-system): A setup that tries to give an agent memory across sessions by saving notes to files or a database and loading them back when a new session…
- [Mentor](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/mentor): An experienced person who gives a founder guidance.
- [Merge conflict](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/merge-conflict): What happens when two branches change the same lines of code in different ways, so version control cannot combine them on its own.
- [Mesh network](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/mesh-network): A network where devices pass data to each other instead of each one needing its own connection to the internet, so it can cover places…
- [Meta box](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/meta-box): A panel on a WordPress editing screen with extra fields for a post, such as an event date or a price, beyond the main title and body.
- [Microsite](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/microsite): A small website, separate from an organization's main site, built for one event, campaign or product.
- [Microtransaction](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/microtransaction): A small purchase inside an app or game, such as extra lives or a cosmetic item.
- [MLOps](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/mlops): The practices and tools for running machine learning models in production: versioning data and models, deploying them, monitoring quality…
- [Moat](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/moat): An advantage that makes it hard for competitors to copy your business or take your customers, such as unique data, network effects or high…
- [Mobile-first design](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/mobile-first-design): Designing for small phone screens first, then expanding the design for larger screens.
- [Model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/model): The trained system at the center of an AI product.
- [Model provider](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/model-provider): The company or service that runs an AI model and answers requests to it, usually over the internet through an API.
- [Model provider request](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/model-provider-request): One trip from an AI product to the model provider and back.
- [Moonlighting](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/moonlighting): Doing paid work on the side, outside a full-time job.
- [MRR](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/mrr): Monthly recurring revenue.
- [Multi-factor authentication](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/mfa): A sign-in that asks for more than one kind of proof, drawn from something a person knows, something a person has and something a person is.
- [Multi-tenancy](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/multi-tenancy): One copy of a software system serving many customer organizations at once, with each one's data kept separate.
- [Multimodal](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/multimodal): Describes a model that works with more than one type of content, such as text plus images or audio.
- [MVP](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/mvp): Minimum viable product.
- [NAICS code](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/naics-code): A number from the North American Industry Classification System that labels what industry a business is in.
- [NDA](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/nda): Non-disclosure agreement.
- [Net promoter score](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/net-promoter-score): A survey score based on one question: how likely are you to recommend us, from 0 to 10.
- [Neural network](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/neural-network): A kind of software model made of many layers of simple math units connected by weights, loosely inspired by the brain.
- [Next-token prediction](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/next-token-prediction): The one job a language model performs.
- [NIST AI Risk Management Framework](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/nist-ai-rmf): A voluntary framework from NIST, the US standards agency, that helps organizations manage the risks AI can pose to people, organizations…
- [No-code](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/no-code): Tools that let you build an app or site by arranging visual blocks or describing what you want, instead of writing code.
- [Non-dilutive funding](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/non-dilutive-funding): Money a company receives without giving up any ownership.
- [Non-provisional patent](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/non-provisional-patent): The full US patent application that the patent office actually examines.
- [Nonprofit](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/nonprofit): An organization that exists to serve a mission and does not pay profits out to owners.
- [Notice of allowance](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/notice-of-allowance): A notice from the patent or trademark office that an application has been approved, pending final fees or steps.
- [Object storage](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/object-storage): A cloud service for storing files such as images, videos and documents.
- [Observability](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/observability): Being able to see what a running system is doing through its logs, metrics and traces, so a team can tell when something goes wrong and why.
- [Offer letter](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/offer-letter): A written job offer to the chosen candidate.
- [Office action](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/office-action): A letter from a patent or trademark examiner explaining problems with an application, often rejecting some claims.
- [Office hours](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/office-hours): A set time when founders can bring questions to an expert, a mentor or program staff, usually in short one-on-one or small group sessions.
- [Offline attribution](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/offline-attribution): Connecting sales or sign-ups that happen outside a website, such as in a store or over the phone, back to the ads that led to them.
- [OKRs](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/objectives-and-key-results): Objectives and key results.
- [Omnichannel](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/omnichannel): Handling a customer across every channel, such as phone, email, chat, text and in person, as one connected experience with shared history.
- [On-premises](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/on-premises): Running software on servers an organization owns and keeps in its own building or data center, instead of in the cloud.
- [Onboarding](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/onboarding): The first steps a new user takes in a product: signing up, setting it up and learning enough to get value from it.
- [Online advertising](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/online-advertising): Paying to show ads on search engines, social media, websites and apps, often aimed at specific audiences.
- [Open source](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/open-source): Software whose code is published for anyone to read, use and build on, under a license that sets the rules for doing so.
- [Open source hardware](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/open-source-hardware): Physical products whose design files are published so anyone can study, change, make and sell the design or hardware based on it.
- [Open source vs open weights](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/open-source-vs-open-weights): Two labels for AI models that people often mix up.
- [OpenAPI](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/openapi): A standard format for describing what an API offers: its addresses, what each one expects and what it returns.
- [Operating system](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/operating-system): The base software that runs a computer or phone, such as Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS or Android.
- [Opportunity zone](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/opportunity-zone): A designated low-income area in the US where investors can put money through special funds and postpone tax on certain gains.
- [Option pool](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/option-pool): A block of shares a company sets aside to grant to future employees, advisors and contractors, usually as stock options.
- [Order form](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/order-form): A short document that records one purchase under a contract already in place: what the customer buys, how many users or units, the fees…
- [Original equipment manufacturer](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/original-equipment-manufacturer): A company that makes products or parts that another company sells or builds into its own products, often under the other company's brand.
- [ORM](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/orm): Object-relational mapping.
- [Output tokens](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/output-tokens): The tokens the model writes back.
- [Overfitting](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/overfitting): When a model learns its training examples too closely, including their quirks, and then performs poorly on new data.
- [Package manager](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/package-manager): A tool that downloads and updates the pieces of shared code, called packages, that a project depends on.
- [Pair programming](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/pair-programming): Two people writing code together at one screen, one typing and one reviewing and thinking ahead, switching roles often.
- [Parameters](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/parameters): The values a model learns during training.
- [Parametric knowledge](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/parametric-knowledge): What a model knows from its training, stored in its parameters.
- [Partnership agreement](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/partnership-agreement): A contract between two companies that work together to sell, market or support their products, for example through referrals, co-marketing…
- [Pay-per-click advertising](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ppc): Online ads where you pay each time someone clicks, most often shown beside search results.
- [Payments](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/payments): The service that lets a company charge customers' cards and bank accounts and receive the money.
- [Payroll](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/payroll): Paying employees on a schedule, and the work that goes with it: withholding income and payroll taxes from each paycheck, paying the…
- [Per-seat pricing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/per-seat-pricing): A way to charge for software where the customer pays for each person who uses it.
- [Permalink](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/permalink): A web address for one specific page or item that is meant never to change, so links to it keep working.
- [Permission mode](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/permission-mode): The rules that decide which actions an agent may take on its own and which need your approval first.
- [Permission request](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/permission-request): The pause where an agent asks before it takes an action its permission mode does not allow on its own.
- [Philanthropic foundation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/philanthropic-foundation): An organization that gives money to causes it wants to advance, such as education or a city's economy.
- [Picture-in-picture](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/picture-in-picture): A feature that keeps a video playing in a small floating window while the person uses other apps or pages.
- [Pilot](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/pilot): A small, time-limited trial of a product with one customer, run to learn whether the product works for that customer before a full contract.
- [Pitch competition](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/pitch-competition): An event where founders present their companies to judges, who pick winners.
- [Pitch deck](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/pitch-deck): A short slide presentation that explains your business to investors: the problem, your solution, who it is for, your traction and what you…
- [Pivot](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/pivot): A deliberate change of direction after learning that your current plan is not working.
- [Portfolio](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/portfolio): The set of companies that an investor has funded, or that a program supports.
- [Pre-accelerator](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/pre-accelerator): A program for people who have an idea but not yet a company or a product.
- [Pre-seed](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/pre-seed): The earliest outside money a startup raises, often before the product is finished or has customers.
- [Preferred stock vs common stock](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/preferred-stock): The two main kinds of shares in a startup.
- [Prefix cache](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/prefix-cache): A provider feature that remembers the opening of a request it has just handled.
- [Price anchoring](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/price-anchoring): Showing a reference number first so that the real price is judged against it.
- [Priced round](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/priced-round): A fundraising round where investors buy shares at a set price per share, which fixes the valuation of the company.
- [Pricing tiers](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/pricing-tiers): The set of plans a product sells, from a cheap or free starting plan up to plans for large customers.
- [Primary source](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/primary-source): The original material itself, such as the code, a full transcript or the raw data.
- [Prior art](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/prior-art): Anything public before a patent was filed, such as earlier patents, papers or products, that shows the idea was already known.
- [Private equity](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/private-equity): Investment firms that buy stakes in, or all of, established private companies, usually aiming to improve them and sell later at a profit.
- [Pro rata rights](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/pro-rata): An investor's right to buy enough shares in a later round to keep the same percentage of the company.
- [Probabilistic vs deterministic](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/probabilistic-vs-deterministic): Deterministic software gives the same output for the same input every time.
- [Product manager vs program manager](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/product-vs-program-manager): Both are called PM.
- [Product requirements document](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/product-requirements-document): A document that explains what a product or feature should do, for whom and why, so the team agrees before building.
- [Product-market fit](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/product-market-fit): The point where you have built something a clear group of customers really wants.
- [Production](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/production): The live version of your app that real customers use.
- [Professional certificate](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/professional-certificate): A credential that shows a person has passed training or an exam in a specific job skill, such as IT support, cloud or project management.
- [Profit](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/profit): What is left of your revenue after every cost is paid.
- [Programmatic advertising](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/programmatic-advertising): Buying and selling online ad space automatically through software, often in auctions that run in a fraction of a second as a page loads.
- [Progressive disclosure](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/progressive-disclosure): Giving an agent only what it needs right now, with pointers to the rest, instead of loading everything at the start.
- [Projection mapping](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/projection-mapping): Projecting video onto an uneven surface, such as a building, and shaping the image to fit it, sometimes so people can interact with it.
- [Promise chain](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/promise-chain): A way of writing code for steps that take time, such as network requests, so each step starts when the one before it finishes.
- [Prompt](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/prompt): The instructions or question you give an AI tool in everyday words.
- [Prompt injection](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/prompt-injection): A security weakness in AI products.
- [Prompt optimization](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/prompt-optimization): Improving a prompt through repeated testing: change it, run it against a set of examples, measure results and keep the better version.
- [Protected health information](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/protected-health-information): Under US health privacy law (HIPAA), health information that can identify a person, such as a diagnosis tied to a name.
- [Prototype](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/prototype): An early, rough version of a product made to test an idea or show others what you mean.
- [Pull request](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/pull-request): A request to merge the changes on one branch into the main code.
- [Quantization](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/quantization): Shrinking a model by storing its weights with fewer digits of precision.
- [RAG](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/rag): Retrieval-augmented generation.
- [Rate limit](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/rate-limit): A cap on how many requests or tokens an account can send to an API in a set period.
- [Reasoning model](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/reasoning-model): A model, or a mode of a model, that works through a problem in intermediate steps before it answers.
- [Recommendation engine](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/recommendation-engine): Software that suggests items a person is likely to want, based on what they and similar people have done before.
- [Recruiter](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/recruiter): A person whose job is to find and contact candidates for open roles.
- [Red-green-refactor](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/red-green-refactor): A way of writing code in three steps: write a test that fails (red), write just enough code to make it pass (green), then clean up the…
- [Referral fee](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/referral-fee): A one-time payment to someone for introducing a customer or deal that closes.
- [Region](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/region): A geographic location where a cloud provider groups its data centers.
- [Repository](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/repository): The folder where a project's code lives, together with the full history of every change made to it.
- [Request for proposal](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/request-for-proposal): A document a buyer, often a government or large company, publishes to invite vendors to bid on a project.
- [Reranking](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/reranking): A second pass in search where a more careful model reorders the first batch of results by how well each actually answers the question.
- [REST API](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/rest-api): A common style of API where each kind of data lives at its own web address and software reads or changes it with standard web requests…
- [Retainer](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/retainer): An ongoing services arrangement where a client pays a set amount each month to reserve a provider's time or attention.
- [Retargeting](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/retargeting): Showing ads to people who already visited your site or used your app, to bring them back.
- [Retention](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/retention): The share of customers who keep using or paying for your product over time.
- [Revenue](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/revenue): All the money customers pay your business, before any costs are taken out.
- [Revenue share](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/revenue-share): An arrangement where partners split the revenue a product or deal brings in by an agreed percentage, instead of a fixed fee.
- [RLHF](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/rlhf): Reinforcement learning from human feedback.
- [Roadmap](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/roadmap): A plan that shows what you intend to build and in roughly what order.
- [Role-based access control](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/role-based-access-control): A way of managing access where permissions are given to roles, such as admin, editor or viewer, and each person is assigned a role.
- [RSS](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/rss): A standard format websites use to publish a list of their newest posts so other software can check for updates automatically.
- [Runway](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/runway): How many months your company can keep going before the money in the bank runs out, if spending stays the same.
- [S-corp](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/s-corp): A corporation that has chosen a US tax status in which profits and losses pass through to the owners' own tax returns.
- [SaaS](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/saas): Software as a service.
- [SAFE](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/safe): Simple agreement for future equity.
- [Sales cycle](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/sales-cycle): The steps and time from a first conversation with a prospect to a signed deal.
- [Sales engineer](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/sales-engineer): A technical expert on a sales team who explains how a product works, answers technical questions and shows it can fit a customer's systems.
- [Sales funnel](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/sales-funnel): The stages people move through from first hearing about a product to buying it.
- [Sampling](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/sampling): How a model chooses each next token from its list of likely options.
- [Sandbox](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/sandbox): A walled-off space where an agent can run commands and change files without reaching the rest of your computer, your accounts or the open…
- [Scaling](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/scaling): Adding capacity so a system can handle more use.
- [Scope](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/scope): The agreed list of what a project will include and what it will not.
- [SDK](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/sdk): Software development kit.
- [Search engine optimization](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/search-engine-optimization): Making a website easier for search engines to understand and more likely to show up when people search for what you offer.
- [Secondary source](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/secondary-source): A description of the original material rather than the material itself, such as a summary, a README or a compaction note.
- [Secrets](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/secrets): Passwords, API keys and other credentials that software needs to run.
- [Seed](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/seed): An early round of funding that helps a startup go from a first product to a business that shows traction.
- [Sentiment analysis](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/sentiment-analysis): Using software to classify the tone of text or speech, such as positive, negative or neutral, often across many customer messages at once.
- [Series A](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/series-a): Usually the first larger funding round led by a venture capital firm, where investors buy shares at a set price.
- [Server](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/server): A computer that stays on and connected to the internet so it can run your app and answer requests from people's phones and browsers.
- [Server-side rendering](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/server-side-rendering): Building a web page's HTML on the server before sending it, instead of in the visitor's browser.
- [Serverless](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/serverless): A way to run code where the cloud provider sets up and looks after the servers.
- [Session](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/session): One stretch of work with an AI agent, from a blank start until it is cleared, closed or compacted.
- [Shortcode](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/shortcode): A short tag in square brackets, used in WordPress and similar systems, that a plugin replaces with richer content when the page loads.
- [Similarity search](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/similarity-search): Finding the stored items whose vectors are closest to a query's vector, so results match by meaning rather than exact words.
- [Small business loan](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/small-business-loan): Money a business borrows and must repay with interest.
- [Smart zone](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/smart-zone): A name for the early part of a session, when an agent is focused and accurate.
- [SOC 2](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/soc-2): An examination of how a service company protects customer data.
- [Social media](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/social-media): Sites and apps where people share posts, photos and videos and follow each other, such as LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook.
- [Soft-landing program](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/soft-landing-program): A program that helps a company from another country or region set up in a new place.
- [Software engineer](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/software-engineer): A person who designs, writes and maintains code for a living.
- [Software factory](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/software-factory): A way of organizing work where events, not people, start agent sessions.
- [Spec](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/spec): A written description of what is being built and why, for work too big to finish in one session.
- [Speech-to-text](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/speech-to-text): Software that turns spoken words into written text.
- [Spinout](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/spinout): A new, separate company created from part of an existing company, university or lab, often taking a product, team or technology with it.
- [Spreadsheet](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/spreadsheet): A grid of rows and columns for numbers and lists, with formulas that calculate totals.
- [SSO](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/sso): Single sign-on.
- [Staff augmentation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/staff-augmentation): Adding outside contractors to your own team, usually through a firm, while you keep directing the work.
- [Standard Occupational Classification](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/standard-occupational-classification): The official US system that sorts jobs into numbered occupations.
- [Standard operating procedure](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/standard-operating-procedure): Written step-by-step instructions for doing a routine task the same way every time.
- [Startup ecosystem](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/startup-ecosystem): The people, money and organizations in one place that help new companies start and grow.
- [Stateful](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/stateful): Describes something that carries information forward from one moment to the next.
- [Stateless](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/stateless): Describes something that keeps nothing between uses.
- [Static site](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/static-site): A website made of fixed pages that look the same for every visitor.
- [Stock options](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/stock-options): The right to buy shares in the company later at a price that is set today.
- [Subagent](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/subagent): A second agent that the main agent starts to handle one piece of a job in its own separate session.
- [Supply-side platform](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/supply-side-platform): Software that websites and apps use to sell their ad space automatically to many buyers at once.
- [Sycophancy](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/sycophancy): The habit AI models have of telling you what you want to hear: agreeing too readily, praising weak ideas or giving up a correct answer…
- [System prompt](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/system-prompt): Standing instructions that the builder of an AI product gives the model before any user types.
- [Talent](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/terms/talent): The skilled people a company can hire or work with, such as software engineers and designers.
- [TAM](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/tam): Total addressable market.
- [Target customer](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/target-customer): The specific kind of person or company you are building for and selling to first.
- [Tech conference](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/tech-conference): A one-day or multi-day event with talks, workshops and hallway conversations about technology.
- [Tech stack](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/tech-stack): The set of programming languages and tools a product is built with.
- [Techlahoma Code of Conduct](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/techlahoma-code-of-conduct): The rules for how people treat each other at Techlahoma events, in person and online, and in its Slack.
- [Technical advisor](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/technical-advisor): An experienced engineer or technology leader who gives a startup occasional advice on technical choices, such as what to build on and whom…
- [Technical co-founder](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/technical-co-founder): A founding partner who can build the product themselves and who makes the technology decisions.
- [Technical debt](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/technical-debt): Shortcuts taken while building software that save time now but make later changes slower and riskier until someone cleans them up.
- [Technical due diligence](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/technical-due-diligence): A review of a company's technology by an outside expert before an investment or an acquisition: how the product is built, its security…
- [Technical requirements document](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/technical-requirements-document): A document that explains how a feature will be built: the systems, data and technical choices.
- [Temperature](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/temperature): A setting that controls how random an AI model's word choices are.
- [Term sheet](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/term-sheet): A short document that lays out the main terms of a proposed investment, such as the amount, the valuation and the investor's rights.
- [Terminal](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/terminal): A text window where a person types commands to a computer and reads its replies.
- [Terms of service](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/terms-of-service): The legal agreement between a service and the people who use it.
- [Testing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/testing): Checking that software does what it should, before your users find the problems for you.
- [Time and materials](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/time-and-materials): A way to pay for services by the hour or day worked, plus costs, instead of a set price for the whole job.
- [Token](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/token): In AI, a small chunk of text, roughly a word or a piece of a word, that an LLM reads and writes.
- [Tokenizer](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/tokenizer): The step that splits text into tokens, the small pieces a model actually reads, and turns each one into a number.
- [Tool result](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/tool-result): What comes back to the model after it uses a tool: a file's contents, the output of a command, a search result or an error.
- [Tool use](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/tool-use): A way for a model to ask the software around it to run a defined action, such as a search or a database lookup, and send back the result.
- [Tracking pixel](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/tracking-pixel): A tiny invisible image or snippet of code on a web page or email that reports back when someone views it or takes an action.
- [Traction](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/traction): Proof that real people want what you are building, such as paying customers, growing use or signed agreements.
- [Trade secret](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/trade-secret): Valuable business information, such as a formula, algorithm or process, that is protected by keeping it secret rather than by registering…
- [Training](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/training): Teaching an AI model by showing it a very large number of examples before anyone uses it.
- [Transformer](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/transformer): The design that most modern language models are built on, introduced by Google researchers in 2017.
- [Turn](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/turn): One round of a conversation with an agent: you send a message, and the agent works until it hands control back to you.
- [Unit economics](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/unit-economics): Whether you make or lose money on one customer or one sale, once you count what it cost to win and serve them.
- [Uptime](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/uptime): The share of time a service is working and reachable.
- [Usage-based pricing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/usage-based-pricing): A way to charge where the bill follows how much the customer uses, instead of a flat fee.
- [User group](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/user-group): A club of people who use or study the same technology and meet regularly to share what they learn.
- [User journey](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/user-journey): The sequence of steps a person takes to reach a goal with a product, from first contact to done, including what they think and feel along…
- [User story](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/user-story): One short sentence describing something a user needs to do and why, written from their point of view.
- [UX / UI](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/ux-ui): UI, the user interface, is what people see and tap on the screen.
- [Valuation](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/valuation): What the company is agreed to be worth for the purpose of an investment.
- [Valuation cap](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/valuation-cap): A term in a SAFE or convertible note that sets the highest valuation used to work out how many shares the investor gets when it converts.
- [Value-based pricing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/value-based-pricing): Setting a price based on how much the result is worth to the customer, not on how much it costs you to deliver.
- [Vector](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/vector): An ordered list of numbers.
- [Vector database](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/vector-database): A database built to store embeddings and quickly find the items closest in meaning to a question, not just the ones that share its exact…
- [Vendor lock-in](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/vendor-lock-in): Depending on one vendor so heavily that switching to another would cost a lot of time or money.
- [Venture capital](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/venture-capital): Money that professional investment firms put into young companies in exchange for equity.
- [Venture studio](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/venture-studio): An organization that comes up with business ideas itself and builds companies around them, often bringing in founders to run them.
- [Version control](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/version-control): A system that records every change to the code, who made it and when.
- [Vertical slice](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/vertical-slice): A small piece of a product built all the way through, from screen to database to deployment, so it actually works for a user, rather than…
- [Vesting](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/vesting): Earning your shares bit by bit over time instead of all at once.
- [Vibe coding](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/vibe-coding): Building software by describing what you want to an AI tool and accepting the code it writes, often without reading that code closely.
- [Vibe coding vs software engineering](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/vibe-coding-vs-software-engineering): Two ways to build software with AI.
- [Video conferencing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/video-conferencing): Meeting with people over live video and audio on a computer or phone.
- [Video editing](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/video-editing): Cutting, arranging and finishing recorded video, with titles, music and color, before it is published.
- [Virtual try-on](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/virtual-try-on): Showing how clothing, glasses or makeup would look on a person by generating or overlaying an image, so shoppers can preview items before…
- [VPC](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/vpc): Virtual private cloud.
- [Web analytics](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/web-analytics): Measuring how people find and use a website or app: how many visit, where they come from and what they click.
- [Web app vs mobile app](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/web-app-mobile-app): A web app runs in a browser at a web address, on any device.
- [Web browser](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/web-browser): The app people use to open websites and web apps, such as Chrome or Safari.
- [WebAssembly](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/webassembly): A format that lets code written in languages like C, C++ or Rust run in a web browser at close to full speed.
- [WebM](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/webm): An open video file format made for the web.
- [Weights](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/weights): The numbers inside a model that it learned during training.
- [White label](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/white-label): A product or service made by one company that another company sells under its own name.
- [Win rate](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/win-rate): The share of deals or bids you pursue that you actually win.
- [Wireframe](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/wireframe): A simple outline drawing of a screen that shows where things go, without colors or finished design.
- [Work-integrated learning](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/work-integrated-learning): Education that formally combines a student's studies with real work in a workplace, for example co-op terms, internships, apprenticeships…
- [Workforce development](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/workforce-development): Training and support that help people gain the skills employers need, often paid for in part by government or philanthropy.
- [Zero-day vulnerability](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/zero-day-vulnerability): A security flaw that attackers know about before the software's maker has a fix, so defenders have had zero days to patch it.

Map view: https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/terms