ABOUT THE GLOSSARY

02

Stepping into a new environment comes with challenges, not least getting to grips with a new vocabulary and new acronyms. We know that this can be daunting, and in some cases may hold back researchers to pursue potential great business opportunities based on their research or ideas they have that have the potential to solve societal problems.

Getting acquainted with the vocabulary, and learning how to communicate your research or business idea is a great way to boost your confidence and credibility when talking to a range of stakeholders. Many stakeholders, whether they are from the technology transfer office, funders, investors, customers, and/or other researchers will be generalists. They will not be experts in your particular research, but will be able to advise and provide support.

Communicating the idea/opportunity by using the accepted vocabulary will help these stakeholders understand the opportunity, what stage your idea is at (just an idea with no market/customer research, prototype available, team/no team, funding/seeking funding, with or pre-IP etc).

When researchers start talking to non-expert stakeholders they need to learn two things to clearly communicate their ideas:
 

1. Reduce the use of technical language and acronyms related to their own research/idea – you’re dealing with generalists, this won’t mean a thing to them. They need to hear big picture statements - focus on describing benefits that your solution brings to the users (see the questions below).

   2. Use business vocabulary to explain your idea.

There are many terms you will come across in conversations with technology transfer offices, translational research coordinators, entrepreneurship education programmes, or when talking with people from industry. What will they want to hear about your idea? And if they don’t hear it, what are the questions you will be asked? The reason why they ask these questions is so they can understand the need/attractiveness of your idea and whether /how they can help:
 

• What problem are you solving?

• Whose problem are you solving and how many people/organisations have that problem?

• What is your solution (product, service) and what are the benefits to your customers?

• Who is/are your customer(s) (those that will pay to get your solution)?

• How big is the market (growth?)

• What is your competition?

• What is different/unique about your solution?

• What is your value proposition?

• Is your solution scalable?

• What stage is the opportunity/technology at?

• How are you going to make money from your solution?

• What traction do you have?

• Why are you/your team best placed to develop the solution?

• What is your ask?

• Do you have a Pitch deck?

• Do you have a One pager?

When you are at the stage where you are looking to raise money/funds from investors – angel and venture capital investors (VCs) – you will also need to address the following questions:

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• How much funding do you need right now? And what for?

• What is your gross profit and what is your bottom line? - this applies when you already have sales

• What is your break even point?

• If you don’t yet have sales, you can use assumptions of predicted costs (fixed and variable) and expected sales to calculate the break event point.

• What is your burn rate?

• What is your cash flow forecast?

• What is your exit strategy?

This glossary gives an overview of the most frequently used terms you will come across when engaging with the business and start up world and the context of why it is important to use these when talking about your ideas. We have grouped them in four categories.

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1. Start-up basics
2. Problem - Customer - market
3. Solution
4. Finance – business related and funding /support

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You can also find a (linked) alphabetical list of all terms on the glossary home page.