J-curve

August 27, 2016 by Alexa Cleek -

The appearance of a graph showing the typical value progression of early stage investment portfolios. Values often drop soon after the initial investment during the startup and early stage period, but rebound significantly in later years after companies reach profitability.⁷

Alexa Cleek

Definitioner

Startup

A startup is a new business venture / enterprise in its initial or early stages of development. These stages include the concept, seed, early, growth and mezzanine stages.⁶

Early Stage

The key characteristic is market development. The business is focused on sales and marketing and proving business viability.²
A state of a company that typically has completed its seed stage and has a founding or core senior management team, has proven its concept or completed its beta test, has minimal revenues, and no positive earnings or cash flows.³
This term generally refers to a young enterprise that is three years old or younger. During this phase, a company is still in its novel stages of development. They could be in the process of experimenting with new products or services that they intend to market in the near future and/or may have viable products that are already available to the public.⁴