Accelerator: A fixed-term program that provides early-stage startups with financing, education, mentorship, and resources to help them grow into self-sustaining businesses.

Brick-and-Mortar: A traditional street-side business that offers products and services to its customers face-to-face in an office or store that the business owns or rents.

Business Model: The plan for a company to make a profit.

Demo Day: An event that usually marks the end of a program or phase, where startups present their products or services, showcase their business models, and pitch to a live audience. It serves as a platform for startups to highlight their innovations, attract investment, and gain exposure within the entrepreneurial community.

Design Thinking: A human-centered approach to innovation that prioritizes empathy, experimentation, and iterative learning.

Due Diligence: Audit or review that investors conduct to analyze a business’s financial records and intellectual property prior to making an investment or acquisition.

Equity: Refers to the percentage of ownership in a business.

Forecast: Projections of activity or performance for a specific period of time in the future.

Hackathons: Tensive, collaborative events where teams work together to solve specific problems or generate new ideas within a limited timeframe.

Ideation Stage: Process of generating ideas and solutions through sessions such as brainstorming, prototyping, and sketching.

Impact Happy Hours: A co-created event with fellow incubators, bringing together actors from across the social impact ecosystem to network and connect with peers and unlock opportunities.

Incubator: A non-profit or for-profit organization that helps startups develop their business idea into a self-sufficient business.

MVP: A basic version of a product with the necessary features that can be used for testing to gauge customer interest in the product.

Nushu Network: An initiative of Villgro Philippines, is a vibrant community of empowered women entrepreneurs focused on growth in South and Southeast Asia.

Pre-seeding Stage: Selling the idea to potential investors, investing your own money and receiving contributions from friends and family.

Scalability: Describes a business’s ability and capacity to grow and increase revenue.

Seed Funding: The first official equity funding stage that allows companies to secure funding towards processes such as product development and determining target markets.

Startup Lifecycle: The series of key milestones that startups typically experience as they evolve from initial conception to full maturity.

Talk Impact: A thought leadership event series hosted by Villgro Philippines, focusing on social innovation, impact entrepreneurship, and impact investing. It is designed to foster deep discussions and share valuable insights on pressing social issues, the series brings together key stakeholders and experts.

Unit Economics: Method applied to analyze a company’s cost-to-revenue ratio in relation to its basic unit, hence the term.

Valley of Death: The critical and often precarious phase in the lifecycle of a startup or entrepreneurial venture. It describes the period between the initial stages of development and the point where the company starts to generate significant revenue or achieve commercial success.

Valuation: An analytical process of determining the current (or projected) worth of an asset or a company.

Value Chains: The full range of activities a company engages in to deliver a product or service to the market and ultimately create value for its customers.

Value Proposition Canvas: A tool that enhances a company’s business model by focusing on the alignment between a product or service and the needs and preferences of the target customers.

Venture Capitalist: An investor who provides venture capital funding to startups with growth potential in exchange for a stake in the company, known as equity.