Free · Basics

Founder Vocabulary, Mastered

From BM to escrow, the words that intimidated you become your weapons 30 minutes from now

about 25 min10 steps

What you will have built

18 core terms that let you read founder conversations and campaign pages without stumbling, plus understanding hardened by quizzes

What you need

VibeCampus account (free)required
You need it to collect quiz rewards and to open the actual screens where these terms appear.
(Recommended) The Age of the Solo Founder: Unfolding the Mapoptional
See the full map first and each term instantly connects to its station.

Learn the Language of Money and the Fear Disappears

MVP, LTV, escrow, unit economics. If you have ever backed away from words like these thinking "I'm nowhere near ready", here is the good news. The vocabulary you actually need for founding is smaller than you think, and every term can be understood through one everyday analogy. This course covers exactly 18.

The method is simple. Each of the four blocks comes with term cards. Tap a card, read the analogy first, then check the definition and "where you meet it on VibeCampus". A quiz follows each block, and correct answers earn Vibes.

Let me say this up front. Not knowing the terms does not mean you are unqualified to found. Every successful founder today once knew none of these words, and you will catch up here in 30 minutes.

If you see this, it worked

By the end of this course, campaign pages on the Funding Market, startup articles, and business talk in the Community start to read without a dictionary.

Tip

Every card leads with the analogy. Once the analogy forms a picture in your head, the definition attaches itself. Do not try to memorize definitions first.

Basics: the Backbone Words of a Business

The first block is the backbone of a business. BM, MVP, target customer, hypothesis. These four words repeat through every course ahead, so pin them down here and the rest of the journey gets easier. Open the cards below one by one.

The four words actually chain into a single sentence. "Predict how you will solve the target customer's problem and make money (BM), treat that prediction as a hypothesis, and confirm it with the smallest possible product (MVP)." When that sentence reads naturally, you have passed the first block.

Term cards · tap to open

BM (business model)

The blueprint of what a shop gives its customers and how it gets paid.

The structure of who you serve, what value you deliver, and how money comes in. This blueprint gets used as is when you put your business into a Studio prompt and when you plan a campaign on the Funding Market.

MVP

The single tasting plate you put out before the restaurant officially opens.

The smallest product that can confirm your core hypothesis. It is the first thing you will build with Deep Build in the Studio, and this founder school's entire MVP course is devoted to it.

Target customer

Not "everyone", but the one person whose face you can picture clearly.

The specific person who needs your product most desperately. Whether you are writing prompts, reading demand in the Community, or drafting campaign copy, the yardstick is always this one person.

Hypothesis

The not-yet-confirmed prediction that "this person will pay money for this."

A belief before validation. Beta tests, the reliability check, and your first sale are all procedures for confirming whether this hypothesis holds. The moment you forget it is a hypothesis, the mistake of building big without confirmation begins.

Tip

As you read the cards, plug in a business idea of your own. Terms memorized through someone else's example fade, but terms understood through your own business stay.

Quiz: Backbone Words

Which best describes an MVP?

Money: the Thermometer Words of a Business

The second block is the money words. Conversion rate, retention, LTV, CAC, unit economics. They sound hard because they are about numbers, but all five are just one question seen from five angles: is more money coming in than going out?

Open the cards while picturing a meal-plan subscription service. How many visitors start a subscription (conversion rate), whether those who start stay next month (retention), how much one person spends before leaving (LTV), how much it costs to bring one person in (CAC). Attach all five to one service like this and they make sense as a set.

If you see this, it worked

After opening all five cards, the sentence "LTV must be bigger than CAC" reads naturally. Honestly, that one sentence is this entire block.

Term cards · tap to open

Conversion rate

Out of 100 people passing the shop, how many walk in and make it to the register.

The share of visitors who reach a goal action like signing up or buying. It is the first number for reading a business's health after launch, and you will meet it constantly in the metrics dashboards you build with the Studio.

Retention

Whether a customer who came once comes back again next week.

The degree to which customers keep using instead of leaving. Like VibeCampus's check-in rewards, it is also a signal that your product needs its own designed reasons to come back.

LTV (lifetime value)

Everything one regular spends at your shop before they leave for good.

The total value one customer leaves behind. It must be bigger than CAC, the cost of bringing one in, for the business to last. It is the anchor when you design pricing and subscriptions.

CAC (customer acquisition cost)

The flyers and ad money it took to bring one customer to your shop's front door.

The cost of acquiring one customer. You will compare marketing channels with this number, and paired with LTV it tells you whether the business is sustainable.

Unit economics

The shop's profit-and-loss statement, calculated one customer at a time.

The revenue structure per single customer. If LTV exceeds CAC, the business improves as it grows; if it is the other way around, the business gets harder as it grows. Always confirm before deciding to scale.

Heads up

Metrics are only thermometers. The moment making the numbers pretty becomes the goal, the business goes strange. Use numbers only as hints for helping customers better.

Quiz: Money Words

What is the word for the total value one customer leaves behind before they go?

Selling: the Words of the Funding Market

The third block is the words of the selling floor. Escrow, settlement, early bird, campaign, review. You will meet every one of them on the actual Funding Market, and use them exactly as they are on the day you open your first sale.

The common theme of these five words is trust. Is the backers' money safe (escrow), when and how does my share arrive (settlement), what do you give the people who believed first (early bird), in what unit are promises made (campaign), who confirms quality (review). Know the trust machinery and a campaign page stops looking like decoration and starts looking like structure.

Term cards · tap to open

Escrow

Like the safe-payment service that holds the money in the middle of a secondhand deal.

A mechanism that keeps backing money in neutral ground and passes it to the creator once the promise is kept. It is the reason backers on the Funding Market can pay a creator they have never met with peace of mind.

Settlement

The day at the end of the month when you tally the shop's sales and move them into your own account.

The procedure by which sale proceeds are paid out to the creator. You will check the records in the Funding Market's creator payouts, and the first settlement day is one a solo founder never forgets.

Early bird

The special opening price offered only in the first week.

A discount pass given to the backers who believed in you first. It is the most reliable tool for building early campaign momentum, and you will design one yourself when you open a campaign on the Funding Market.

Campaign

A grand-opening event held with a set period and a set goal.

The unit on the Funding Market that gathers backing against a goal amount and a deadline. The story page, early bird passes, and goal amount come bound as one set, and you will open one yourself in the later part of this founder school.

Review

The quality screening a department store gives products before letting them onto the floor.

The procedure where the platform confirms a campaign's content and feasibility before it goes public. It is a device that protects backers, and knowing the passing criteria in advance is also a hint that makes your own campaign prep much faster.

Tip

After opening all the cards, open the Funding Market again. Words that slid right past you yesterday will read like a blueprint today.

Heads up

Early bird offers are powerful, but overusing them erodes trust. They only work when you keep their original meaning: gratitude to the people who believed in you first.

Quiz: Selling Words

On the Funding Market, what is the mechanism that keeps backing money safely held in the middle instead of going straight to the creator?

Growth: the Words of a Scaling Business

The last block is the language of life after first revenue. Funnel, cohort, subscription, bundle. Once the business starts running, the question "where do I push to grow bigger?" appears, and these four words are the tools that answer it.

It is fine if you cannot internalize them all today. These words come back in the marketing and scaling courses. For today, just remember which question each word is a tool for answering.

If you see this, it worked

After the four cards, you can turn a worry like "lots of visits but few payments" into an actionable sentence: "let's find where the funnel is leaking."

Term cards · tap to open

Funnel

Wide at the mouth and narrower the further down you go.

The flow in which people thin out from visit to signup to payment. Find the stage where it leaks and you can see what to fix. You will watch this flow with your own eyes in the metrics dashboards you build with the Studio.

Cohort

The group of classmates who all enrolled in the same month.

A batch of customers who arrived in the same period. Compare the retention of January's customers with March's and you can tell whether the product is truly getting better.

Subscription

The milk delivery that arrives at your door automatically every month.

A sales model with recurring monthly payments. It is especially powerful for products with natural repeat use, like meal plans, and it makes revenue predictable, which protects a solo founder's sleep at night.

Bundle

The set menu that sells ramen bundled with an egg and green onions.

Selling several products tied into one. It delivers more value in a single sale and pairs especially well with digital products that have no inventory.

Heads up

Growth terms are tools, not goals. Optimizing your funnel before you have your first ten customers is like adding registers to a shop with no customers.

Quiz: Growth Words

What do you call the flow where people drop off at each stage from visit to signup to payment?

You Can Now Speak the Language of Founding

Eighteen words have become your vocabulary. The backbone of a business (BM, MVP, target, hypothesis), the money thermometer (conversion rate, retention, LTV, CAC, unit economics), the trust machinery of selling (escrow, settlement, early bird, campaign, review), and the tools of growth (funnel, cohort, subscription, bundle). Campaign pages and founder conversations will read differently now.

If you want to harden them further, drop by the term match game in the Class. Clearing it daily comes with rewards, so it makes a perfect brain warm-up on your check-in route. The next course is "Finding an Idea That Sells". Take the language you learned today. Now the real hunt begins.

Remember this

Terms exist not to intimidate you but to make your thinking faster. That tool is now in your hands.
In the next course you will read demand with this language and draw a circle around one idea that sells.
Curious where the words you learned actually live and move? Open the Funding Market again right now. It will look completely different from yesterday.

Try it in the Studio