1. “Uber for…”
I have not met someone who takes Uber for _____ businesses seriously. The problem with 95% of these startups are that they are underdeveloped ideas, typically the business model does not translate, and there is massive over-saturation.
While the allusion can be helpful, make sure the shortened pitch is worth the possible stigma that will come with it.
Social media platforms and the desire to become famous has brought half-baked celebrities with the entitlement of Kanye. These characters go by the term social influencer.
Most of them possess no real power, authority, or fame and will have spotty follow-through. Social influencer actually means someone who wants a quick buck.
3. Internet entrepreneur
People who call themselves Internet entrepreneurs likely cannot name a single coding language. Just because you want to be in the tech world does not mean you are an ~Internet~ entrepreneur. In fact, this term likely means you do not belong in the tech community.
4. Disruption
While one of the more harmless buzzwords in terms of connotation, it largely just becomes a bit of an overstatement.
Disruption is the term of taking something from 0 to 1. Nowadays people like to call going from 82 to 83 disruption, despite the lack of true, life-changing value.
5. Crowdsourced
Crowdsourced has not only just become too over-stated but also comes with huge assumptions. When a platform is “crowdsourced” you need to have a large following of users or else it is never going to take off.
So unless you have real backing and plans for adoption, you are just spouting off a pretty word. Additionally, many investors question the validity of crowdsourced information, because of the lack of checks.
Unless you know the information is correct, beware taking up the crowdsourced approach.
6. Big Data
Big Data is an overly-used term with little real meaning. What does a Big Data company actually do? While there are good big data ventures out there, they will usually require more experience, education, and knowledge than you possess.
7. Sharing/On-demand economy
These types of businesses will almost never work out because execution is everything. Due to the immense saturation of these industries and the difficulty of matching this business strategy with other existing industries, most on-demand business models will never be in demand.
8. Venture funding
Too often entrepreneurs will say they have venture funding if they got a single investor, but alas the real meaning of this term is substantial investment from an institutional investor.
So please, if your uncle gave you $5,000, do not say you have venture funding.
9. Traction
A few years back the major investors all were looking for “traction” and eventually people realized this was the term you had to throughout if you wanted to raise money.
The real meaning has since disappeared since people are eager to call the slightest bit of work completed on the most vacuous task a sign of traction. Only major milestones are real traction.
10. Business plan / Pitch deck
People often believe you need to have a business plan in order to have a business, but in reality, this procedure only wastes time and ignores the necessity of pivoting quickly.
The only reason to write 10-30 pages about your company instead of actually working on the company, is for business plan competitions to try and get money. Investors all know this and will only ever ask for your business plan as means of killing the conversation.
No investor will ever read your business plan or legitimately ask for it.
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