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Glossary

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SaaS

Software as a Service - a model whereby software is licensed to customers on a subscription basis.

SAM

SAM, or Serviceable Available Market, is the segment of the Total Available Market (TAM) targeted by your products and services that's within your geographical reach.

Scale-up
A scale-up is basically a high-growth company. The OECD defines high growth as a company that has achieved growth of 20% or more in either employment or turnover year on year for at least two years, and have a minimum employee count of 10 at the start of the observation period.
Scrum
Scrum is a framework that helps teams work together. Much like a rugby team (where it gets its name) training for the big game, scrum encourages teams to learn through experiences, self-organize while working on a problem, and reflect on their wins and losses to continuously improve.
Seed Round

Follows the Pre-seed round. Angels can still invest in this round but expect more interest from funds and early-stage VC. Some degree of commercial traction and revenue is expected at this stage, but this can vary depending on the sector. Round sizes vary but can be £500k-2m. Bridging rounds between Seed and Series A exist in different forms, such as 'late seed' and 'growth' rounds.

SEIS
The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme was introduced in April 2012 by HMRC to help small, early-stage companies raise funds through individual investors by providing a series of tax reliefs on investments made into qualifying companies. It does this by offering tax reliefs to individual investors who buy new shares in your company. You can receive a maximum of £150,000 through SEIS investments.
Series A

Following the Seed round, the Series A round is usually led by Venture Capital funds, given the amount of capital being raised and higher valuations; as such expect rigorous a due diligence process. Companies raising a Series A round are usually revenue-generating, but can still be pre-profit. Round sizes can vary, but generally north of £3m.

Servant-leader (Agile)

Servant-leadership is an important behaviour skill required for projects developed in Agile. At Founder and Lightning, the Delivery Managers act as servant-leader - they lead a team as a servant, putting team members’ needs above theirs. As a result, this creates a more positive and productive work environment, which improves productivity and performance.

Shipping
In tech, shipping is a term used in building software which refers to getting the product to the end user.
Software regression

Software regression is when an active piece of software or feature stops working. It usually happens after changes or updates in the code that didn’t pass acceptance criteria on QA (quality assurance) testing.

SOM

SOM, or Serviceable Obtainable Market, is the portion of Serviceable Available Market (SAM) that you can capture - that means, it's your short-term target.

Source Code
Source code is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text.
Sprint
A Sprint is a set period of time during which specific work has to be completed and made ready for review. We tend to break down large chunks of work into a series of manageable sprints. These sprints could be daily or weekly usually. Sprints are part of the Agile methodology.
Staging Environment
A staging environment (stage) is a nearly exact replica of a production environment for software testing. Staging environments are made to test codes, builds, and updates to ensure quality under a production-like environment before it is available to the end user.
Start-up
A start-up is a company in the early stages of operations. Start-ups are usually seeking to solve a problem of fill a need, but there is no hard-and-fast rule for what makes a start-up. Some might say a business is called a start-up due to their growth aspirations (high growth = start-up). However, in reality a company is considered a start-up until they stop referring to themselves as a start-up.
Start-up studio
A start-up studio, also known as a start-up factory or a start-up foundry, or a venture studio, is a studio-like company that aims at building several companies in succession.
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