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Kurums Decoded: business and corporate terms explained for Gen Z in plain, pop-culture English. Corporate, translated.
An NDA (non-disclosure agreement) is a contract in which one or both parties agree to keep specific information confidential and use it only for an agreed purpose. If someone breaks it, the other side can claim damages or ask a court to stop further disclosure.
A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is the plan for bringing a product to customers: which customers to target first, what problem to lead with, how to price it, which channels to reach people through and how the sale actually happens. It turns a finished product into a business.
Acquisition is everything a company does to win new customers. Retention is everything it does to keep existing ones buying. Both drive growth, but they cost very different amounts and need different tactics, so companies have to decide how to split their effort between them.
CTR (click-through rate) is the percentage of people who saw an ad or link and clicked it. CPM (cost per mille) is what an advertiser pays for every thousand times the ad is shown. Together they tell you how expensive attention is and how well your ad turns attention into action.
Brand equity is the extra value a product gets from its brand name: the premium people will pay, the trust they give it and the choice they make before comparing alternatives. It is built over years from what customers know, feel and remember about the brand.
An A/B test shows two versions of something (a headline, a button, a price, an email) to two random groups of users at the same time, then measures which version performs better on one chosen metric. It replaces opinions with evidence.
A funnel is the path people take from first hearing about a product to buying it, drawn as stages that get narrower: awareness, interest, consideration, purchase. Each stage loses people, and the funnel shows where and how many.
CAC (customer acquisition cost) is the total sales and marketing spend needed to win one new customer. LTV (lifetime value) is the total profit that customer brings over the time they stay. The ratio between them tells you whether a business is buying customers at a profit or at a loss.
A lead is anyone who has shown some interest or fits your target profile: a form fill, a download, a name on a list. A prospect is a lead that has been qualified: you have confirmed they have a real need, the budget, the authority and a timeline. Prospects go in the pipeline; leads wait to earn it.
A sales quota is the revenue or unit target a salesperson or team is expected to achieve in a set period, usually a quarter or a year. Pay is tied to it: commission typically accelerates above quota and bonuses depend on reaching it.
An upsell is persuading an existing customer to buy a bigger or better version of what they already have. A cross-sell is persuading them to buy something additional that goes with it. Together they are expansion revenue: growth from customers you already won.
Churn is the rate at which customers stop doing business with a company over a period, usually a month or a year. For subscription businesses it is the single most watched number after revenue, because every lost customer has to be replaced before growth even starts.