# Words to know

URL: /start/words-to-know · Id: `page:start/words-to-know`

> The words a founder meets first on these pages, each with its one definition and its page, then the everyday words founder pages use.

These are the words founder pages use most, in the order a new business meets them. Each has one meaning everywhere, and [the glossary](/business/glossary) has every other term.

## The business
| Word | What it is |
| --- | --- |
| [Startup](/business/nouns/startup) | A Startup is the smallest business that can be moved, promoted, or sold on its own, with its own Products, Offers, Customers, and P&L. |
| [Idea](/business/nouns/idea) | An Idea is a business concept that exists apart from any Startup that pursues it and outlives each one. |
| [Hypothesis](/business/nouns/hypothesis) | A Hypothesis is a belief about a Startup stated so it can be proved wrong, with the Metric and threshold that settle it. |
| [Evidence](/business/nouns/evidence) | Evidence is a recorded quote, reading, or artifact that supports or refutes a claim, graded as behavior, commitment, or opinion. |
| [Experiment](/business/nouns/experiment) | An Experiment is a test of a Hypothesis that varies copy or behavior through Flags and judges the variants by a primary Metric. |
| [Offer](/business/nouns/offer) | An Offer is a Product, under a Brand, at a price, on terms, made by a Startup. |
| [Customer](/business/nouns/customer) | A Customer is a party that has accepted an Offer from a Startup at any price, including zero. |
| [Order](/business/nouns/order) | An Order is a Customer’s commitment to buy one or more Offers once, moving from placed to paid, fulfilled, and closed. |
| [Subscription](/business/nouns/subscription) | A Subscription is a Customer’s standing acceptance of an Offer, billed each Period until canceled. |
| [Site](/business/nouns/site) | A Site is a website as a Thing: its Pages, navigation, and Brand, served on one or more Domains. |
| [Domain](/business/nouns/domain) | A Domain is a hostname that points at a Thing, with a role, a status, and a lifecycle tracked as data. |

## Who does the work
| Word | What it is |
| --- | --- |
| [Agent](/business/nouns/agent) | An Agent is a digital worker with instructions, tools, and a model that performs Verbs for a Startup. |
| [Role](/business/nouns/role) | A Role is a seat that owns a set of work and holds the Permissions to do it, filled by a Human or an Agent. |
| [Team](/business/nouns/team) | A Team is a named group of Roles under one owner; every Startup starts with eleven default Teams. |
| [Process](/business/nouns/process) | A Process is a named, repeatable piece of business work, owned by a Team and run by one or more Workflows. |
| [Workflow](/business/nouns/workflow) | A Workflow is the durable, executable body of one Action: its steps, the Functions that run them, retries, and waits. |
| [System](/business/nouns/system) | A System is the headless software for one job, such as CRM or billing, that every Startup runs on shared data. |

## What waits for you
| Word | What it is |
| --- | --- |
| [Approval](/business/nouns/approval) | An Approval is a Task to allow or refuse one pending Action that exceeds a Limit or a Mandate. |
| [Limit](/business/nouns/limit) | A Limit is a bound on a Permission, Entitlement, or Mandate, checked before every call; exceeding it creates an Approval. |
| [Mandate](/business/nouns/mandate) | A Mandate is a standing authorization for an Agent to act for a Party, within Permissions and Limits, until it expires. |

## Under the hood
| Word | What it is |
| --- | --- |
| [Thing](/business/nouns/thing) | A Thing is an instance of one or more Nouns, with an identity, a current state, and the union of their properties. |
| [Noun](/business/nouns/noun) | A Noun is a type of record, with its properties, its relationships, and the Verbs that act on it. |
| [Verb](/business/nouns/verb) | A Verb is an action an Agent or a person performs on a Noun, emitting one event when it completes. |
| [Action](/business/nouns/action) | An Action is one Verb performed by a Worker on a Thing, recorded with its status and every Event it emits. |
| [Event](/business/nouns/event) | An Event is the immutable record of something that happened to a Thing, named by its Noun and past-tense Verb. |
| [Lifecycle](/business/nouns/lifecycle) | A Lifecycle is the states a Thing of one Noun moves through and the Verbs that move it between them. |
| [Mode](/business/nouns/mode) | A Mode is how a caller invokes a Verb: try waits and stores nothing, send returns a pending Action, do waits for the result. |
| [Reserved Act](/business/nouns/reserved-act) | A Reserved Act is a Verb the law reserves to the holder of a named Credential, so its Function is always human. |

## Everyday words
You also meet these words, each with one meaning.

| Word | In plain words | For example |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seat | A [Role](/business/nouns/role): one job in the business, filled by an agent | The support agent sits in the [Customer Lead](/agents/customer/customer-lead) seat |
| The [Founder](/agents/founding/founder) seat, and you | The Founder seat is the Role an agent fills from day one. You are the owner: you hold its approvals, not the seat | The Founder agent asks you before it spends over $5,000 |
| Part of your idea | One of the five slots of the [Founding Hypothesis](/business/founding-hypothesis): customer, problem, approach, switch and differentiation | "Small property managers" fills the customer part |
| The sponsor | The person who claims a [Startup](/business/nouns/startup) an agent built, connects Stripe and becomes its owner, as [sponsor claim](/agents/sponsor) shows | You, when you open the claim link |
| Test and live | Test runs everything with no real charge and no message sent. Live is real money and real customers | A test purchase charges no card |
| Try | A preview: the call shows what it would do and stores nothing | `try` before a refund shows the amount, and moves no money |
| Offered later | A guide your agent offers only once something happens in your own records | Retrying failed payments is offered after a payment fails |