How to Speak Start-Up | 10 Essential Business English Words

So you want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs or Jack Ma. Well you are in the

right place because today I'm going to teach you how to speak Start-up with ten super useful

business English words. All that is coming right up.

Welcome to Eat Sleep Dream English, if you haven't met me before my name is Tom and I

teach fresh modern British English so that you can tae your English to the next level

and achieve your life goals. Today we're looking at start-up English. Now Silicon Valley or

The Valley as it is also known is changing our world every single day and that includes

English. Just think about the companies we use for example Google. Google has become

a verb, to google something. So if you don't know the answer to something you could just

say 'I'm going to google it.' and that means you are going to search for it online whether

you use google or not. Think about Uber, the taxi service. We now say 'I'm going to get

an uber.' Not 'I'm going to get a taxi.' An uber is a taxi but we don't say taxi anymore

we say an uber. Unless of course you are getting a taxi and then you would say taxi. We even

use it as a verb 'I'm going to uber it tonight.' Like I'm going to take an uber, a taxi to

get home. Also think about Netflix, there's a common phrase Netflix and chill. Now you

can google the meaning of Netflix and chill, I'm not going to tell you. It's a bit rude

but it's become a phrase. These companies have become part of our every day vocabulary

and that's why I love language and that's why I love English is because it's changing

and evolving and these phrases, if you had said them five years ago, people would be

like 'What are you talking about?' but now everybody knows. So today we're going to look

at ten words that are a part of the start-up world, business English that you probably

won't find in your business English text books or course books. Alright, let's get to number

one. Well let's start with start-up. It's a noun and it's just a very young company,

a company that is just beginning hence the word start. It's beginning. We often talk

about a tech start-up, so a technology focused company that is very new. An example sentence

'I think he works for a tech start-up.' So a tech start-up. Now tech, short for technology

we use in other ways for example fintech. Fintech is financial technology so it's the

way we use technology to do things in banking and stuff like that. So tech is a word we

use a lot these days to mean technology. 'I work in tech.' Now that's the industry of

technology. So if you work in tech maybe you work for one of these big companies like Google

or Amazon or whatever. Alright so tech is a great word. Number two is entrepreneur.

Now an entrepreneur is a person that starts a company so often an entrepreneur will start

a start-up. That makes sense. Now this is a word that has come from French and we probably

say it a little bit differently, our pronunciation 'entrepreneur'. So the stress is on the final

syllable entrepreneur. 'A lot of entrepreneurs move to Silicon Valley.' Number three is co-working

space. Now this is a shared workplace, so people from different companies are coming

there to work, it's not just owned by one company, there are people from lots of different

companies. And the idea is that maybe you rent a desk or you could rent an office. So

it could be temporary you could work there for a couple of weeks or you could be there

permanently. Alright let's put that into an example sentence 'There are so many co-working

spaces now in London.' Number four Angel Investor. This is an individual that puts their money

into a start-up to help it grow and hopefully become successful. An angel investor. Alright

let's put that into an example sentence 'The start-up is looking for angel investors to

grow.' Number five is a business incubator or it's also know as an incubator. This is

a facility that is provided to very new companies, very new start-ups. They rent space very cheaply

to help the start-up grow. So they might give support in terms of ideas or management or

money and it's a kind of cheap place for the start-up to be based and then to grow over

time. Because obviously starting a company is quite expensive and you know rent is very

expensive so if you have got a place where the rent is cheap, where you have got good

facilities, potentially good training facilities then yeah your company will probably grow

faster and succeed. So an incubator is exactly that, it could be a house or just an office

facility that's very cheap to help start-ups to grow quickly. If you have ever seen the

TV series 'Silicon Valley' they are based in an incubator.So if yo want to get to know

about start-ups and tech business but in a funny way definitely watch Silicon Valley.

Number six growth hacking. Essentially growth hacking is using experiments to quickly learn

and change your business strategy or your marketing to grow the quickest way possible.

So you are finding little tricks to improve the way you do almost everything. So whether

it's through your marketing or your product development you are learning as quickly as

you can from your mistakes and improving your processes as quickly as you can. So it could

be a noun growth hacking or it could be a verb to growth hack. 'If you are an entrepreneur

you really need to learn how to growth hack.' Number seven is pivot, it's a verb and it

basically means if a company's original plan isn't working, it's not successful they may

change the direction of their business. Now it doesn't mean they'll do something totally

different but it means they'll adapt it or change it in some way. So for example Starbucks,

they weren't originally a coffee shop. Originally they were founded as a business that sold

coffee beans and coffee makers and then the owner Howard Schultz decided to pivot and

start a chain of coffee shops. So they were going in one direction and then they slightly

changed direction that is to pivot. So they pivoted, would be the past tense. Number eight,

scalability. Scalability is the ability for a company to grow and to be able to deal with

increased customers or increased demand. So if something isn't scalable, which is the

adjective, if something isn't scalable you can't grow it bigger than it is already. Uber

is a very scalable business because there is not just one person in the world that can

drive a taxi, there are thousands of people, millions of people that could drive a taxi.

So that's a very scalable business. So the word is scalability, is the noun and scalable

is the adjective. So 'Uber never had any problems with scalability.' Number nine, iteration.

This is a noun and it's the new version of something so it could be a computer programme

or it could be an English course it could be anything really. So the idea is that it's

a new version and you have changed something and hopefully improved the old version. So

with each iteration the idea is that your computer programme improves, it gets better.

A company might release a computer programme and then they'll make several iterations and

by the tenth iteration it's improved dramatically, it's so much better than the original version.

So an iteration is a new version of something. And the final one, number ten, exit strategy.

Now as you might be able to guess exit means kind of to leave and this is when the founder

of the business, the entrepreneur that started it makes a plan to leave the business. So

maybe they sell part of the business or maybe they sell the whole business but it's their

plan to leave and hopefully make some money on the business. So an exit strategy. 'It's

important for all entrepreneurs to have an exit strategy.' Eat Sleep Dreamers I'd love

to know which of those words did you find most useful. Did you know al of them? Were

some of them new to you? Let me know in the comments below. I'd particularly love to hear

from those of you that are learning English for your jobs. So that you can improve your

job, get a promotion whatever it might be or speak to colleagues or clients in English.

I'd love to know how you use English in business. Put that in the comments below. Remember to

check out my Instagram account which is @EatSleepDreamEnglish also check out my Facebook page and of course

hit the subscribe button and give this lesson a big thumbs up. I'm back every Tuesday and

every Friday with new lessons helping you take your English to the next level. Thanks

so much for hanging out with me guys I hope you enjoyed that one. This is Tom, the Chief

Dreamer, saying goodbye.