Silicon Valley start-ups are all leveraging hyperlocal onboarding tactics to capture the low hanging fruit and capitalize on their excess capacity.
Silicon Valley is full of jargon - like the seemingly mind-boggling sentence above - and it's always wise to know and use the popular vocabulary of business.
1. Unicorn
You might've heard the overused neologism unicorn, describing a start-up with a valuation above one billion. The idea was that highly valued start-ups were so rare, that seeing one was equivalent to a unicorn sighting.
2. Decicorn
Now there are herds of unicorns roaming Silicon Valley, 184 at the last count. A few of these start-ups are worth more than $10 billion, which are called decicorns (also spelled decacorn).
3. Dronevertising
The advertising is always looking for new places to advertise products, and since drones and other quadcopters' popularity are (literally) rising, a noodle company in Russia decided to fly ten drones with banners around the district - and there was a 40% increase in sales. This word means flying a drone around with a sign or banner on it.
4. Lookupable
This word cannot get any simpler. Coined by Wordnik founder Erin McKean, lookupable means to be able to look up - in a dictionary, on the internet, or search for a definition. Phubbing? Yes, that's lookupable.
5. Phubbing
Though you may not know what this word means, the chances are that you have done it before, perhaps more than once. The common practice of paying attention to a phone or any other type of tech device during a face-to-face conversation with someone is called phubbing, the combination of the words phone and snubbing. Hopefully, you're not a phubber.
6. Phubber
Phubber, meaning the person who's snubbing someone in favor of their phone, can be used to describe someone who's phubbing. Of course, this is just the highly refined 'art' of maintaining a full conversation without taking one's eyes off their phone.
7. Procrastatweeting
Yes, you're supposed to be cleaning the house, but you can't take your eyes off this funny cat meme on Twitter! You're procrastatweeting - using Twitter to put off whatever you're supposed to be doing. As you may have guessed, the word is a combination of procrastinating and tweeting.
8. Quinquagintacorn
Another word that ends in 'corn.' A quinquagintacorn is a start-up that's worth $50 billion - or more. The only start-up to achieve this status is Uber, currently at $68 billion - which is why a start-up can also be called an ubercorn.
9. Unicorpse
This last word that doesn't end in 'corn,' but is nonetheless, related to unicorns, decicorns, and quinquagintacorns. Dead unicorns are what you call a unicorpse. That's wordplay right there.
Unicorpses are startups that gain valuations of more than $1 billion (which is a unicorn) but then declines and fails before going public.
Now that you've read seven common Silicon Valley words - hopefully not phubbing as you were reading - you have the culture the words have wrought.
Comment below on your ideas and thoughts about Silicon Valley's unique vocabulary!
