Customer development is a systematic approach that enables start-ups to understand and validate their target customers, their problems and their needs at an early stage. The focus is on testing assumptions about the market and the business model before a company invests significant resources in product development or scaling up.
The customer journey describes the entire path a person takes from their first contact with a brand or company through to the decision to purchase and beyond. It encompasses all the points of contact – known as touchpoints – that customers have with a company, both online and offline.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) describes the total economic value that a customer generates for a business over the course of their relationship with that business. This metric is also referred to as customer lifetime value or lifetime value (LTV). Depending on how it is calculated, it takes into account either the expected turnover or the contribution margin over the entire duration of the customer relationship.
SAM stands for Serviceable Available Market and refers to the portion of the total market that a start-up can, in principle, serve with its current product, business model and range of services. The metric therefore describes the market potential that a company can actually tap into.
Prompt engineering refers to the deliberate design and optimisation of inputs for AI systems. These inputs are called prompts and contain instructions, questions or information that an artificial intelligence (AI) is intended to process. The aim is to obtain results that are as precise, relevant and useful as possible. Through well-formulated prompts, users can influence which tasks an AI undertakes, what information it takes into account and how it structures its responses. Prompt engineering therefore plays an important role in the use of generative AI, for example in text generation, data analysis or software development.
Accelerator programmes are intensively supervised platforms that support start-ups at an early stage of their growth by providing access to capital, mentoring, workspaces and networks.
The halo effect describes a cognitive distortion in which a single positive characteristic of a person or product leads to other, less obvious characteristics also being perceived as positive. This effect can play a role both in everyday life and in marketing, for example by outshining the overall impression of a company or brand through a positive perception of a single characteristic.
Up-selling is a sales method in which customers are offered a higher quality or more expensive product than the one originally selected. The aim is to increase sales by switching the customer to a product with more functions, higher quality or additional benefits. Typical examples include upgrading to a larger smartphone model or a premium version of software. Successful upselling relies on trust, timing and clear added value for the customer.
The full-time equivalent (FTE) is a key figure that is used to compare the work performance of part-time and full-time employees.