Glossary
Definitions of the vocabulary used in our case studies and columns, as this site uses it. This page organizes terminology for reading the articles; it is not business advice.
- Monthly revenue
- Revenue per month, before any costs — not take-home profit. This site converts non-JPY figures at ¥150/USD for cross-case comparison.
- Monthly profit
- What remains of monthly revenue after costs (goods, ads, tools). Granularity varies by source — each article follows the wording of its source.
- MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)
- Subscription revenue that recurs every month, excluding one-off sales (annual plans are usually divided by 12). The base metric for SaaS scale and growth.
- ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
- MRR annualized (×12). SaaS sale prices are often quoted as a multiple of ARR.
- Solopreneur
- Someone who runs a business without employees. Unlike freelancing, which sells time, a solopreneur typically owns an asset — a product, a site, an audience — that earns without their direct labour.
- Indie hacker
- A developer who builds their own products and lives off the revenue, without outside funding. The term spread from the community site Indie Hackers.
- Bootstrapping
- Growing a company on its own revenue and the founder’s savings, without raising venture capital. Used in contrast to VC-funded startups.
- Micro-SaaS
- A small SaaS run by one to a few people, focused on a niche problem with a small feature set and low running costs. Frequently bought and sold between individuals.
- Exit
- The founder converting a business into cash, typically by selling it. IPOs are exits too, but this site mainly covers small M&A — asset or share transfers.
- Multiple
- The sale price expressed as a multiple of profit or revenue — “x months of monthly profit” for small sites, “x times ARR” for SaaS. Observed multiples are recorded on the Data page.
- SDE (Seller’s Discretionary Earnings)
- Profit with the owner’s salary and personal expenses added back — what a new owner could actually take home. The standard pricing basis in US small-business sales.
- Site flipping
- Buying a running site or small business, improving it, and reselling. Marketplaces such as Flippa, Acquire.com, Rakko M&A and Batonz host these deals.
- Churn rate
- The share of customers (or revenue) lost over a period. MRR growth is the tug-of-war between new signups and churn.
- LTV (Lifetime Value)
- Total revenue or profit a customer brings over their lifetime. Discussed alongside CAC (customer acquisition cost) as the ceiling for what acquisition can cost.
- D2C (Direct to Consumer)
- Selling directly to consumers through your own store rather than marketplaces or wholesale. In the cases here, ad spend and return rates tend to decide the P&L.
For money metrics (monthly revenue, profit, sale price, multiples), the canonical definitions and FX rate live on the Data page under “How to read the numbers”. See the Data page →