Every term used in this course, defined once. Lessons follow these definitions exactly; where the source document uses a term differently, that is noted.
| Free trial | The full product, time-boxed. Converts on evaluation. Fails when the user never reaches value inside the window. |
| Freemium | A permanently free tier of a limited product. No clock, so the limit does the converting. Converts on outgrowing. Fails when the free tier is quietly sufficient forever. |
| Usage cap | A limit on metered units per period. The default shape for a product with real variable cost per use. |
| Feature cap | Functionality withheld from the free tier. Risks the magic never landing. |
| Seat cap | A limit on people. Inert against solo professionals, which is most of this market. |
| Soft cap | The threshold where pressure begins - warnings, degradation - without stopping the user. |
| Hard cap | The threshold where use actually stops. The gap between soft and hard is what stops a bad week from breaking a formed habit. |
| Metered unit | What the cap counts. A good one tracks value received, tracks your cost, can be felt coming, and grows with habit rather than luck. |
| Loss leader | A lead item sold below its own cost, with margin recaptured elsewhere. Requires three parts: the lead item, the recapture path, the attach assumption. |
| Recapture path | The named mechanism by which a person who took the lead item ends up paying. The part proposals omit. |
| Attach assumption | The fraction of takers expected to travel the recapture path, and the evidence that would show it wrong. |
| Razor and blades | The strong case of a loss leader, where the lead item makes the paid item necessary rather than appealing. |
| Cherry-picker | The customer who takes the free thing and never attaches. Bounded in retail, unbounded in software. |
| Revente à perte | The French prohibition on reselling goods below effective purchase price (Code de commerce, art. L.442-2 et seq.). Applies to resale of goods, not to software or services you build. |
| Wedge | A narrow, overlooked problem attacked first, won with something simple, expanded from. Narrow in problem. |
| Dinky feature | Dixon's term for a wedge that accumulates nothing. Narrow and simple and pointless. |
| Bridge asset | What winning the wedge accumulates that the expansion needs and you could not buy: accumulated data, workflow position, distribution, or trust. Signups are not one. |
| Beachhead | Moore's term for the narrow segment you dominate first. Narrow in people. Chosen for internal word of mouth, one shared urgent reason to buy, deliverable whole product, no entrenched competitor. |
| Bowling pins | Moore's sequencing: the first segment must knock down the second. |
| Land and expand | Growing seats and modules inside an account you already entered. Expands the account; a wedge expands the product. |
| Frequency | They open it often. A leading indicator, not an asset. |
| Habit | They open it without deciding to. A mechanism that produces investment. |
| Switching cost | Leaving would cost them something real. The only one of the three that is an asset. |
| Hook model | Eyal's trigger, action, variable reward, investment. In professional tools the trigger is external and generous, variable reward is the wrong lever, and investment is the whole point. |
| Investment (Hook) | The user depositing data, corrections or configuration that makes the product better for them and worse to leave. The bridge from habit to switching cost. |
| Network effect | Other users make the product better for you. Compounds across the market. |
| Data network effect | Often claimed, rarely present. NFX warn it is routinely confused with plain switching cost from accumulated data. |
| Re-derivable data | Anything a competitor rebuilds by connecting to the same sources the user still controls. Not a moat. |
| Time to value | How long until the user feels the point. |
| Time to lock | How long until leaving hurts. Runs only on non-re-derivable accumulation, and may never start. |
| Provenance labels | Primary; primary, reported; trade aggregation; unsourced. Apply to every number as you write it down. |
| Sector substitution | Quoting a statistic about a broad population as if it described your narrow one. The commonest way honest people produce false slides. |
| Gate | A constraint that can stop a launch. Legal, capability, commercial, or imagined. |
| Imagined gate | A constraint asserted and never checked. More expensive than a real one, because it removes an option without debate. |
| Activity or artifact | The question that resolves most regulatory claims: does the rule attach to doing a regulated thing, or merely to touching a regulated topic? |
| Validated versus taken | A funded early mover validates a category. Only distribution lock or switching cost at scale takes one. |
| Falsifier | A checkable condition agreed in advance that would reverse the decision. Prevents relitigating it monthly. |
| Mandataire | An independent commercial agent working under a network's licence rather than holding a carte professionnelle. Individual, solo, and the fastest-growing part of the market. |
| Carte professionnelle | The licence required under Loi Hoguet to act as an estate agent. Issued by the CCI, valid three years. |
| Loi Hoguet | The 1970 law governing estate agency in France. Constrains who may act as an agent, not who may sell them software. |
| CNIL | The French data protection authority. The real regulator for a recording product. |
| ARCEP | The electronic communications regulator. Governs numbering resources and operator status. Not implicated by recording calls you do not carry. |
| FNAIM | The main French estate agency trade body. Over 10,000 member establishments. |
| RENT | Real Estate & New Technologies, the French proptech trade show. 4-5 November 2026, Porte de Versailles. |