Decisive Finance glossary
Purpose: A single reference for the vocabulary used across Decisive Finance writing. Ten canonical terms, each with a short definition and a pointer to the pillar where it lives.
For the site: publish at /glossary/ as a standalone page. Link from the footer. Link into it from every blog post on first use of a term.
1. Walking dead portco
A post-Series A or Series B company that has stopped moving. Revenue holds or creeps. Burn is the thing that grows. The board deck still has up-and-to-the-right charts. The next round is six months overdue. Alive on the cap table. Dead in the forecast.
2. Six-signal pattern
The Six Trap Diagnostic™ that together define a walking dead portco. Three of six is enough to be in the category. The signals are: ratio mirage, board question shift, CEO/investor fracture, stalled raise, retrospective CFO, and forward-reallocation potential with no owner.
3. Ratio mirage
When a company’s headline ratios (gross margin, LTV/CAC, NRR) remain inside acceptable bands while the denominators drift out from under them. The numbers stay fine and stop meaning what they used to. A structural feature of walking dead portcos.
See: The ratio mirage
4. Decision-first finance
A methodology that moves finance’s primary deliverable from retrospective reporting (variance deck) to forward decision framing (Three-Path Model). The close and the variance still happen. They are no longer the center of gravity.
5. Six-Trap Diagnostic
A two-week, fixed-fee engagement that runs across eight cash-recovery categories, restates the company’s three headline ratios against an explicit customer definition, and produces the first Three-Path Model on a material decision. Cash recovery floor: $22,500 to $30,000 in 14 days. Guaranteed.
See: What the first 14 days actually look like and the guarantee
6. Three-Path Model
A one-page decision artifact that frames a material decision as Keep, Kill, or Restructure, with dollars under each path (incremental ARR, incremental burn, 12-month net cash), a recommendation from the finance function, and a decision date with a named owner. Also called the Decision Slide when it appears in the board deck.
See: The one-page decision slide
7. Financial Rhythm System (FRS)
The monthly operating cadence that keeps decision-first finance running after a Diagnostic ends. Three instruments: Decision Slide, Runway Spine, Signal Dashboard. All three produced before the close deck, each one page, every month.
See: The Financial Rhythm System
8. Runway Spine
A rolling 18-month cash view with three sensitivities (base, downside, upside), each row naming the decision the scenario depends on. One of the three instruments in the Financial Rhythm System.
See: The Financial Rhythm System
9. forward-reallocation potential
Recoverable cash sitting across one of eight categories in a funded technology company: SaaS overages, cloud infrastructure, R&D tax credits, AR aging, vendor terms, revenue leakage, headcount and contractor load, and G&A overhead. In a walking dead portco, $22,500 to $30,000 of forward-reallocation potential is the floor we have yet to miss in 14 days.
See: What the first 14 days actually look like and the guarantee
10. CEO/investor fracture
The silent break that opens between the CEO and the lead investor around month ten to sixteen of the Series A, when each party starts operating on a different story about the company and tells it to different outside audiences. Repaired by a one-page co-authored definition of what the company is, signed by both.
See: The CEO/investor fracture
Implementation notes
- Publish at
/glossary/with an anchor id on each term (#walking-dead-portco, etc.) so posts can deep-link into the entry. - On first use of a glossary term in any blog post, wrap as a link to the glossary entry. On second use, unlinked.
- Keep the glossary to 10 entries. New canon terms require a Phrase Book update first; glossary follows the Phrase Book, not the other way around.