Etym.from mid-20th-century aviation jargon, repurposed in early 21st-century venture discourse to quantify company survival in investor communications, see Sommers, Venture Language, 2011.

A single-number projection, expressed in months of funded operation, that reduces cash on hand and burn rate to a negotiable timeframe used to justify spending, hiring, or fundraising.

'We need to extend runway by 12 months to hit the growth inflection' - Q2 Board Deck, slide 12

Etym.From Old French levier and Latin levare 'to lift', repurposed in corporate English during the 1990s by consultants seeking a noun that implied advantage without specification (Keane, 2003).

A managerial invocation that implies operational effectiveness without measurable criteria; leverage obscures accountability by presenting vague scalability as a remedy.

'Leverage existing platforms to unlock synergies across the portfolio' - Q2 Strategy Memo, slide 3

Etym.from Old French plate-forme 'flat shape', recontextualized by management consultancies and marketing teams in the early 2000s as a neutral label for strategic aggregation; see P. Holloway, Corporate Lexica, 2011.

A platform is a corporate abstraction that bundles unrelated features into a single investable object, thereby inflating valuations and postponing responsibility.

'We will build a platform to unlock network effects and synergize monetization' - Q3 Board Deck, slide 12

Etym.From L. scala, 'ladder', repurposed into corporate parlance circa 2010 by a consulting associate who needed a word that implied growth without immediate budgeting, see Henley, Corporate Metaphors, 2014.

To defer investment decisions and accountability by framing operational expansion as an inevitable future state rather than a present cost.

'We will scale next quarter' - Q3 Board Deck, slide 12