adjective · status: emerging
non-zero
1.A number that is not zero, reported with the confidence of a much larger number. Usually means there are users, revenue, or odds, but not enough to volunteer the figure.
At Demo Day the founder said revenue was non-zero, and the investor politely stopped asking what it was.
01Origin
"Nonzero" began as mathematical English, with dictionary evidence dating it to the nineteenth century, not a Bay Area group chat. Engineers and quantitatively trained people carried it into ordinary speech through phrases like "non-zero value" and "non-zero probability," allowing "some" to arrive wearing safety goggles.
Startup culture gave the term a second job as a category of traction. Stripe's startup-pitching guide explicitly says reviewers compress metrics into "zero," "non-zero," and "impressive." That is the modern SF sense: proof that something exists, carefully separated from proof that it is going well.
02Notable sightings
sophie · @netcapgirlSupporting post supplied with the pitch appears to use or comment on "non-zero," but its exact text could not be independently retrieved.
raghav · @rargulatiSupporting post supplied with the pitch appears to use "non-zero" in casual tech discourse, but its exact wording could not be independently retrieved.
03Spread the ism
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