Definitional, citation-ready

Indie SaaS business-term glossary.

Canonical definitions for the non-Brunson, non-formula SaaS terminology indie founders run into — PMF, ICP, GTM, MoR, NPS, TAM/SAM/SOM, ACV, MVP. Each page covers the short definition, the longer context, how to operationalize the concept, the common misuse, and what good looks like for indie SaaS.

Distinct from /glossary (Brunson-method funnel terminology) and /saas-metric (numerical metrics with formulas).

Go-to-market

PMF — Product-market fit is the state where a product satisfies a specific market well enough that demand exceeds the team's ability to deliver — measured by retention, organic growth, and customer behavior.
ICP — An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a specific named description of the customer your product is best for — who they are, what they do, what they pay, and why they stay.
GTM — Go-to-market (GTM) is the structured plan for how a product reaches its target customer — combining product, marketing, sales, and customer success into one coherent motion.

Product

MVP — A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the smallest product that delivers a complete user value loop — not a half-built product with missing features.

Operations

ACV — Annual Contract Value (ACV) is the average annualized revenue per customer contract, normalized across all contract lengths.

Market sizing

TAM/SAM/SOM — TAM (Total Addressable Market) is the total revenue if every potential customer bought; SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market) is what you could realistically serve; SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) is what you could realistically win.

Customer success

NPS — Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer-loyalty metric calculated as the percentage of promoters (scored 9-10) minus the percentage of detractors (scored 0-6) on a 0-10 'would you recommend' question.

Legal & financial

MoR — A Merchant of Record (MoR) is the legal entity that processes the customer's payment and is responsible for sales tax, VAT, refunds, and chargebacks on the merchant's behalf.

Pair definitions with the metric pages

Many terms here connect to specific metrics with formulas. The cross-links from each detail page resolve there.

SaaS metric formulas Brunson glossary

🚀 Explore Our Network

Full disclosure: UnlockSaaS is one of ten small products built and run by one independent operator. These are the other nine.

60 days
To First Paying Customer

7 steps
Proven Playbook

100%
Money-Back Guarantee

$49
Founding Price /mo

You shipped. Nobody paid. The playbook breaks the pattern or the code refunds you automatically.

Get Free Diagnosis

Refund runs from your dashboard, not a support ticket — the server re-checks eligibility and issues it through Stripe automatically.