Burn Rate
How much cash a company consumes each month.
Gross burn is total monthly operating spend. Net burn subtracts revenue and is the figure that actually reduces the bank balance. When someone says burn without qualifying it, they usually mean net.
Burn is only meaningful next to what it buys. $200,000 a month at 15% monthly growth is a different business from the same burn flat, and investors read the ratio of burn to traction rather than the absolute number.
Burn creep — spending rising quietly with headcount — is the most common reason a runway model proves optimistic. Tracking burn weekly rather than monthly surfaces the trend before it becomes a surprise.