How to Describe Your Tech Company's Business Model in English at Work

These industry terms are often mispronounced, especially in international meetings. Here's how to say them correctly.

Whether you're onboarding a new team member, pitching to investors, or explaining your product to a client, you need precise vocabulary to describe where your company fits in the tech industry. Vague phrases like 'we make software' or 'we help businesses' don't communicate your company's actual position.

This article covers the essential industry terms you'll use in standups, all-hands meetings, pitch decks, and client conversations. You'll learn to distinguish between service delivery models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS), customer types (B2B, B2C), and industry verticals—plus how to pronounce these terms correctly.

The 'as a Service' models describe how technology is delivered to customers. Understanding these distinctions helps you position your company accurately and explain technical architecture to non-technical stakeholders.

Your customer type fundamentally shapes how you talk about your product. B2B and B2C companies have different sales cycles, pricing models, and communication styles—and your English should reflect this.

A vertical (or industry vertical) is a specific industry or market segment that a company targets. Tech companies often specialize in particular verticals because each industry has unique requirements, regulations, and vocabulary.

In pitches and all-hands meetings, you'll often hear phrases like 'We're focused on the healthcare vertical' or 'Our main verticals are fintech and e-commerce.'

Let's see how these terms work in real tech workplace situations.

Scenario 1: Explaining to a New Hire

In your first week, a new engineer might ask, 'So what exactly does our company do?' Here's a structured way to answer:

'We're a B2B SaaS company in the fintech space. Our main product is a payment orchestration platform—basically, we help e-commerce businesses route payments through multiple providers to optimize for cost and success rates. Our customers are mid-market to enterprise retailers, and we're deployed in about 40 countries.'

Scenario 2: Client Conversation About SaaS vs. On-Premise

A prospective enterprise client might ask about deployment options:

'Most of our customers use our cloud-hosted SaaS offering—you get automatic updates, we handle scaling, and there's no infrastructure to maintain on your end. That said, we do support on-premise deployment for organizations with strict data residency requirements. The on-prem version requires your team to manage updates and infrastructure, but you get full control over where your data lives.'

The level of formality changes depending on context. Here's how the same information might appear in different formats.

Test your understanding of tech industry vocabulary with these exercises.