carve out

A business term for a dot-com spin-off from a larger, usually brick-and-mortar, company. its purpose is to gain market share. The term is derived from the phrase "carving out a particular niche." The spin-off will look and feel like a separate company (and may offer different products or services), but it will leverage the marketing and distribution muscle of the parent company (for example, the creation of Barnesandnoble.com as a separate company from Barnes & Noble). VCs may do this to try and save a new economy investment, but all they're really doing is developing an online component of an already successful offline business.