The founder was halfway through his pitch and every slide had a five-times-bigger number than the last one. The market was enormous. The solution was proprietary. The pilot customers, when named, were described as "exploring adoption." She wrote a polite question in her notebook and waited for him to finish. When he opened for questions she asked about retention — just retention — and he gave an answer that was not, strictly speaking, about retention. She wrote that down too. The slides kept projecting numbers. She had already decided. She would listen through the rest of the meeting to be fair, but her decision would be the same at the end as it had been three minutes in.