I was recently involved in negotiations with a very early stage company for some seed money investment. I thought they had a great product and team but they shot themselves in the foot with their outrageously optimistic projections based on no verifiable data. After I declined I pointed out to them that the story they told didn’t align with their investment request. If they could generate the profits they were projecting as quickly as they were projecting they could easily self fund and didn’t need 18 months or even 3 months of runway.