I don't know. When you bring it up (other than maybe market/ecosystem flux risk), lot of the major VC types are pretty dismissive and say "yeah, yeah: startups

I don't know. When you bring it up (other than maybe market/ecosystem flux risk), lot of the major VC types are pretty dismissive and say "yeah, yeah: startups are risky". But people who don't spend 40+ hours/week evaluating startups seem to appreciate a pretty frank discussion of the things that could go wrong and what you are doing to minimize the odds of that happening or how you will respond if they do happen. I've helped some new founder types develop business plans and pitch decks over the years, and they all seem to be very hesitant to have this kind of (let me call it "adult") conversation with people, but I personally find a slick/happy/always-sunny-here pitch to be a little too used-car-salesman for my tastes. It certainly wouldn't be out-of-bounds to have one of the five projections be "total loss", but it doesn't add much information to the discussion, so while I mention it in passing, I don't include that in chart form. But, it seems to me that if honesty turns off investors, they probably aren't the kind of people you want on your board anyway... Nothing worse than a noob investor asking all the wrong questions all the time and harshing your zen when you've got a company to build.