> One small tip my cofounder learned in business school: I don't remember the exact terminology, but analyses that go from the inside outwards are more respecte

> One small tip my cofounder learned in business school: I don't remember the exact terminology, but analyses that go from the inside outwards are more respected by investors than ones that go from the outside inwards. Don't take huge figures like "Number of Americans" and multiply by "Percent of Americans that do 'x'", but rather find localized, small figures, and extrapolate those up/outwards. Not sure if it could be considered the same, but in physics there's a concept of "from first principles" where you obtain something starting from laws which you know are true (within the domain of applicability of a theory). "From first principles" is in contrast to making comparisons for example reasonings like "I know the answer in that other situation, so in my situation of interest I'm going to estimate the answer is X% more". Calculations from first principles are tipically more robust but harder to do.