Investors often feel the need to give a made-up reason, but the real reason is that they're not as excited about you as about something else. Don't be discouraged -- even the most successful companies got many nos on the way to their first yes. Don't change your business strategy based on the reason any one investor gives you, although if several good investors give you the same reason, you might want to think about it.
BTW, it's normal to extrapolate retention to a yearly number using cohort analysis. Your claim is a bit like "I can't have been going 80 MPH because I've only been driving for 30 minutes!"
Realized the title and final sentence were misleading, was less looking for advice and more looking for war stories. Some of these interactions can feel pretty bizarre from the entrepreneur side and was wondering if anyone else had good ones to share.
War stories are best when you hear both sides. One-sided war stories are mostly like "they made a mistake, and we took advantage of it." But why did they make a mistake? What were they thinking? Did they have bad data, or wrong analysis, or internal disagreement? Were they losing a battle to win the war? That's when it gets interesting.
From my experience, extrapolating retention like that isn't really particularly valuable. It's basically the same as making something up whole-cloth past a certain point--feels more like lying than projecting.
(I also read the OP's story as the investor asking to see actual numbers, and not projections--if someone asked to see those kinds of numbers my first thought would be that they were asking for historical data)
Investors often feel the need to give a made-up reason, but the real reason is that they're not as excited about you as about something else. Don't be discouraged -- even the most successful companies got many nos on the way to their first yes. Don't change your business strategy based on the reason any one investor gives you, although if several good investors give you the same reason, you might want to think about it.
BTW, it's normal to extrapolate retention to a yearly number using cohort analysis. Your claim is a bit like "I can't have been going 80 MPH because I've only been driving for 30 minutes!"