How do founders actually estimate LTV with almost no retention data?

Most founders I talk to invent LTV from a three-month cohort and hope nobody asks for the retention curve. Early stage almost never has clean 12-month churn. The move is not to fake lifetime. It is to show the assumptions.

What I check before any unit-economics slide: ARPU from real invoices, gross margin you can defend, and the churn you actually observed, even if the sample is thin. Say the sample size out loud. Investors fund honesty plus a path, not a polished guess.

I run those three on Round Funded before the call so the diligence conversation is about retention levers, not arithmetic. Free check: https://www.roundfunded.com/en/t...