This seems related to (though not quite the same as) “Eulering”.
A remark about your startup founder / investor example: I think most startup founders meeting with investors absolutely will have concrete answers to questions like “where will your business be in two years’ time?” cached in their heads, because that’s the sort of thing investors are likely to ask about. So I don’t think I agree with “Most founders aren’t going to have committed projections of those specific dates to memory even if they do have a coherent business plan” in this context: I think they likely will have, at least if their coherent business plan is one that supports such projections and the projections are positive-sounding enough to share with a prospective investor.
(I think a well prepared founder will answer the interruption with something along the lines of “That’s slide three, which we’ll get to in a moment. Now, as I was saying, …”.)
This seems related to (though not quite the same as) “Eulering”.
A remark about your startup founder / investor example: I think most startup founders meeting with investors absolutely will have concrete answers to questions like “where will your business be in two years’ time?” cached in their heads, because that’s the sort of thing investors are likely to ask about. So I don’t think I agree with “Most founders aren’t going to have committed projections of those specific dates to memory even if they do have a coherent business plan” in this context: I think they likely will have, at least if their coherent business plan is one that supports such projections and the projections are positive-sounding enough to share with a prospective investor.
(I think a well prepared founder will answer the interruption with something along the lines of “That’s slide three, which we’ll get to in a moment. Now, as I was saying, …”.)