What they get either way

Most first ventures do not last, and this is not the disaster it sounds like. Someone who has found customers, set a price, been refused, kept records and stopped deliberately has done something most graduates have never done, and it shows in an interview in a way that a good transcript does not.

The outcome worth steering toward is therefore not success but a clean ending — a decision made against a number they set in advance rather than a slow drift into resentment. If you can help with one thing, help with that: ask early what the number and the date are, and remind them of it kindly when it arrives.