In business, truth doesn’t come with a comfort setting.
It doesn’t warm itself to protect morale.
It doesn’t cool down to avoid conflict.
Truth, especially for founders, simply exists.
And the moment you accept it calmly – without drama, apology, or emotional cushioning – you’re labelled something else.
Cold.
Clinical.
Too hard.
“Not people-centric enough.”
As if leadership must always bleed to be considered humane.
One of the hardest lessons for startup founders is this:
You can be empathetic without being indulgent.
We struggle because we confuse caring with avoiding hard decisions.
Take hiring.
Early employees are often believers, friends, fellow dreamers.
They stay late.
They try hard.
They mean well.
But as the company evolves, the role evolves too and sometimes the person doesn’t.
Keeping them feels loyal.
Letting them go feels cruel.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth:
A role filled emotionally but not functionally becomes a silent liability.
Truth doesn’t downgrade itself because someone has been around longer.
Or take strategy decisions.
Markets change.
Assumptions break.
Business models stop working.
Yet founders cling to old plans because they’ve invested time, money, and identity into them.
Pivoting feels like betrayal of the original vision.
But persistence without relevance isn’t courage, it’s denial.
Truth doesn’t reward stubbornness.
Then there are opportunities.
Big names.
Shiny partnerships.
“Great for branding.”
But misaligned incentives, poor execution fit, or distraction risk quietly creep in.
Saying no makes you look arrogant.
Saying yes makes you operationally fragile.
Truth doesn’t care about how impressive something looks on a pitch deck.
Why is this so hard?
Because founders are emotional creatures building rational systems.
And emotions crave continuity, while truth demands calibration.
Emotions say, “Let’s give it one more quarter.”
Truth says, “The data is already loud.”
Accepting truth without emotional theatre often makes you appear indifferent.
But restraint isn’t absence of feeling, it’s control over it.
The best founders aren’t emotionless.
They’re emotionally disciplined.
And yes – this principle eventually spills beyond boardrooms.
In personal relationships too, there comes a moment when two good people realise that what once created joy now creates pain.
Staying out of history feels noble.
Leaving out of clarity feels heartless.
But truth doesn’t measure warmth, it measures reality.
You didn’t become cold when you accepted it calmly.
You became clear.
Because truth has no temperature.
Only consequences.
And founders – more than anyone – must learn to live with that.
LeadershipTruths
FounderMindset
Kashyapism
(Inspired from a dialogue from the movie “The Counselor”)