A post by Amon Munyaneza | Kavumu Capital LLC | Managing Partner
We all worry about product-market fit, burn rate, CAC, and speed to market. These matter. But 70% of startup failures don’t come from bad economics; they come from broken humans. It’s not that the business didn’t make sense. It’s that the people inside it stopped having integrity.
We have metrics for everything: NPS, MRR, LTV. But where’s the dashboard for moral direction? The quarterly review on trust? The OKR for humility, for the kind of leadership that doesn’t implode when things get hard? Integrity isn’t for PR. It goes straight to the bottom line.
Most people discover the value of character after the damage is done. After the co-founders split. After the investor pulls out because they “lost confidence,” which usually means “this person isn’t safe for my investment.”
I have done due diligence on founders with great pitch decks and better numbers, but not much soul. Numbers change. Markets shift. Tech evolves. But people tend to stay in their patterns until something breaks them or wakes them.
I look for something different now. I look for soul. Not the spiritual kind; the dependable kind. The kind that doesn’t ghost their team after a bad quarter. The kind that can be trusted with success and failure.
Integrity is not a state of being. We work for it. We pay for it. It will cost you something now or everything later.
Why don’t more consultants talk about this? Because it doesn’t scale fast. It doesn’t fit a dashboard. Soul work is slow. And in a market addicted to speed, that feels like a luxury. But it’s not. Integrity is the lifeblood. We need more of it than we need funding rounds.
I have built businesses, mentored founders, and advised investors. In my experience, the “soft stuff” always makes or breaks the hard results. I have seen culture misalignment quietly kill momentum. I have watched the absence of honesty derail multi-million-dollar deals. I have seen egos burn businesses faster than the lack of capital.
The companies I have worked with that prioritize truth don’t always grow the fastest, but they grow the healthiest. Speed matters. But health matters more. Because health is value; and speed, well, that’s just the thing we do to prove we are killing it.
To investors: measure character. Look for hidden fractures before they cost you millions.
To founders: we don’t need more,
angel rounds turning into BMWs.
Or seed rounds into apartments.
Or Series As into land titles.
We need more integrity in the system. It holds things together. The mission isn’t your lifestyle. The raise isn’t your reward.
Real traction is the founder who still lives modestly after their raise, who mentors their team, listens, prays, and shows up with integrity when no one’s watching.
Business models matter. Vision matters. But integrity multiplies everything good. And the lack of it kills everything it touches.
Follow us on X for latest posts and updates
Join and interact with our Telegram community
_________________________________________
