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Welcome to the HBR IDEA cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish.

Fake it till you make it. It's something we hear all the time, an idea that is framed as

innocent. That we can embellish our skill set or past experiences so we can get a foot

in the door and really prove what we can do, or in the case of a new business venture

so we can get the funding we're asking for. But there's a fine line between embellishment

and misrepresentation. Our guest has studied how startup culture and economics encourage

exaggeration and even outright deception. He's here to explain how even well-meaning entrepreneurs

fall into these traps and to share how they can do better. Kyle Jensen is the Director

of Entrepreneurship and an associate dean at the Yale School of Management. Along with

Stanford's Tom Buyers, Laurie Dunham of the University of St. Thomas, and John Fjeld

of Duke, he wrote the HBR article, Entrepreneurs and the Truth. Kyle, thanks so much for joining

me. Kurt, it's my great pleasure. Thanks for having me.

I love a simple headline like that. Entrepreneurs and the Truth, it's very clear.

Is it, yes, in truth, the truth is sometimes lacking in entrepreneurship, unfortunately.

Why is it that way? Yeah, well, it's complicated. The most important reason is that entrepreneurs

are always on more than anybody else. Entrepreneurs start with nothing, they're building a dream,

a castle in the sky, something in which no one else believes, and they have to be a passionate

advocate for their projects all the time. It is an endeavor that requires unwavering confidence.

There's some good reasons for that. As an investor or an employee or another stakeholder associated

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