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I will state my position unlike those afraid to speak so they can have deal-flow or perhaps enter YC. I do not doubt that there may be correlation between peop

I will state my position unlike those afraid to speak so they can have deal-flow or perhaps enter YC. I do not doubt that there may be correlation between people who have performed poorly in YC and "very strong accents", it does not mean causation. Such a statement from someone whom people hang to his every-word should not be put out without clarification. The defense of "accents so strong you cannot understand" holds no water. It was an after thought. What about people that are dumb and cannot speak at all? Nothing could have stopped him from saying "people who do not communicate well make bad CEOs. As an example, thick accents, stammering, unclear minds can be the cause. Instead of clarifying the context which I assume to be "With a strong accent you will find it to raise money on demo day which is very important" or expanding it, Paul Graham goes "Don't say things people want to misunderstand" It is insulting at best. Heaping the blame/responsibility of understanding on the readier/listener. How ironic considering the topic. I hope his position does not lead to default bias in YC companies. "He has a strong accent, I cannot ask him to be my co founder". Or "His strong accent means he will be a bad CEO so why employ him at all" This tread will soon disappear. But I will end with a Martin Luther King quote from the I have a dream speech 5o years ago yesterday. "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter"

sliverstorm 13y ago
I do not doubt that there may be correlation between people who have performed poorly in YC and "very strong accents", it does not mean causation. pg is an investor. From the point of view of angel investing, causation is not important. Correlation is enough. If some trait historically shows the company will be half as likely to succeed, why should an investor put money in that company, causation be damned?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- OoTheNigerian 13y ago
  You sir, have just described pattern matching. e.g Thee cliche white male that attended an Ivy League school was successful. therefore, to be safe I go that way all the time. This then goes ahead and pollutes your data-set because it would be built on that bias. Now, I am not saying that those that patten match are bad, but they should at the very least try not to make their 'findings' influence other people who might have the chance to to start a new data set without bias.
  - dylangs1030 13y ago
    If being male, being white, and attending Harvard are all positively correlated with being successful in a startup, then there's actually nothing wrong with selectively looking for those qualifiers. Does it make it more difficult to get a foot in the door if you're female, Ecuadorian and went to a community college, despite being a phenomenal programmer with a great idea? Yes, it does make it more difficult, but that's not their problem. They are choosing where to invest their money, and using math to do so should be encouraged. If they don't have a spreadsheet in front of them, then at the very least they should understand that prestige is prestige for a reason. Does that make it impossible to succeed without those qualifiers? No, but it's not unfair that it's more difficult to do so without them. You can't play a fair game all the way through. Sooner or later something's going to happen that's not in your favor.
    - cglee 13y ago
      I think you just rationalized discrimination. Nice work.
      - tedunangst 13y ago
        Discrimination is not irrational. As a society we have determined that we value an individual's desire to get a job more than a business's desire for an efficient filtering mechanism. "Discrimination is rational" and "discrimination is bad" are not mutually exclusive.
        cglee 13y ago
        The fact that discrimination seems natural means that we need to fight against it consciously, not rationalize it as acceptable. If you value diversity, equality, etc, then you have to actively monitor your own discriminatory tendencies and lead with respect, compassion, love instead of rationality and pattern matching.
        tedunangst 13y ago
gruseom 13y ago
The defense of "accents so strong you cannot understand" holds no water. It was an after thought. If that is right then PG has missed the obvious in his own data, since several high-quality YC startups have CEOs who speak American English with moderate accents. One of them is on the front page of Hacker News right now, in fact. So I don't think your claim is either likely or, given that you've offered zero evidence, fair. Amusingly, you condemn his clarification immediately after condemning him for not offering one.
dylangs1030 13y ago
I think people are blowing this out of proportion. >I do not doubt that there may be correlation between people who have performed poorly in YC and "very strong accents", it does not mean causation. It doesn't matter what the cause is, he's an investor, not a doctor. The cause is irrelevant. If there's correlation, that's enough to say no. Being an investor is a game where you find what's wrong before you try to find what's right. You don't approach deal-flow with "How can I make this work?" but "What does this person have to offer me?" >The defense of "accents so strong you cannot understand" holds no water. Nor should it be a defense; it's a solid fact. How many CEOs do you see in the United States who can't be understood very well when they're speaking? >Nothing could have stopped him from saying "people who do not communicate well make bad CEOs. You're right, nothing stopped him. Then again, he doesn't have any responsibility to people on a message board who will critique him without any experience of internal operations of Y Combinator. "Nothing stopped him" is a good enough reason for anything. It's invalid because it's not a logical rebuttal, it's just a tautology. >Heaping the blame/responsibility of understanding on the readier/listener. How ironic considering the topic. I'm a bit confused by this part. I think Paul Graham's entire point is that the responsibility of understanding is on the speaker...hence why strong accents aren't desirable in a CEO. >I hope his position does not lead to default bias in YC companies. "He has a strong accent, I cannot ask him to be my co founder". Or "His strong accent means he will be a bad CEO so why employ him at all" I don't care if it becomes a default bias. Do you know why? Because it isn't a bias in the sense of discrimination. If the statistics bears out that it's not a quality correlated with success, then you don't want it. This isn't unicorns and candy rainbows. This is capitalist investment. There isn't room for everyone to succeed. That doesn't mean we're being ethnocentric. In fact, if the math bears it out, I honestly hope YC companies do take this on as a qualifier. If it's valid, it doesn't matter if it hurts your feelings. They're not being racist. >This tread will soon disappear. But I will end with a Martin Luther King quote from the I have a dream speech 5o years ago yesterday. "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter" You're taking this entirely the wrong way. This has nothing to do with unfair discrimination. It's entirely about the logistics of public speaking and communication in a company that has everything going against it. A quote from MLK has nothing to do with any of this.
- OoTheNigerian 13y ago
fsck--off 13y ago
In the HN thread discussing the article [1], pg said: "It's not our top criterion. It's just one that I'm willing to talk about publicly, because there's no way to fake it. We're not against funding people from outside the US, and we fund a lot of them. But 564 startups is enough to see patterns, and the empirical evidence about very strong accents is striking. And I am talking about failure to communicate here. I don't mean strong accents in the sense that it's clear that someone comes from another country. I'm talking about accents so strong that you have to interrupt the conversation to ask what they just said." and "I talked about this on another thread, but by strong accent I mean so strong that people have a hard time understanding you. It's not a problem if founders have accents as strong as, say, the Collison brothers'." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6278293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6278293
- subsystem 13y ago
  That only addresses the first part of the answer which I assume isn't the controversial one.

sliverstorm 13y ago

I do not doubt that there may be correlation between people who have performed poorly in YC and "very strong accents", it does not mean causation. pg is an investor. From the point of view of angel investing, causation is not important. Correlation is enough. If some trait historically shows the company will be half as likely to succeed, why should an investor put money in that company, causation be damned?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
OoTheNigerian 13y ago
You sir, have just described pattern matching. e.g Thee cliche white male that attended an Ivy League school was successful. therefore, to be safe I go that way all the time. This then goes ahead and pollutes your data-set because it would be built on that bias. Now, I am not saying that those that patten match are bad, but they should at the very least try not to make their 'findings' influence other people who might have the chance to to start a new data set without bias.
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  If being male, being white, and attending Harvard are all positively correlated with being successful in a startup, then there's actually nothing wrong with selectively looking for those qualifiers. Does it make it more difficult to get a foot in the door if you're female, Ecuadorian and went to a community college, despite being a phenomenal programmer with a great idea? Yes, it does make it more difficult, but that's not their problem. They are choosing where to invest their money, and using math to do so should be encouraged. If they don't have a spreadsheet in front of them, then at the very least they should understand that prestige is prestige for a reason. Does that make it impossible to succeed without those qualifiers? No, but it's not unfair that it's more difficult to do so without them. You can't play a fair game all the way through. Sooner or later something's going to happen that's not in your favor.
  - cglee 13y ago
    I think you just rationalized discrimination. Nice work.
    - tedunangst 13y ago
      Discrimination is not irrational. As a society we have determined that we value an individual's desire to get a job more than a business's desire for an efficient filtering mechanism. "Discrimination is rational" and "discrimination is bad" are not mutually exclusive.
      - cglee 13y ago
        The fact that discrimination seems natural means that we need to fight against it consciously, not rationalize it as acceptable. If you value diversity, equality, etc, then you have to actively monitor your own discriminatory tendencies and lead with respect, compassion, love instead of rationality and pattern matching.
        tedunangst 13y ago

gruseom 13y ago

The defense of "accents so strong you cannot understand" holds no water. It was an after thought. If that is right then PG has missed the obvious in his own data, since several high-quality YC startups have CEOs who speak American English with moderate accents. One of them is on the front page of Hacker News right now, in fact. So I don't think your claim is either likely or, given that you've offered zero evidence, fair. Amusingly, you condemn his clarification immediately after condemning him for not offering one.

dylangs1030 13y ago

I think people are blowing this out of proportion. >I do not doubt that there may be correlation between people who have performed poorly in YC and "very strong accents", it does not mean causation. It doesn't matter what the cause is, he's an investor, not a doctor. The cause is irrelevant. If there's correlation, that's enough to say no. Being an investor is a game where you find what's wrong before you try to find what's right. You don't approach deal-flow with "How can I make this work?" but "What does this person have to offer me?" >The defense of "accents so strong you cannot understand" holds no water. Nor should it be a defense; it's a solid fact. How many CEOs do you see in the United States who can't be understood very well when they're speaking? >Nothing could have stopped him from saying "people who do not communicate well make bad CEOs. You're right, nothing stopped him. Then again, he doesn't have any responsibility to people on a message board who will critique him without any experience of internal operations of Y Combinator. "Nothing stopped him" is a good enough reason for anything. It's invalid because it's not a logical rebuttal, it's just a tautology. >Heaping the blame/responsibility of understanding on the readier/listener. How ironic considering the topic. I'm a bit confused by this part. I think Paul Graham's entire point is that the responsibility of understanding is on the speaker...hence why strong accents aren't desirable in a CEO. >I hope his position does not lead to default bias in YC companies. "He has a strong accent, I cannot ask him to be my co founder". Or "His strong accent means he will be a bad CEO so why employ him at all" I don't care if it becomes a default bias. Do you know why? Because it isn't a bias in the sense of discrimination. If the statistics bears out that it's not a quality correlated with success, then you don't want it. This isn't unicorns and candy rainbows. This is capitalist investment. There isn't room for everyone to succeed. That doesn't mean we're being ethnocentric. In fact, if the math bears it out, I honestly hope YC companies do take this on as a qualifier. If it's valid, it doesn't matter if it hurts your feelings. They're not being racist. >This tread will soon disappear. But I will end with a Martin Luther King quote from the I have a dream speech 5o years ago yesterday. "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter" You're taking this entirely the wrong way. This has nothing to do with unfair discrimination. It's entirely about the logistics of public speaking and communication in a company that has everything going against it. A quote from MLK has nothing to do with any of this.

OoTheNigerian 13y ago

fsck--off 13y ago

In the HN thread discussing the article [1], pg said: "It's not our top criterion. It's just one that I'm willing to talk about publicly, because there's no way to fake it. We're not against funding people from outside the US, and we fund a lot of them. But 564 startups is enough to see patterns, and the empirical evidence about very strong accents is striking. And I am talking about failure to communicate here. I don't mean strong accents in the sense that it's clear that someone comes from another country. I'm talking about accents so strong that you have to interrupt the conversation to ask what they just said." and "I talked about this on another thread, but by strong accent I mean so strong that people have a hard time understanding you. It's not a problem if founders have accents as strong as, say, the Collison brothers'." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6278293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6278293

subsystem 13y ago
That only addresses the first part of the answer which I assume isn't the controversial one.