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 stron

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.