45 ms·

Founders' Accents

• bra-ket 13y ago
  just make something people would pay for, accent be damned, on internet nobody knows you're a dog
  • bdcravens 13y ago
    Most bootstrappers spend a lot of time in customer development. If you build something without spending time talking to customers, your likelihood of success goes way down. You can only go so far in email-only discussions. Eventually you'll need to talk to potential users. VC-based companies: obvious need for verbal communication.
• EGreg 13y ago
  http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/gt/leaveme.htm http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/gt/leaveme.htm
• beachstartup 13y ago
  at university i had an EE professor with such a strong russian accent i dropped the class. couldn't understand a damn thing he was saying. my parents are foreigners - it's not that i'm not used to it. sorry folks, but it's true.
  • guard-of-terra 13y ago
    There is nothing to be sorry about, you should expect public speaker to be able to convey their message or at least compensate it with sheer brilliance. Even speaking from your heart should not save you: http://glavtube.ru/video/844D72986KRX/%D0%92%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B9-%D0%9C%D1%83%D1%82%D0%BA%D0%BE-let-me-speak-from-my-heart http://glavtube.ru/video/844D72986KRX/%D0%92%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%... (sorry for the lame video hosting because YouTube decided to region-restrict this speach just, you know, because)
  • bitwize 13y ago
    Same here. Circuits class, Chinese prof with accent. Also he sort of muttered, making a bad problem even worse. If you are in a position of giving information or instructions to others then you are responsible for clarity of communication. An obtrusive accent can hinder that. What PG talks about is also why Linus acquired a North American accent since moving to the United States. His accent used to be strongly Finnish (Swedish?) but now he speaks American English like a native.
  • freehunter 13y ago
    I had a C professor with a thick Russian accent. Apparently he had been talked to by the dean after several student complained in semesters prior to my taking the class, and after each class he sent out written notes of the important aspects of his lecture. He was a great teacher with a wonderful grasp of the English language when he wrote it down, but his accent was atrocious when he got excited during the lecture. I'm glad he was able to work around that, I learned a lot from him.
• unimpressive 13y ago
  Pronunciation is absolutely a part of spoken language. You could probably make a decent argument that somebody who can't pronounce the spoken word in such a way that other people understand them doesn't completely know the language.
  • cafard 13y ago
    The range of accents between native speakers of English even in the US is large now. Sixty and seventy years ago before radio and TV had had time to do their work, the range was even larger.
    • unimpressive 13y ago
      >The range of accents between native speakers of English even in the US is large now. Sure, if I plot all the accents in the United States on a graph there's probably a lot of divergence. I would think that the accents that impede understanding are outliers though. (At least among native speakers.)
      • btilly 13y ago
        I can say, from experience, that native Texans and Australians can have difficulties understanding each other. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fChqXqvvmg8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fChqXqvvmg8 for an example that I enjoy of a song, in English by native English speakers, than many English speaking people have trouble understanding. After you've seen the words written down, native English speakers usually can then understand. But if English is a second or third language, then good luck!
        • unimpressive 13y ago
          >I can say, from experience, that native Texans and Australians can have difficulties understanding each other. (On a pedantic note, I did specifically say US accents.) I have to wonder if this is purely caused by pronunciation or other aspects of dialect. After all, the stereotypical Australian 'accent' (Ex. "Shrimp on the barbie") is usually accompanied by more than just a change in pronunciation. Obviously the international case is different than the local one. It's probably more accurate to say that somebody who has trouble getting people who speak a dialect of English to understand them doesn't know the dialect. >See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fChqXqvvmg8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fChqXqvvmg8 for an example that I enjoy of a song, in English by native English speakers, than many English speaking people have trouble understanding. Music is something of a special case. If it weren't, there wouldn't be so many lyrics sites out there to help people who have trouble understanding.
• loceng 13y ago
  Why not just narrow it down to communication barriers? It has really nothing specifically to do with accents. Two people with the same heavy accents may perfectly understand the other - or maybe not at all. That still comes down to issue with communication. How about making the statement that 3 year olds are terrible CEOs - they're terrible at conveying a story, and I'm not even sure they're speaking English when they make sounds!
  • loceng 13y ago
    Really? My humour is getting downvoted? Hilarious. Seriously, lighten up..
    • _greim_ 13y ago
      The humor signal in this case was indistinguishable from the noise of normal NH contrarianism :)
  • guard-of-terra 13y ago
    - How much watch? - Six watch. - What, so much? - For whom how. ... - MGIMO finish? - Asks!
  • zw123456 13y ago
    I agree, I was about to post this same sentiment. There are people who speak perfectly good English but they are simply bad at communicating, the net effect is the same, they are unable to lead because people cannot understand their ideas.
  • jt2190 13y ago
    Spoken language is an strong indicator of education and class. I'm guessing that native english speakers with poor communication were hardly ever accepted to YC, while non-native english speakers with good educations were. That would explain pg's data, at any rate.
    • loceng 13y ago
      "Communication skills is an strong indicator of education and class." is probably what you meant to say - though I'd disagree, and say it's more experienced based. You last sentence suggests that the non-native English speakers were accepted only because they had good educations, though again I'd imagine that someone could have a strong accent - and still be highly educated.
• Fuzzwah 13y ago
  It is difficult to have empirical evidence for a subjective thing like the understandability of someone's accent.
  • dllthomas 13y ago
    No, it really isn't. Just record something they say, and have a randomly selected group try to transcribe it. Count errors and measure speed.
  • asolove 13y ago
    What? Listening comprehension is absolutely measurable. Take the same passage, have subjects in different groups listen to it as read by various speakers, and test them on how much of the content (and its implications) they understood. Of course there is an extreme where the passage isn't understandable at all. But what we're talking about is the point where the words are comprehensible, but the mental effort to decode them is quite high. That effort pushes out the higher-level thoughts that would otherwise be going along with the surface-level listening. So listeners will know what was said, but have thought and abstracted less about it. This kind of thing is commonly done in linguistics research when trying to, for example, differentiate dialects.
    • Fuzzwah 13y ago
      Yes, but in PG's example it is his list and his comprehension we're talking about.
    • tarre 13y ago
      You should not forget, that the result depends heavily also on the listener. Probably the hardest to understand English I have ever heard has been spoken by two native Englishmen who I met last year at a hostel in Spain. Similarly in my opinion the most clear English is spoken in Germany and the Nordic countries. It's just a matter of what you are used to.
• jusben1369 13y ago
  Oddly enough this is a re-hash of the same types of arguments used for why engineers could never be CEO's and run startups. They didn't speak the language of business, weren't good communicators. "Go hire a 6'3" white sales guy CEO if you are really serious about this startup and raising money from VC's" Is this the proper definition of irony?
  • einhverfr 13y ago
    I picked up on the language of business in order to get my business going. It isn't rocket science. What you want is someone who can connect with people. Culture is a part of that but business tends to be sufficiently at arms length that cultural barriers are not fatal. What is necessary is being understood, having a common mutually intelligible language and enough connection that things can get done. If your engineer is living in a world of machines or bits, or software, that individual cannot be an effective CEO in that mindset but language is much harder. I am learning Bahasa Indonesia. Last time I tried to tell someone "I only speak a little Bahasa Indonesia" it ended up coming out more along the lines of "I speak a little Bahasa Indonesia" which I must have said really well because I couldn't follow a thing after that......
  • seiji 13y ago
    bzzt You fail the analogy-off. He's not talking about stares-at-feet aspies who can't say hello to save their lives. He's talking about neurotypicals who don't see their own lingual deficiencies and how it impacts how they are viewed, understood, and accepted by others. There's nothing more draining than being a listener trying to constantly adjust to understanding somebody who isn't quite able to communicate what they want to say.
    • jusben1369 13y ago
      You're missing the point. Many capable engineers, who could have led, were dismissed simply because they were engineers.
  • boomzilla 13y ago
    No it's not. A typical engineer is not a good CEO. Like Knuth said, "a good scientist/engineer is one who get to the bottom of things". A CEO is someone who gets on top of things. That is not to say there doesn't exist someone who can do both, probably better in one than the other. Bill Gates / Larry Page / Larry Ellison, etc. are (or used to be) good engineers, but they are also good businessmen and able to to communicate the language of business. A CEO not only communicates with his engineers / manager / executive team, but also with external customers. There are also different classes of customers: enterprise, consumers; each would need a different sales pitch. A CEO who is not able to connect with people is not going to be a good CEO. And by connecting, you probably need to make references to sports, music, fashion trends or whatever that is the demographics you are selling to are interested in. A CEO who is "foreign" to US culture / language will have a hard time running a company in US. Now if you are as charismatic/iconic as Arnold Schawazenegger then you might get by. But even Arnold worked hard on his English and he is clearly picking up some American accent :) Disclaimer: I am a recent immigrant and have a strong accent.
• jasonkester 13y ago
  Never explain yourself to people who misunderstand you on the internet. They'll just use it as an excuse to misunderstand you again, which is worse because not only are you a terrible monster who said those terrible things, but now you've had the unmitigated gall to defend those terrible things. It's a universal truth of saying things in public. No matter how clearly you say things, somebody will take it the wrong way. The only approach that doesn't make things worse is to simply ignore those people.
  • agilord 13y ago
    What if - on a rare occasion - you did say something that was misunderstood by a lot of people who trust your judgement? Would you be ignorant at that time too?
    • jasonkester 13y ago
      Yes. For an example of why, observe the situation we're discussing. If you read the original piece, it's perfectly clear what was meant, and there's absolutely no room for anybody to misunderstand it. Still lots of people did. And they were quickly corrected in the previous thread. And if you read this very thread, you'll see people responding to his even more carefully written clarification who still hold their initial misunderstanding and are writing angry replies as though their mistaken reading of the piece was what the author had actually said. Seriously. There's no fixing those people. The only winning move is not to play.
      • mbesto 13y ago
        Seriously. There's no fixing those people. The only winning move is not to play. Agreed. Going on record to defend yourself without provocation (he doesn't specifically refer to someone asking him for an official response) generally means there is something deeper at hand here. PG did respond originally to provocation and should have kept it to that.[0] This is akin to when someone goes out of there way to explain why things "aren't their fault". If it wasn't your fault, you state the case and be done with it. People at fault generally go beyond their means to make sure people think they aren't at fault. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6279276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6279276
• _greim_ 13y ago
  The crazy thing is I used to have a boss who was native to India until late childhood, and (so the story went) had taught himself English, largely by watching American TV. The guy now has zero accent. So I was somewhat skeptical. But maybe some people as part of their personality just pick up on pronunciation faster than others?
  • asciimo 13y ago
    And some people don't even try. I'm fascinated when I listen to someone who speaks English with excellent syntax and vocabulary, but with consistently poor pronunciation. Sometimes it comes off as a mark of pride, like "I'll deign to speak to you, but I'm not going to put forth the effort to sound like you."
    • marcosdumay 13y ago
      You can learn syntax and vocabulary quite easily by reading and writting in a language. Pronunciation is much harder to learn, often requiring relocating yourself.
    • DrJokepu 13y ago
      This happens because English as Second Language teachers are often non-native speakers and speak with an accent themselves. They are able to teach grammar or vocabulary but they cannot teach pronunciation. Often non-native speakers are only exposed to a native speaking environment as grown-ups. By that time your brain is already stuck in its ways and it is frustratingly tough to learn new vowels and consonants. As a non-native speaker myself I can often hear myself pronouncing English poorly yet I find it excruciatingly difficult to pronounce some vowels the way I intend to pronounce them, even though I have been living in a native-speaking environment for a long time. Similarly, my native English-speaking (American) wife finds it very difficult to pronounce some vowels and consonants of my own native language. It took her fairly long to learn how to pronounce my name correctly. (Ironically, now that we're married it is her name as well.) All I am saying is that I would not attribute this to pride or laziness. Pronunciation is a genuinely difficult thing to learn as an adult.
• protothomas 13y ago
  I think the reason people got slightly sniffy about it was the use of the word 'foreign' in a negative context, which, whether or not it is intended, will be interpreted by some as xenophobic. Had it been stated as '...having unintelligible accents...' it would probably have passed without note.
• FD3SA 13y ago
  This is one of the few cases where this is worth repeating: correlation is not causation. PG is definitely one of the foremost researchers in the realm of entrepreneurial success factors, but it is important to step back for a moment when analyzing such things as verbal accents and "Zuckerberg likeness" correlating with failure and success, respectively. Just as Noam Chomsky criticized Peter Norvig because of his focus on statistical methods versus fundamental models, I would suggest that inferring success based on statistical observation without an underlying model can become a confusing and unrewarding process. Statistics is a tool to test fundamental models, not a model to explain phenomena all in itself. As such, I would guess that founder success is more likely based upon mundane traits such as intrinsic motivation, intellect, experience, access to capital and key personnel, and most importantly, luck. We see this time and time again in superstars such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, John Carmack, Bill Gates, etc. Extremely smart people are more prone to analyzing every tiny variable, which sometimes causes them to give additional weight to trivial factors in a complex equation.
  • jonkelly 13y ago
    PG offered a clear underlying model in this essay. His model is that a) founders need to sell well to succeed and that b) it's hard to sell well if you can't be easily understood. You have a "guess" that mundane traits are more important for success. He has a theory and data that support his theory.
    • vasilipupkin 13y ago
      That's fine just as long as what he did wasn't the following: see some small number of founders with a fairly strong accent, say < 30 or < 50 or < 60, then observe that those startups happened to do poorly and then extrapolate a theory from those observations to explain what is happening. I am not necessarily disagreeing with his thesis, but in statistical data analysis you have to be very careful about drawing conclusions from small samples when the underlying distribution is non-normal, with fat tails
      • tlb 13y ago
• noonespecial 13y ago
  There are "things you can't say".[1] You can be right, and your message can be harmless but the way you communicate it comes so close to a cultural taboo button that it requires too much extra effort not to be misunderstood. You just probably shouldn't go there. It will cause misunderstanding. Its kind of like having a thick "cultural accent". For example, I used to, but do not now, ever use the word "niggle". Its just too much work. [1]http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html
  • rdl 13y ago
    Niggardly is even worse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%2...
    • dsimms 13y ago
      A friend of mine got hung up by a vendor because the friend said they were being ``asinine''. (No, it wasn't because they offended at being called stupid, but rather they thought it was a naughty, posterior related word...) Good times.
    • lifeformed 13y ago
      And the even more dangerous noun form of those words, "Niggler" and "Niggard".
  • spuz 13y ago
    Niggle is a pretty common word. I can't believe it could ever be misinterpreted as 'nigger'.
  • libria 13y ago
    One of the things that hastened Larry Summers departure from Harvard is the general public's sudden inability to comprehend the difference between average and standard deviation in reference to male/female intelligence. http://media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/?p=145 http://media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/?p=145
• tokenizer 13y ago
  I don't see how this is a discussion. His point is completely valid, and holds true for many things. If you were to become a public speaker/motivational speaker in Canada, then not being able to be understood in either English or French would affect your career. It seems to me like everybody is caught up in the semantics of whether pointing this out is politically correct or not. I personally think it doesn't matter, and if you're truly committed on creating a startup in the US, you'll have to just persevere regardless of the opinions, as this is just a remark on data.
• tpatke 13y ago
  So the message is, 'It helps if people can understand you'. Um. Ok. ...and I appreciate that PG wanted to make this clear as the press loves to make a story where there isn't one. But do we really need to vote this up like crazy to guarentee it is the top story for the next 48 hours? Are there really that many people here who will benefit from this lesson?
  • mathattack 13y ago
    The reason for voting this up isn't so people know that it's good to communicate well. The reason for voting this up is to correct a misperception with what was said. Corrections rarely ever get the publicity that they deserve.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    • phillmv 13y ago
      The right way to have communicated would have been "Oh shit, I didn't mean it that way, sorry guys. I understand how that may have come across poorly." instead of "What me racist unpossible!"
      • PhasmaFelis 13y ago
        Yeah, I agree 100% with his conclusion, but I would've been a bit less defensive about why people might have misunderstood him.
        • sp332 13y ago
          He was explicitly called out as being prejudiced when deciding which companies to fund. I don't think he's being too defensive here. http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/08/27/quoted-y-combinators-paul-graham-on-ceos-with-strong-foreign-accents/ http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/08/27/quoted-y-combinators-p...
          • 13y ago
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• dllthomas 13y ago
  I recall working in a lab with a lot of foreign grad students from different backgrounds (under a professor with a bit of an accent). There were definitely times the accents interacted in interesting ways, where some would understand completely and others would have no clue what was said (even after several repetitions) until someone else said it.
• cllns 13y ago
  I found a typo: >A startup founder is alway selling. (edit: has been fixed)
• bonaldi 13y ago
  I think the problem really arose because he said foreign accent. So if it was someone American with an incredibly thick and hard-to-understand accent that would be fine? It wouldn't, if what he really cares about is comprehension. > I'd thought of just letting this controversy blow over. A common PG tactic, this (see also the "HN mods wilfully ruin submission titles" storm). But probably not a great one to emulate: time and again here we've seen startups badly burnt by the "fuck up in public and don't say or post anything hoping it will blow over" stance. Even if it does blow over, you've damaged your image. People might treat you the same, but they'll long remember that time you ran away and hid when people expected better of you.
  • chilldream 13y ago
    > I think the problem really arose because he said foreign accent. So if it was someone American with an incredibly thick and hard-to-understand accent that would be fine? How many native-born US citizens with regional accents this strong are in a position to start a technology startup? I grew up in the Bible Belt and I find this inconceivable.
  • pessimizer 13y ago
    >American with an incredibly thick and hard-to-understand accent Is there an example of this that can be pointed out? A nearly unintelligible American accent held by someone working in technology who is trying their best to be understood? It's exceedingly easy to find an example in people who are speaking English as a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th language, and isn't a reflection of their worth as a person, but a sign that they may have a problem in the English speaking startup world.
    • bonaldi 13y ago
      A sole person in the country would do as an example, right? And I'll bet with 300 million there's at least one tech-inclined American with English as the first language that has trouble being understood. Likewise, if foreignness isn't really the issue, disabilities will surely also count? Are there disabled people in tech who have a hard time speaking English? Would Stephen Hawking pass as a Founder for PG?
• bambax 13y ago
  Here's a startup idea: help people speak English well. I live in France, my kids don't speak English at all. I send them to the "American School of Paris" on weekends for a so-called "immersion program" where most kids are French. Results are a little disappointing, and the thing is quite expensive. Yet the waiting list to get in is immense, people are willing to fight to get in. I'd pay a very high price for an app or a program that young kids would love / do willingly, that would result in them becoming fluent in English.
  • herge 13y ago
    Get'm a DVD box set of The Simpsons.
    • fs111 13y ago
      This. Start watching everything in English and add English sub-titles, in case people speak too fast.
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
    • jakobe 13y ago
      Watching TV shows in English (with English subtitles) is a great idea, but I'm not so sure about The Simpsons. I speak English fairly well and I still have some trouble understanding the Simpsons (Homer especially). There are other shows that are much easier to understand and better suited for beginners. For example, I would consider Breaking Bad much more suitable for beginners in English (most characters speak very clear), but it might not be an appropriate show for kids.
      • Void_ 13y ago
        Malcolm in the Middle.
      • kohanz 13y ago
        "Might not"?! That brought a smile to my face.
• newsign 13y ago
  i guess there are 2 things here : 1. having accent is ok as far as you can make others understand your point in english ... 2. bad english (i mean really bad) will be turn-off anyway with or without accent .... so it is not accent but its all about english as a language i guess ... I've seen people with english and no bad accent but still having trouble in making other people understand :) and they are either Dumb OR they're P.hd holders (not generalizing though)...
• ErikAugust 13y ago
  People go to Pitch Nights just to work on the quality of their communication. The reason is, if you have ever waded through a large round of pitches - you understand that it only takes a couple hard to understand sentences before you lose interest. This doesn't just apply to foreign accents, it applies to volume, pace, etc.
• rvivek 13y ago
  Added similar thoughts yesterday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6297740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6297740)
• ilamont 13y ago
  Stephen Hawking and Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston (aka "Mumbles") are examples of people who have experienced difficulty making themselves understood (either through medical conditions or strong accents), yet are leaders in their respective domains. In entrepreneurship, one example that springs to mind is Charles Pfizer, who started a successful chemical company a year after arriving in the United States from Germany in the 1840s. I assume he spoke with a heavy accent which may have been difficult for some employees and customers to understand, yet his company flourished. Let's not equate "poor English" with "likely to fail at X". There are other factors, ranging from domain knowledge to soft skills, that come into play as well.
  • lifeformed 13y ago
    True, but I think he's just saying it puts them at a disadvantage. It can indeed be overcome by the factors you state.
  • cruise02 13y ago
    Let's not equate three cherry picked examples with "likely to succeed at X" either.
  • ecopoesis 13y ago
    I don't think Mayor Menino is hard to understand for native Bostonians: he speaks with their accent. If anything, it's probably helped him in what has traditionally very xenophobic city. Hawking was famous in physics circles before he could no speak.
• hollerith 13y ago
  People underestimate the level of skill required to speak a language well enough so that it is not a chore for a native speaker to listen. The chairman of the English Department of my local community college (College of Marin in California) told me that it takes an immigrant an average of 7 years to get good enough at speaking English for native speakers to actually want to listen to them talk.
  • msoad 13y ago
    I am an immigrant and have lots of immigrant friends with various lengths of being at in the U.S. I can confirm that it takes 7 years to speak English well enough so people really want to socialize with you.
• ovoxo 13y ago
  Look, I respect PG as much as the next person so this is not a slight against him since I feel HN far too often comes to his defence as if protecting their newborn. Having said that ... I don't understand how a man of his stature and someone in his position can allow himself to make those statements about accents (or anything that sounds remotely xenophobic). I say that because even his blog post says the following: "A startup founder is always selling. Not just literally to customers, but to current and potential employees, partners, investors, and the press as well ... there is little room for misunderstanding." That statement doesn't just hold for startups but for anyone in business. His initial statements left plenty of room for misunderstanding. Furthermore, I would also find it very difficult to believe that his inclination towards avoiding "excessive" accents does not also subconsciously lead him to have a slight bias against founders with a "slight" accent. That's how biases work - the threshold for when your brain decides to evoke that bias is not black-and-white.
  • makomk 13y ago
    Read the rest of the comments in this discussion on HN and you should quite easily be able to see how he can allow himself to make this kind of statement. There's a huge amount of people willing to portray anyone who interpreted his statement differently from how he said it should be interpreted as malevolent, as part of "the looking-for-reasons-to-be-offended patrol", of only caring because it's in their "business model to generate politically correct controversies".
    • ovoxo 13y ago
      I have read a fair amount of this thread and I still stand by what I said. Furthermore, for obvious reasons, I don't believe HN is an objective place to discuss the merits of PG's statements past & present.
      • makomk 13y ago
        Oh, HN's definitely not even close to objective when discussing the merits of PG's statements, but in a way that's beside the point. So long as HN comments represent the subjective viewpoints of the kinds of people that can affect PG - startup founders and employees, venture capitalists, etc - they're a good demonstration of why PG will have no problems making these kinds of statements. I suspect HN is probably a good representation of their viewpoints, at least on this topic. He's getting some slight blowback from the press, but sadly they have a short attention span.
• danso 13y ago
  Much respect to Paul here. I've been impressed with his willingness to engage the press in rebuttals and elaborations (and in a polite, clear way). I've made it a personal rule not to be quoted in anything controversial just because, even if the reporter is well-meaning, the editor may not be. I suspect Paul is even more aware of this and so his willingness to communicate is a sign of how important he believes his message is.
• 31reasons 13y ago
  If you have thick accent don't get discouraged, all you have to do is speak numbers. No one can ignore numbers if they are really good.
• hnriot 13y ago
  I was hoping for some statistics. Rather than trying to convince people, it would be a far more compelling rebuttal if there was some data to backup the comment. Without data, it's just opinion, and that reflects on the one with the opinion. With data, it's stops being personal, and in the domain of science.
  • cruise02 13y ago
    > But after ranking every Y.C. company by its valuation, Graham discovered a more significant correlation. "You have to go far down the list to find a C.E.O. with a strong foreign accent," Graham told me. "Alarmingly far down—like 100th place."
• dazzla 13y ago
  Everybody has an accent! There is not a single person in the world that has "no accent"! This may seam like nit picking but it is in fact very important. When someone in the US says they think someone speaks English "with an accent" it's actually the fact that they are not speaking English with an American accent. Who's to say that speaking English with an American accent is the correct way? The English language is used in many parts of the world and has diverged immensely. Pronunciation has changed, spelling has changed, words have been added, etc. So bear that in mind when you say someone speaks bad English or wonder why don't they make the effort to speak it "correctly". Also remember communication is 2 way. If you can't understand someone due to their accent most likely they cannot understand you due to your accent.
  • yannyu 13y ago
    "Who's to say that speaking English with an American accent is the correct way?" If you're trying to found a company and get venture funding from Americans, you need to be able to communicate well with Americans. No one is saying there's a correct way to speak anything, but it's obvious Paul Graham is talking about founders going for an American market. "Also remember communication is 2 way. If you can't understand someone due to their accent most likely they cannot understand you due to your accent." That's just straight out wrong, sorry to say. There are plenty of cases of one way unintelligibility in ALL parts of the world, in many languages. English is no exception, just consider the stereotype of American tourists being confounded by Australian or England-English.
    • dazzla 13y ago
      Absolutely. "If you're trying to found a company and get venture funding from Americans, you need to be able to communicate well with Americans. No one is saying there's a correct way to speak anything, but it's obvious Paul Graham is talking about founders going for an American market." However a big part of startup accelerator is about helping the founders gain the skills needed to be successful. No reason communicating well with Americans shouldn't be one of those skills that help is given for. "That's just straight out wrong, sorry to say. There are plenty of cases of one way unintelligibility in ALL parts of the world, in many languages. English is no exception, just consider the stereotype of American tourists being confounded by Australian or England-English." Yes it can be mostly a one way problem but there will always be subtle problems in both directions. I'm a UK native and have been living in the US for many years married to an American wife. We still come across words or phrases that confuse each other.
• EdwardCoffin 13y ago
  I'm reminded of this quotation: "Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood" - Lionel Trilling http://thinkexist.com/quotation/where_misunderstanding_serves_others_as_an/189017.html http://thinkexist.com/quotation/where_misunderstanding_serve... What if this misunderstanding regarding accents is just a standard attempt at stirring up controversy?
• doubledub 13y ago
  It's unfortunate such an explanation is necessary. People with difficulty speaking have a harder time successfully communicating ideas. Not sure how that is misunderstood. Anyone claiming racism or xenophobia is, ironically, only confirming their potential shortcomings.
  • 13hours 13y ago
    Except that there are many root causes for bad communication. Why choose to fixate on a foreign accent as the only or at least largest cause?
    • tsax 13y ago
      There is no 'fixation.' PG noted stuff in his data that was screaming to be retold. That was one thing he found. A correlation between strong foreign accents and lack of success. Blame reality, not him.
• igorsyl 13y ago
  This is a case where the founder has an American accent yet people did not understand what he tried to convey correctly. I think PG should have referred to founders' elocution, diction, communication skills, etc. instead of only their accents. As we've seen here one can have no foreign accent at all and you may still be misunderstood.
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• nobodysfool 13y ago
  I think the NYT reporter Nathaniel Rich hit on something when he commented that PG made an 'evil Soviet henchman' voice. I don't think he was intending to sound evil, but only to imitate a Russian accent. The 'evilness' comes from the NYT reporter's mind. And I think the failure of start-ups with foreigners with bad English language skills is also likely due to their recruitment efforts - you'd tend to hire only people who speak your native language if you can't speak English very well, thus your hiring pool is quite small.
• zavulon 13y ago
  ValleyWag and the whole of Gawker Media are just fucking WORST. They have a long record of doing scummy things just to generate views. I've lost all respect for them when their editor published the Brett Favre dick picks story, which was told to him by Jenn Sterger in a private, friendly, off-the-record conversation, after she specifically asked him not to publish it. Unsurprisingly, that resulted in her career being completely destroyed after that.
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• peterjs 13y ago
  And that's the reason I am packing my stuff and heading to London. At this very moment. I was just about to remove the legs from the table I am writing these lines on (well, I am writing them on a computer, but thats not the point). And surprise, surprise, I am moving from Central Europe. And yes, I can speak with a thick Slovak, Czech, and Hungarian (Andy Grove style) accent. If anyone had a job available for a fresh CS graduate, please let me know (email is in my profile)!
• sriramk 13y ago
  I think some of the folks here are casting aspersions on the folks arguing with PG - there are some reasonable arguments in there. PG's stance (my interpretation) is - (1) Founders need to sell to be effective and (2) Having a strong accent makes it hard to communicate effectively and in turn, sell. I get that (I have an accent myself). People are objecting to the underlying assumption that this causation is something we deem acceptable. Here's a counter example. (1) Founders need to sell (2) Part of selling is to make the audience identify with you, so founders who look/act like their audience do better. This suddenly becomes a slippery slope, even if that's a perfectly logical argument. tldr: (Correlation or causation) != acceptable.
  • lumens 13y ago
    Regarding your counter example: "Part of selling is to make the audience identify with you..." This is distinctly not what you're trying to do. Part of selling is helping your audience understand that you identify with them, and you don't need to look/act like them to do it. Also, I do think this correlation is "acceptable" (though admittedly I'm saying this as a person with minimal discernible american english accent). It's important when competing at a high level to play to your strengths. English not a strength? Go raise money/operate somewhere else, or work on it until it becomes a strength. Language is a tool in your belt just like someones ability to write code. No one expects to be able to play Major League Baseball if they can't hit a 90mph fastball.
  • ekanes 13y ago
    It's an interesting point, what you're saying is that theoretically "be more white" is something that would make logical sense (while being repulsive). A big difference though is you can't change what you look like (which is why racism is so disgusting) -- but you can change how you speak. So his advice is quite practical: Work on your English.
    • sriramk 13y ago
      Agreed - this is pragmatic advice. It definitely works on an individual level. But if this is something acceptable to go work on yourself, from the other side of the table, does it automatically become ok to judge people on? There's a logical inconsistency between saying a) Don't judge people on their accents, listen to the message and b) Fix your accent. To pg's credit I think he frames this purely on efficacy of communication ( it's similar to typing out better phrased emails) but that ignores the other reasons people with accents get judged.
• websirnik 13y ago
  I'm Russian and was running an ed tech company for the last 2 years. Even thought I rate my English skills reasonably high and I've finished one of the top universities in London with the top grade, once we were at the stage when we need to sell our product, I was completely lost. While talking to native people I was kept noticing how bad my accent was and I think because I've been critical to myself, I felt over time even worse about my accent and ability to fluently communicate what I was doing. It's definitely affected our sales numbers and ability to raise capital. Our company was losing credibility in front of the customers eyes, because of inability to keep up with the conversation pace. After hiring native sales and bizdev people our numbers have grown up. I would advice non-native speakers to keep improving there accent and ability to fluently communicate by getting English tutor or personal-dev trainer or by any other means that I would be happy to hear.
  • LiweiZ 13y ago
    I'm a native Mandarin speaker. I think the most important part is to figure out which part of the business is interface-heavy and their priority and allocate the finite resource to the most necessary. As you mentioned, channels with high local customer communication demands. Founders' time is finite. We second language learners all know how difficult it is to improve language skills from the current level. While keeping practice for a long term gain, a thoughtful resource allocation is a good thing to do to face up the short term challenges.
• tsax 13y ago
  Look, it's the online click-generating, culture-destroying media firms' business model to generate politically correct controversies especially on the words of famous or successful people. ValleyWag is the latest monster to grow out of the repulsive Gawker empire. They will do what they have to do. The joke is on everyone else who even cares what is published there.
• tokenadult 13y ago
  Learning foreign languages to high levels of communication proficiency was the first adult learning challenge I took on. I majored in Chinese at university and worked for quite a few years as a Chinese-English interpreter and translator. I'll back up what pg said with a data point from academic research. The online article "How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist," http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html by a Nobel laureate in physics who is a native speaker of Dutch, makes clear what the key learning task is to be a good physicist: "English is a prerequisite. If you haven't mastered it yet, learn it. You must be able to read, write, speak and understand English." On his list of things to learn for physics, that even comes before mathematics. I like to share advice on language learning, because this topic comes up on Hacker News frequently. I hope the FAQ information below helps hackers achieve their dreams. As I learned Mandarin Chinese up to the level that I was able to support my family for several years as a Chinese-English translator and interpreter, I had to tackle several problems for which there is not yet a one-stop-shopping software solution. For ANY pair of languages, even closely cognate pairs of West Germanic languages like English and Dutch, or Wu Chinese dialects like those of Shanghai and Suzhou, the two languages differ in sound system, so that what is a phoneme in one language is not a phoneme in the other language. http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/Wha... But a speaker of one language who is past the age of puberty will simply not perceive many of the phonemic distinctions in sounds in the target language (the language to be learned) without very careful training, as disregard of those distinctions below the level of conscious attention is part of having the sound system of the speaker's native language fully in mind. Attention to target language phonemes has to be developed through pains-taking practice. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10442032 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10442032 It is brutally hard for most people (after the age of puberty, and perhaps especially for males) to learn to attend to sound distinctions that don't exist in the learner's native language. That is especially hard when the sound distinction signifies a grammatical distinction that also doesn't exist in the learner's native language. For example, the distinction between "I speak" and "he speaks" in English involves a consonant cluster at the end of a syllable, and no such consonant clusters exist in the Mandarin sound system at all. Worse than that, no such grammatical distinction as "first person singular" and "third person singular" for inflecting verbs exists in Mandarin, so it is remarkably difficult for Mandarin-speaking learners of English to learn to distinguish "speaks" from "speak" and to say "he speaks Chinese" rather than * "he speak Chinese" (not a grammatical phrase in spoken English). Most software materials for learning foreign languages could be much improved simply by including a complete chart of the sound system of the target language (in the dialect form being taught in the software materials) with explicit description of sounds in the terminology of articulatory phonetics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics with full use of notation from the International Phonetic Alphabet. http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html Good language-learning materials always include a lot of focused drills on sound distinctions (contrasting minimal pairs in the language) in the target language, and no software program for language learning should be without those. It is still an art of software writing to try to automate listening to a learner's pronunciation for appropriate feedback on accuracy of pronunciation. That is not an easy problem. After phonology, another huge task for any language learner is acquiring vocabulary, and this is the task on which most language-learning materials are most focused. But often the focus on vocabulary is not very thoughtful. The classic software approach to helping vocabulary acquisition is essentially to automate flipping flash cards. But flash cards have ALWAYS been overrated for vocabulary acquisition. Words don't match one-to-one between languages, not even between closely cognate languages. The map is not the territory, and every language on earth divides the world of lived experience into a different set of words, with different boundaries between words of similar meaning. The royal road to learning vocabulary in a target language is massive exposure to actual texts (dialogs, stories, songs, personal letters, articles, etc.) written or spoken by native speakers of the language. I'll quote a master language teacher here, the late John DeFrancis. A few years ago, I reread the section "Suggestions for Study" in the front matter of John DeFrancis's book Beginning Chinese Reader, Part I, which I first used to learn Chinese back in 1975. In that section of that book, I found this passage, "Fluency in reading can only be achieved by extensive practice on all the interrelated aspects of the reading process. To accomplish this we must READ, READ, READ" (capitalization as in original). In other words, vocabulary can only be well acquired in context (an argument he develops in detail with regard to Chinese in the writing I have just cited) and the context must be a genuine context produced by native speakers of the language. I have been giving free advice on language learning since the 1990s on my personal website, http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html and the one advice I can give every language learner reading this thread is to take advantage of radio broadcasting in your target language. Spoken-word broadcasting (here I'm especially focusing on radio rather than on TV) gives you an opportunity to listen and to hear words used in context. In the 1970s, I used to have to use an expensive short-wave radio to pick up Chinese-language radio programs in North America. Now we who have Internet access can gain endless listening opportunities from Internet radio stations in dozens of unlikely languages. Listen early and listen often while learning a language. That will help with phonology (as above) and it will help crucially with vocabulary. The third big task of a language learner is learning grammar and syntax, which is often woefully neglected in software language-learning materials. Every language has hundreds of tacit grammar rules, many of which are not known explicitly even to native speakers, but which reveal a language-learner as a foreigner when the rules are broken. The foreign language-learner needs to understand grammar not just to produce speech or writing that is less jarring and foreign to native speakers, but also to better understand what native speakers are speaking or writing. Any widely spoken modern language has thick books reporting the grammatical rules of the language, http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-Reference-Grammar/dp/0520066103/ http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-Reference-... http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar-Grammars/dp/0415150329/ http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar-Grammars... http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English-Language/dp/0582517346/ http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English-Language... http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-Language/dp/0521431468/ http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-Language/dp/... and it is well worth your while to study books like that both about your native language(s) and about any language you are studying.
• ignostic 13y ago
  Don't worry about it, PG, you just had a run-in with the looking-for-reasons-to-be-offended patrol. I actually thought this would happen when I read the post, but I also understood what you mean. It's a fairly benign point if we're honest and give you the benefit of the doubt: communication is important for a startup. Heavy accents are a barrier to effective communication. I speak a foreign language that I learned later in life, so I speak it with an ugly American accent. People sometimes have trouble understanding me when I speak, and even though I know all the words native speakers use, I know I'm missing the subtleties and undercurrents in language. We take these things for granted in our native language, but understanding the associations with common phrases and subtle connotations of words takes many years to learn. Many native speakers miss these subtleties from time to time. I would never (at my current skill level) try to start a company where I'd have to rely on my foreign language skill. I'm fluent in the language, but nowhere close to native skill. I wouldn't trust myself to explain a product - especially a technical product - in a clear and convincing manner. "Offending people is a necessary and healthy act. Every time you say something that's offensive to another person, you just caused a discussion. You just forced them to have to think." Louis C.K.
  • ngoel36 13y ago
    I'm the American-born son of Indian parents, so I don't have any hint of an accent (although I did when I was very young). Three years ago, I tried to start a company in India, and my "American-accent" Hindi was indeed a hindrance to my communication and, by effect, our success.
• eksith 13y ago
  Am I the only one who feels that it's ridiculous PG even had to make this post? I mean the original story was such a bag of hot air and insinuation. It's objectively better for entrepreneurs to communicate as clearly as possible. That's the whole point of the message. Good grief, people there's real bigotry out there that needs defeating. If anyone has spare energy for baseless accusations, we could sure use a few extra hands over on more productive ground.
• CurtMonash 13y ago
  It's not just pitching; it's also listening. Some of the most obstinate, unimpressed-by-reality founders I've known have had thick accents.
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• codegeek 13y ago
  I am not a native english speaker (indian) even though I moved to the US at the age of 16. I am 32 now. I have a fairly "neutralized" accent according to my native speaker friends. How did I get there ? Over 16 years of practice by listening to music, watching movies and most importantly, how my co-workers/colleagues communicate and express themselves. I still do that today when I can. Just a habit. I am not interested in commenting whether PG should have said what he said or not but I do think that if you have a thick accent, you need to work on it and not just assume that people understand what you are saying even if your grammar is great. My advice as a non native speaker. -Talk slow. Lot of foreign languages are spoken fastly and hence when they switch to english, they go at the same pace. Don't do that. Try and space out the words. - Ensure that the each word is spoken clearly and not mixed together. Instead of saying "how'r you", start with "How are you" ? Once you get a hang of it, you can switch to the faster version. - Just working on specific letters can make a lot of difference. For example, the letter 'T'. In Indian languages, people hit that letter really hard. So when they pronounce something like "want", it sounds like "wantttt". The tongue rolling should be minimal here. - Watch english shows, movies, listen to music, radio whatever. Dont just stick to your own language. Socialize with people who don't speak your native language. Observe them and learn. - Most importantly, understand that just being able to speak english with perfect grammar is not enough. You need to do more. Nothing wrong with admitting this fact and working on it. Just my 2 cents.
  • ecopoesis 13y ago
    Going slow is very important. I'm from New England where we apparently speak very quickly, and in the South I'm often asked to slow down because people can't understand me. And this is between native American English speakers.
  • bbgm 13y ago
    I am a native English speaker from India (for all practical purposes I am monolingual). I also have what you would probably term as a "neutral" accent, but it's definitely Indian. The tips above are not unique to non-native speakers, but to anyone who cares about proper public communication. The recommendations might make it easier for non-native speakers, but I feel that PG would put someone like me (who has always spoken English) into a convenient bucket just because I sound different.
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• bthomas 13y ago
  One theory for the "why" - I find it takes a higher cognitive load to understand someone with a strong accent. As a result, I don't digest the message as well and I'm subconsciously biased against complex conversations. I wonder if there is any cognitive psych literature on this? Advice to those with a strong accent: find a way to communicate your message so it takes minimal effort for a receiver to understand. That could be improved English, but there might be easier ways for you to hack this - concise language, use concrete metaphors, keep printed slides in your briefcase, etc.
• lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  I cannot find it now, but I listened to a podcast (possibly four thought) with a discussion on disappearing languages. The professor had been approached by a woman asking how she could help her children, who were losing the native language as it died out. He replied if she really wanted to help her children she should encourage them to learn English and not the native language - they will benefiot more from communicating with nearly 2 bn people than with a few thousand in the locale. (I seem to remember that Papua New Guinea has a language every mile along its northern coast - mainly it seemed to piss off the neighbouring tribes)
• unono 13y ago
  It's funny, the communication difficulty applies to PG as well. PG could be much more prominent if he had a better speaking ability. His speeches are really bad, he reads of the paper and 'ums' all the way through. I've never managed to sit one through. If it wasn't for that he could've gotten the press coverage of a major tech CEO.
• gojomo 13y ago
  If you have a team with many different accents, a CEO who speaks with excellent "transatlantic English" (international/mixed-British-American English) will also likely be easiest for all the other team members to understand. It's about being a more central node in mutual communication/intelligibility networks, rather than a leaf node.
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• GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  Don't we all technically speak with an accent? I'm from Canada, and I have been to areas of the USA where I could not understand almost anything being said by the local population.
• clamprecht 13y ago
  Back around 1997 when I was fighting my Internet ban on First Amendment grounds[1], one honest journalist told me the deal. He told me that journalists are not my PR agent. They have their own agenda, and their own angle. Their goal is to get readers, not to spread the message you want them to spread. tl;dr - Remember, journalists are not your PR agent. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lamprecht http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lamprecht
• arbuge 13y ago
  Such is life. This is a requirement not just for startups, but for success in pretty much any field which isn't solitary by nature. That encompasses most businesses, including climbing the corporate ladder if that's your thing.
• 13hours 13y ago
  There are many reasons for a speaker to not communicate in an understandable way : heavy accent, speech impediment, lack of articulation, inability to articulate thoughts, etc. Why focus on the cultural accent to make your point, rather than stating the root cause : lack of sufficient verbal communication skills? The fact that you seemed to put a heavy foreign accent as the main cause of bad communication does seem a little xenophobic.
• georgemcbay 13y ago
  I still have nightmares about the accent of the TA running the linear algebra class I took in college 20ish years ago. He was a Vietnamese man speaking "perfect" English, but not in a way that could be understood by virtually anyone, and I'm usually pretty good with understanding strong accents. I have nothing against people with accents, I'm friends with and co-worker with quite a few people who have significant accents but are still understandable. However, there are certainly cases where accents are so strong that the person is arguably not really speaking the language even if their grammer is impeccable. And I say that fully understanding that the same applies if I find myself for any reason butchering the French language or Mandarin Chinese verbally.
• ojbyrne 13y ago
  This makes me curious about non-foreign (or english as a first language) accents, I've met at least one person in Boston who was nearly unintelligible. I guess there wouldn't be enough data.
• meangeme 13y ago
  As soon as I read that Inc article I saw this coming.
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• gdilla 13y ago
  You can certainly be incomprehensible in your native language. See Sarah Palin. It wasn't the accent that made her hard to understand.
• subsystem 13y ago
  Maybe I'm alone in this, but for me the controversial bit wasn't about accents and communication, but correlating a strong accents to intelligence. "Or, it could be that anyone with half a brain would realize you're going to be more successful if you speak idiomatic English, so they must just be clueless if they haven't gotten rid of their strong accent." It's very similar to what you would hear about geeks ten years ago.
• johnnuy 13y ago
  Damage control time.
• Lucadg 13y ago
  Having learned English, French, German, Polish, Spanish and Portoguese I am ready to share my secret to the world: read comics. They are the only written form of the colloquial language, the one you'll need mostly. Literally 100% of what you learn in a comic will be useful in your daily life. Read a novel and this drops to probably 50%, read a newspaper and it's even worse. Nobody speaks like a book or a newspaper. We speak like comics. P.S. I learned those while living in those countries, so I was exposed to the spoken language too. Plus, comics worked for me, they won't work for everybody. At the end the real trick is to try several methods and find the one which suits you best.
• credo 13y ago
  For all his discussion about "strong foreign accents" being a big weakness, it is interesting that pg doesn't seem capable of recognizing his own huge weaknesses (and almost all of the 200+ comments - particularly the top-ranked ones - seem to miss that too) 1. At best, pg badly miscommunicated what he was trying to say. He could have just said something like 'founders who cannot communicate well' or 'founders who can't be understood' etc. - but he chose specifically to refer to "strong foreign accents". Arguably, some Americans might find it easier to understand some foreign accents (strong British accents, some Indian accents etc) than some American accents (e.g. some rural southern accents). More to the point, some folks with foreign accents can speak much better English and articulate their ideas (and make themselves understood) much better than many people speaking in a mainstream American accent. However, pg chose to use the "strong foreign accent" criterion instead of the more correct "communicate well" criterion. 2. imo a stubborn refusal to acknowledge mistakes/errors is a big weakness and pg is demonstrating that weakness with passive-aggressive pushbacks like the one on Twitter "Don't say things people want to misunderstand." Sorry, I think pg's statement was either blatantly wrong or badly expressed/communicated, but that doesn't amount to me being a part of the alleged "looking-for-reasons-to-be-offended patrol" that one of the commenters below talks about. pg (and his defenders on hn) will be better served by trying to understand the criticism instead of making up false motives for the critics of his statement. <edit> Ten minutes after I posted the comment, it was at 3 points. Thirty minutes later, it was at ZERO points, one hour later at -1 :) In addition to showing the net-points for each comment, I wish HN also showed the total number of upvotes and downvotes each comment receives.
  • thedufer 13y ago
    > He could have just said something like 'founders who cannot communicate well' He could have, yes. But its certainly possible that such a statement would have been lying. "Communicates well" can be a hard trait to pin down. It is contingent on a lot of factors, and may vary widely between listeners. Meanwhile, "strong foreign accents", while somewhat subjective, is something that him and his colleagues can easily agree upon. Since "strong foreign accent" is so much easier to measure, that's the trend they noticed - and thus the one he mentioned. His actual statement was clear enough that, without removing context, it is completely clear that it was not xenophobia.
• glesica 13y ago
  I wonder if general tests of written and verbal communication skills would show the same correlation. I often notice poor word choices, confusing sentence structure, and pretty obvious typos in many of the blog posts that show up on HN. Some of these people are founders. I wonder if their companies suffer due to these sorts of errors (or perhaps they just proofread business communications better).
  • KirinDave 13y ago
    This implies that every founder is a frontman. That is a false statement and an opinionated interjection by Paul Graham. There are plenty of successful companies that have founders who have pronounced accents.
• CurtMonash 13y ago
  It's not just pitching in English. It's both listening and pitching, in both English and techspeak. http://www.strategicmessaging.com/fluency/2013/08/30/ http://www.strategicmessaging.com/fluency/2013/08/30/
• kyro 13y ago
  Maybe I can offer a viewpoint that'll really drive this message home. I work at a hospital full of the most brilliant foreign doctors, but many of them have accents too, too thick to accurately relay and discuss very complex and critical medical information. That is not in any way a reflection of their intelligence or work ethic in the least. They are smart, and they've proven that with numerous tests and years of training. But when effective communication is hindered, there is damage to confidence, mutual understanding, and progress. Confusion amongst doctors and nurses hurt patient management. Families who don't understand what they're being told feel less confident in the physician caring for their loved one because no clear direction or assessment is articulated. And PG here is saying no different. Communication is just as essential in running a startup as it is in managing a patient. Your investors rely on your communication abilities to accurately assess the state of your company. Cofounders need to understand you for decisions to be made. Employees need to feel confident in their leader and the direction they're moving in. This isn't xenophobic at all. Foreign accents, here in America, probably make up the majority of communication issues. I'm sure PG would've mentioned stammering and stuttering if it were significant in his data, but it likely wasn't. How many people do you know with thick foreign accents and how many with other communication hindrances?
• bigdipper 13y ago
  Is there a study to show A) How many founders of YC's funded companies were native English speakers vs the rest of the population? B) Does the size of the round correlate to whether they are native English speakers or not? My theory to test - the more you look like the people judging you, the likelier you are to succeed. It's statistically possible to show this pretty easily. If there is astringent correlation, get a tall blonde, who can speak well to present to YC next time!
• nraynaud 13y ago
  I'm French and I speak english everyday since 5 years (foreign girlfriends) I just can't pronounce this language correctly, the mouth positions required are simply to far from my native tongue. And in the morning it's even worse. I think there is an elocution max level for each of us that's very hard to pass (I suppose that would involve some kind of specific elocution training), whereas the vocabulary always grow. I've met people living in the same foreign country for 20 years and still have a very strong native accent.
  • dougk7 13y ago
    I'm originally bilingual (French and Lingala). I've been living in an English speaking country for the last 10 years, moved here as a teen. It still takes me a lot of effort to pronounce some sounds. e.g some words borrowed straight from French and words containing 'r' when it follows a consonant as in 'brother', 'prescribe', 'degrade'.
    • nraynaud 13y ago
      Funny, my brother in law is also from RDC.
• nadam 13y ago
  My fellow Hungarian Paul Erdos had so strong accent that his speeches are subtitled on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my0L2icGooU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my0L2icGooU And he was successful in the USA. (Edward Teller was similar they say.) But it is different than it is for most people: 1. They were so good that they could not ignore them. 2. Science is different than business. So for the rest of us it is extremely important to learn English well. I am sometimes almost fustrated that I cannot express myself in a sophisticated way in english.:( And I know that it never will be perfect. A Hungarian writer Sandor Marai only wrote in Hungarian despite speaking fluently in several languages (English, German, French and who knows in what other languages), and living as an emigrant in at least half of his life. (He emigrated from communism at the half of his life) He said he cannot 'write' (as a writer) in other languages (by his extremely high standards).
  • theorique 13y ago
    The key difference is that the majority of math research is communicated in writing (journals, etc). Erdos wrote and co-wrote so many excellent papers that his reputation was off the charts. He was unique. Beacause of this, most working mathematicians would have walked through fire to collaborate with Erdos. (He also made it easy for others by randomly turning up at their houses to work long days on math.) His quirky and accented English was a small barrier compared to his singular reputation in his community. Compare this to two competing and somewhat interchangeable startups, both trying to do "the Youtube for Cats". In this case, you're not selling to a market that already knows you - you need to speak and communicate to build credibility and reputation fast.
• indubitably 13y ago
  Well. This is consistent with pg's policy on ascii-only in Arc.
• dlitwak 13y ago
  Totally agree. I've been at demo days and I just tune out the foreigners who I can't understand. It's hard enough having to listen to 40+ startups in a day, and try to understand what someone is doing, why they are doing it, and how it can make money, throw in a thick accent and you are likely to give your brain a rest and just tune out. I notice that these founders are the ones with no one visiting their demo table, etc.
• karapu2 13y ago
  Having lived abroad for 17 years as an American, I have found a very strong correlation between those who can not understand a thick accent, and those who can not communicate well with non-native English speakers. No idea if this is the case with Paul, but if you have actually spent the time communicating with a wide range of non-native speakers, you are much better at understanding and making yourself understood. I think all you non-native English speakers know exactly what I mean. Communication - a two-way street. That is why Paul's comments strike many as tone deaf!
• photorized 13y ago
  There's another problem. When you have a thick accent, poor grammar, and generally have trouble expressing your thoughts in English, people will perceive you as less smart - no matter how eloquent you sound in your native language.
• pitchups 13y ago
  It is ironic that a statement about the importance of being understood clearly by others , was itself not understood clearly by others, although the conversation was presumably between native speakers with no accents. My point is that foreign accents are just one manifestation of the larger problem of communication that occurs far more frequently than any of us supposes. My favorite quote about this problem is from George Bernard Shaw : "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• torrenegra 13y ago
  As a founder with a very strong Latino accent, I would like to share my success with other entrepreneurs who speak English as a second language: If you want a professionally recorded voice over for your demo video, pitch, or whatever, can get one for FREE from VoiceBunny here: http://blog.voicebunny.com/2013/08/30/no-startup-left-behind-calling-entrepreneurs-with-strong-accents/ http://blog.voicebunny.com/2013/08/30/no-startup-left-behind...
• rule30 13y ago
  Useful guide for Italians: http://urli.st/q2t/2dt http://urli.st/q2t/2dt
• DannoHung 13y ago
  Can I talk about this from the other direction? One of the things that I got drilled on in school was that in the real world, good communication skills are critical. However, after a bit less than a decade in financial services, I have come to the conclusion that the real take away is that understanding poor communication is critical, more critical than any other skill in your entire life (I suppose, unless you are at the absolute top of the hill from which shit rolls down). I think we do children a disservice by asking them to read great works of modern literature. They should probably spend their time reading Chaucer in the original middle english and puzzling out half translated foreign language classics. Basically anything Shakespeare and up is too easy to understand if you really want to hone your abilities.
• tarun_anand 13y ago
  Paul, the point is that you looked at a metric that has "correlation" (your words, emphasis mine) So I am not sure how you inferred "causation" from it? You could have easily looked at metrics like founders who wear hoodies are more likely to succeed. I think that somewhere there is sublime conscious at work that is not aligned correctly. People expected higher standards from you on this front!
• buro9 13y ago
  It's a shame that pg felt he had to write that, and it's also a shame that it was presented the way it was. It could've been shorter, more positive, and to the point: CEOs need to inspire, lead, manage, hire, sell. All of these things have one thing in common: Effective communication. If an accent is so thick that it prevents effective communication, then you have a major issue. That it had to be any longer than that says far more about the people who read it than the one that wrote it.
• junktest 13y ago
  "Traveling With an Accent" - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/travel/traveling-with-an-accent.html?pagewanted=all https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/travel/traveling-with-an-...
• rbourke 13y ago
  100% agree with pg on this (and no I don't always agree with everything)... Most problems in life are as a result of miscommunications and associated false assumptions, whether they be in business, marriages, or friendships. Anything you can do to increase the fidelity of communication quite simply: must be done. Before I read the news about this I was about to write my first ever blog post about the symbiosis between DNA health and pair programming - the link between the two... have a guess?! Quality of communication. You see there is ongoing debate amongst the Agile software development community as to what methodologies are most helpful; test-driven-development, refactoring, code reviews, static code analysis... I maintain that that start-ups have the edge mainly because there is more pairing (pair-programming / pair-design / pair-refactoring / pair-testing) than there currently is in most software shops - and the reason this is so effective is the boost it gives to communication... Now the DNA angle you ask, well in 2009 a team won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for proving that chronic stress inhibits the brain from releasing Telomerase that repairs the Telomeres that protect the end of your chromosomes during cell-division (crossing over). Guess what causes most workplace stress - miscommunication... and in software also the fact that you are often unfortunately forced to work alone. Start-ups force you to work together and that is why you are healthier and live longer and, incidentally, write better software ;-)
• fnord123 13y ago
  I wonder if those with [Tourette Syndrome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI) fit into 'accents'. While one can understand someone with Tourette Syndrome, it's very distracting to the discourse at hand.