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The recent frenzy of accent related Hacker News posts seems to reinforce the opinion I saw in a thread discussing the pg controversy: "Dear Paul, It's not wha

The recent frenzy of accent related Hacker News posts seems to reinforce the opinion I saw in a thread discussing the pg controversy: "Dear Paul, It's not what you are, it's what you did. At least, I hope. I suspect this is all coming out of a desire to emphasize that communication is important when you're starting a company. It's never just about solving technical problems. Well, sure, that's true. But as Nitasha has covered rather thoroughly, your "empirical evidence" isn't some blind sample - it's a walking demonstration of confirmation bias. The larger problem is something you've explained yourself, in your essay on "Investor Herd Dynamics". Another name for this essay might have been, "Venture Capital is a Cargo Cult". In that essay, you lay out several reasons why an investment becomes more attractive when other people are already investing in it. And here's the crux of your argument: 'But frankly the most important reason investors like you more when you've started to raise money is that they're bad at judging startups. Judging startups is hard even for the best investors. The mediocre ones might as well be flipping coins. So when mediocre investors see that lots of other people want to invest in you, they assume there must be a reason.' Do I need to spell this out? Your bias is a cancer on your industry, because it becomes part of the voodoo nonsense that less astute investors use to pick their horses. Your decisions may seem rational to you — but if you talk about how you don't like to back people with strong accents, it becomes less likely that other people will back them as well. You can be better than this. Look deeper."

jtheory 13y ago
This doesn't address the real problem, though, which is how exactly pg is supposed to filter out what is bias vs. what is an actual problem. It seems pretty obvious that both are true, so drawing the exact line may not be useful. If you're starting a company, your communication skills are possibly equally as important as your technical skills -- there are simply so many difficult tasks that you will need really great communication to accomplish. Not just convincing investors, but also your customers, possible suppliers and/or potential partners, your employees and potential hires... Communication is huge. If your targets here are NOT English-speaking, then your communication in English is not what matters -- you had damn well better be very fluent in the languages those people speak. This also applies to a native English-speaker trying to break into foreign markets. Unfortunately, there are all kinds of nasty psychological tricks that can harm you if you even look foreign (I'm thinking of a study where students were given one of two photos of an instructor but the same audio file, and some of the ones shown a Chinese-looking instructor had trouble with her accent, but the ones shown a blond instructor didn't. Then if you do have a strongly non-local accent... people who grew up in fairly urban areas may have no trouble understanding you, but others may be lost with an accent that's even moderately different from their own. I remember spending a hour on the phone debugging with an IBM DB2 tech based in India, and his accent didn't seem terribly strong to me, but the (upstate-NY born & bred) woman sitting next to me was extremely quiet on the call... I found out afterwards that she'd hardly understood a word he'd said. It's totally legit to talk about the bias (and I tend to agree pg should make some effort not to make the irrational part worse...), but it's also valid to tell founders that working on their accent can make a huge difference in their success.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- kaitai 13y ago
  Yep. As someone who has taught in the midwestern US, sophomores can deal with all sorts of accents, while freshmen have varying levels of difficulty depending on where they grew up and their local prejudices. I profited on teaching evaluations from being white & having a Midwestern accent myself; less cognitive load for certain kids.
sillysaurus2 13y ago
He's operating off of hard data. And the data shows that the top 100 startups don't have thick foreign accents. He gave them the chance to prove themselves, and they demonstrated it's important not to have a thick foreign accent. Isn't that the opposite of biased? Should he ignore the data? Keep it quiet and not give founders the opportunity to improve themselves?
btilly 13y ago
Do you really doubt pg's claim that an accent strong enough to impede comprehension is a barrier to creating a successful startup in Silicon Valley? The importance of this is undoubtably a piece of common sense that some need to hear, but really, it is common sense. As a founder you need to interact with customers, vendors, employees and investors. If those groups have trouble understanding your speech, then how could you not have a problem? Really, this is not a debatable point among sensible people. The only part that is debatable is which accents are strong enough to pose a major problem. Unfortunately most people don't seem to logically process what was said before deciding to argue. They just pattern match. If the pattern looks like something they argue with, then they argue. So people pattern match on his argument, see the word "accent", and argue on the basis of his comment being thinly veiled xenophobia. Which could not be farther from the truth!
- melipone 13y ago
  IMHO, it's not which accents are strong enough. It's the baggage that an accent brings. Yes, people pattern match an accent but not just the words. For example, the content of what a woman with a strong French accent says will be diluted with thoughts of sexiness instead of being taken seriously (except Christine Lagarde :-)). In this sense, the validity of PG's claim is not cut and dry. There are other factors.
  - btilly 13y ago
    In environments outside of tech hubs like the Silicon Valley bubble, I would strongly agree. For instance a friend's wife moved from Georgia to San Diego as a teenager, and quickly found that as long as she kept her accent, everyone assumed she was stupid. In Silicon Valley there are so many people from all over the USA, and from other countries, that this type of bigotry is less important. I can't promise it will entirely not be an issue, but I doubt it would be a big deal.
    - commandar 13y ago
      >For instance a friend's wife moved from Georgia to San Diego as a teenager, and quickly found that as long as she kept her accent, everyone assumed she was stupid. In fairness, speaking as someone from Georgia, you run into a lot of this within the south. I've lived here my entire life, and generally speak with a fairly neutral, midwestern accent, and I'd say that it's extremely common within the roughly 35 and under demographic around here. Not commenting on whether it's fair or not, but because there is such a stigma around southern accent = stupid, many southerners, especially younger ones, make a concerted effort not to pick up the accent. Generally, the younger and better educated a southerner is, the less likely they are to sound like a southerner. That's not because the accent makes someone stupid, but because there is an awareness that it has that perception, so people avoid it. And, I mean, I'll still fall into it in less formal settings or when I'm cranking up the charm, but in a business environment it gets switched off.
crassus 13y ago
"Dear Paul, The warm and fuzzy thought police department (WTFPD) would like to have a little chat with you. You see, we have taken down bigger game than you, and we could easily have you stuffed and mounted on our mantle. Instead of saying what you believe to be true, the WTFPD recommends that you say what we wish were true. Here at the WTFPD, our belief is that wishing hard enough for something will make it true. Sure, some founders might be hurt along the way while your advice is temporarily false during the small period when we are waiting for our wishes to have effect. But it is far better for a foreign founder's company to die than suffer the chance that he might be made uncomfortable by the suggestion that adapting his accent to the norms of the local market might help his startup. You see, the worst crime in the world according to the WTFPD is making people feel uncomfortable. That's why we're warm and fuzzy ;) Do I need to spell this out to you? Shape up Paul. Our sanctimony is powerful enough to destroy any reputation. Struggle too hard and we can make you a "racist". News reports about you will forever read "Paul Graham, the investor who stirred controversy by saying that foreign accents are bad for startups, ate breakfast today". Don't make us do it Paul. The next time you are tempted to open your mouth to speak your mind based on your experience investing in over 500 startups, stop and consider that maybe we know better. You may have built a firm that revolutionized how investing is done, but we feel deeply. So who is really the expert here? The world needs more sensitivity Paul, not the cancer of your nasty hatey hate speech. But we will give you a chance to redeem yourself. Beg for our forgiveness, say what you're supposed to say from now on, and join us in making the world a warmer, fuzzier place. giggle and hugs -The Warm and Fuzzy Thought Police Department
- kyro 13y ago
  WFTPD
  - crassus 13y ago
    We feel that WTFPD is a better acronym. Are you trying to enforce Eurocentric norms of acronym construction on us?
- walshemj 13y ago
  What Paul needed is some one to have taken his shovel away when we was up to his neck in the brown stuff instead of digging himself in even deeper.
npalli 13y ago
Would PG (or his predecessor silicon valley VC) have made the same comment about strong accents 30 years ago? I don’t think so. For one, the diffusion of Americanisms (idioms, accent etc.) were weaker and founders had stronger accents. It would be inconceivable to say this in public. To me this signifies, perhaps, a shift in the valley from investing in technology heavy companies toward more consumer branded companies. What I mean by this is if I look at Andy Grove and Intel (30 years ago), I don’t think his accent prevented him from being successful. However today you need someone who is more US market oriented. Maybe in 10 years Silicon Valley turns into a modern day Madison Avenue, where it is filled predominantly with marketing/adverting type people who have mastered the medium of Internet and smartphones. They spend their time trying to get people to buy ‘stuff’. As for people who are standing behind PG’s statement, just look outside your window. The US has had a number of immigrants who came to this country and did not speak a single word of English. Yes, they did not speak English forget about a strong accent – who built successful businesses. I think that is great. Somehow lack of the right accent didn't prevent them from interacting with customers/vendors etc. Also, most businesses are international and you can’t expect to master the local accent and idioms everywhere. Does Tim Cook have Chinese accent, or German accent? Last I checked the iPhone is selling quite well in China and Germany. The idea that you need the right accent and master the local idioms to do business makes no sense today where your major customers are half a world away. You partner and figure things out. Having the right accent is not the top or even important in that list. PG is a great guy but he slipped big time this one time.
- crassus 13y ago
  Raising capital for a startup in a particular geographic place and selling a product there from a multinational megacorp are very different propositions. When you have the capital to hire an entire local sales division you're in a very different world than when you are trying to raise your first capital investment. But of course you knew that.
  - npalli 13y ago
    Ok. So when Groupon and Uber are expanding abroad with investor capital, is someone checking if their accent fits with the local population? Their entire international expansion has been funded by external investors not their own capital.
foobarbazqux 13y ago
Many institutions require people to pass TOEFL exams, so really how is PG's requirement any different? He's only saying that speaking English at a high level of fluency is a requirement for his investments in an English-speaking program that he runs. Fluency means you understand others and others understand you. How many of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies have thick foreign accents?
- mjn 13y ago
  The TOEFL doesn't have any kind of accent requirement, as would be clear by walking into any American university's science or engineering departments and speaking with the students who have top TOEFL marks. You do have to be comprehensible, but it's a fairly low bar. Nothing's held against a Russian or Chinese or German accent; in some areas they even have a little cachet (especially Russian accents in mathematics).
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    Alright, so maybe PG would have some problems with these students leading YC companies too. But in principle, how is it suddenly discrimination because the bar has been raised to higher than "so thick that people struggle to understand you"? This is a very reasonable bar when it comes to hiring employees all across the country, especially for any kind of leadership or public-facing position.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      > This is a very reasonable bar when it comes to hiring employees all across the country It depends what country you're in. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1515825.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1515825.stm) > A head chef who was sacked for speaking Welsh at work has been awarded more than £10,000 in compensation. > The award for racial discrimination and unfair dismissal comes five years after Gwilym Williams was sacked from a hotel near Caernarfon after refusing to speak English to Welsh-speaking colleagues. His bosses didn't speak Welsh.
      - 13y ago
prostoalex 13y ago
There's obviously enormous opportunity to try on a contrarian investor suit and back startups whose founders have strong foreign accents. Someone will fill that void.

jtheory 13y ago

This doesn't address the real problem, though, which is how exactly pg is supposed to filter out what is bias vs. what is an actual problem. It seems pretty obvious that both are true, so drawing the exact line may not be useful. If you're starting a company, your communication skills are possibly equally as important as your technical skills -- there are simply so many difficult tasks that you will need really great communication to accomplish. Not just convincing investors, but also your customers, possible suppliers and/or potential partners, your employees and potential hires... Communication is huge. If your targets here are NOT English-speaking, then your communication in English is not what matters -- you had damn well better be very fluent in the languages those people speak. This also applies to a native English-speaker trying to break into foreign markets. Unfortunately, there are all kinds of nasty psychological tricks that can harm you if you even look foreign (I'm thinking of a study where students were given one of two photos of an instructor but the same audio file, and some of the ones shown a Chinese-looking instructor had trouble with her accent, but the ones shown a blond instructor didn't. Then if you do have a strongly non-local accent... people who grew up in fairly urban areas may have no trouble understanding you, but others may be lost with an accent that's even moderately different from their own. I remember spending a hour on the phone debugging with an IBM DB2 tech based in India, and his accent didn't seem terribly strong to me, but the (upstate-NY born & bred) woman sitting next to me was extremely quiet on the call... I found out afterwards that she'd hardly understood a word he'd said. It's totally legit to talk about the bias (and I tend to agree pg should make some effort not to make the irrational part worse...), but it's also valid to tell founders that working on their accent can make a huge difference in their success.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
kaitai 13y ago
Yep. As someone who has taught in the midwestern US, sophomores can deal with all sorts of accents, while freshmen have varying levels of difficulty depending on where they grew up and their local prejudices. I profited on teaching evaluations from being white & having a Midwestern accent myself; less cognitive load for certain kids.

sillysaurus2 13y ago

He's operating off of hard data. And the data shows that the top 100 startups don't have thick foreign accents. He gave them the chance to prove themselves, and they demonstrated it's important not to have a thick foreign accent. Isn't that the opposite of biased? Should he ignore the data? Keep it quiet and not give founders the opportunity to improve themselves?

btilly 13y ago

Do you really doubt pg's claim that an accent strong enough to impede comprehension is a barrier to creating a successful startup in Silicon Valley? The importance of this is undoubtably a piece of common sense that some need to hear, but really, it is common sense. As a founder you need to interact with customers, vendors, employees and investors. If those groups have trouble understanding your speech, then how could you not have a problem? Really, this is not a debatable point among sensible people. The only part that is debatable is which accents are strong enough to pose a major problem. Unfortunately most people don't seem to logically process what was said before deciding to argue. They just pattern match. If the pattern looks like something they argue with, then they argue. So people pattern match on his argument, see the word "accent", and argue on the basis of his comment being thinly veiled xenophobia. Which could not be farther from the truth!

melipone 13y ago
IMHO, it's not which accents are strong enough. It's the baggage that an accent brings. Yes, people pattern match an accent but not just the words. For example, the content of what a woman with a strong French accent says will be diluted with thoughts of sexiness instead of being taken seriously (except Christine Lagarde :-)). In this sense, the validity of PG's claim is not cut and dry. There are other factors.
- btilly 13y ago
  In environments outside of tech hubs like the Silicon Valley bubble, I would strongly agree. For instance a friend's wife moved from Georgia to San Diego as a teenager, and quickly found that as long as she kept her accent, everyone assumed she was stupid. In Silicon Valley there are so many people from all over the USA, and from other countries, that this type of bigotry is less important. I can't promise it will entirely not be an issue, but I doubt it would be a big deal.
  - commandar 13y ago
    >For instance a friend's wife moved from Georgia to San Diego as a teenager, and quickly found that as long as she kept her accent, everyone assumed she was stupid. In fairness, speaking as someone from Georgia, you run into a lot of this within the south. I've lived here my entire life, and generally speak with a fairly neutral, midwestern accent, and I'd say that it's extremely common within the roughly 35 and under demographic around here. Not commenting on whether it's fair or not, but because there is such a stigma around southern accent = stupid, many southerners, especially younger ones, make a concerted effort not to pick up the accent. Generally, the younger and better educated a southerner is, the less likely they are to sound like a southerner. That's not because the accent makes someone stupid, but because there is an awareness that it has that perception, so people avoid it. And, I mean, I'll still fall into it in less formal settings or when I'm cranking up the charm, but in a business environment it gets switched off.

crassus 13y ago

"Dear Paul, The warm and fuzzy thought police department (WTFPD) would like to have a little chat with you. You see, we have taken down bigger game than you, and we could easily have you stuffed and mounted on our mantle. Instead of saying what you believe to be true, the WTFPD recommends that you say what we wish were true. Here at the WTFPD, our belief is that wishing hard enough for something will make it true. Sure, some founders might be hurt along the way while your advice is temporarily false during the small period when we are waiting for our wishes to have effect. But it is far better for a foreign founder's company to die than suffer the chance that he might be made uncomfortable by the suggestion that adapting his accent to the norms of the local market might help his startup. You see, the worst crime in the world according to the WTFPD is making people feel uncomfortable. That's why we're warm and fuzzy ;) Do I need to spell this out to you? Shape up Paul. Our sanctimony is powerful enough to destroy any reputation. Struggle too hard and we can make you a "racist". News reports about you will forever read "Paul Graham, the investor who stirred controversy by saying that foreign accents are bad for startups, ate breakfast today". Don't make us do it Paul. The next time you are tempted to open your mouth to speak your mind based on your experience investing in over 500 startups, stop and consider that maybe we know better. You may have built a firm that revolutionized how investing is done, but we feel deeply. So who is really the expert here? The world needs more sensitivity Paul, not the cancer of your nasty hatey hate speech. But we will give you a chance to redeem yourself. Beg for our forgiveness, say what you're supposed to say from now on, and join us in making the world a warmer, fuzzier place. giggle and hugs -The Warm and Fuzzy Thought Police Department

kyro 13y ago
WFTPD
- crassus 13y ago
  We feel that WTFPD is a better acronym. Are you trying to enforce Eurocentric norms of acronym construction on us?
walshemj 13y ago
What Paul needed is some one to have taken his shovel away when we was up to his neck in the brown stuff instead of digging himself in even deeper.

npalli 13y ago

Would PG (or his predecessor silicon valley VC) have made the same comment about strong accents 30 years ago? I don’t think so. For one, the diffusion of Americanisms (idioms, accent etc.) were weaker and founders had stronger accents. It would be inconceivable to say this in public. To me this signifies, perhaps, a shift in the valley from investing in technology heavy companies toward more consumer branded companies. What I mean by this is if I look at Andy Grove and Intel (30 years ago), I don’t think his accent prevented him from being successful. However today you need someone who is more US market oriented. Maybe in 10 years Silicon Valley turns into a modern day Madison Avenue, where it is filled predominantly with marketing/adverting type people who have mastered the medium of Internet and smartphones. They spend their time trying to get people to buy ‘stuff’. As for people who are standing behind PG’s statement, just look outside your window. The US has had a number of immigrants who came to this country and did not speak a single word of English. Yes, they did not speak English forget about a strong accent – who built successful businesses. I think that is great. Somehow lack of the right accent didn't prevent them from interacting with customers/vendors etc. Also, most businesses are international and you can’t expect to master the local accent and idioms everywhere. Does Tim Cook have Chinese accent, or German accent? Last I checked the iPhone is selling quite well in China and Germany. The idea that you need the right accent and master the local idioms to do business makes no sense today where your major customers are half a world away. You partner and figure things out. Having the right accent is not the top or even important in that list. PG is a great guy but he slipped big time this one time.

crassus 13y ago
Raising capital for a startup in a particular geographic place and selling a product there from a multinational megacorp are very different propositions. When you have the capital to hire an entire local sales division you're in a very different world than when you are trying to raise your first capital investment. But of course you knew that.
- npalli 13y ago
  Ok. So when Groupon and Uber are expanding abroad with investor capital, is someone checking if their accent fits with the local population? Their entire international expansion has been funded by external investors not their own capital.

foobarbazqux 13y ago

Many institutions require people to pass TOEFL exams, so really how is PG's requirement any different? He's only saying that speaking English at a high level of fluency is a requirement for his investments in an English-speaking program that he runs. Fluency means you understand others and others understand you. How many of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies have thick foreign accents?

mjn 13y ago
The TOEFL doesn't have any kind of accent requirement, as would be clear by walking into any American university's science or engineering departments and speaking with the students who have top TOEFL marks. You do have to be comprehensible, but it's a fairly low bar. Nothing's held against a Russian or Chinese or German accent; in some areas they even have a little cachet (especially Russian accents in mathematics).
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  Alright, so maybe PG would have some problems with these students leading YC companies too. But in principle, how is it suddenly discrimination because the bar has been raised to higher than "so thick that people struggle to understand you"? This is a very reasonable bar when it comes to hiring employees all across the country, especially for any kind of leadership or public-facing position.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    > This is a very reasonable bar when it comes to hiring employees all across the country It depends what country you're in. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1515825.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/1515825.stm) > A head chef who was sacked for speaking Welsh at work has been awarded more than £10,000 in compensation. > The award for racial discrimination and unfair dismissal comes five years after Gwilym Williams was sacked from a hotel near Caernarfon after refusing to speak English to Welsh-speaking colleagues. His bosses didn't speak Welsh.
    - 13y ago

prostoalex 13y ago

There's obviously enormous opportunity to try on a contrarian investor suit and back startups whose founders have strong foreign accents. Someone will fill that void.