5 ms·

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 Americ

by 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.
  - crassus 13y ago
    I'm sure that when they are striking deals with local politicians, regulators, and partners, they are careful to do so through representatives intelligible to the local populace. The founders of both firms speak American english well and raised bunches of money in America, so language and accents were not a concern for them with regards to fundraising. Indeed, America is the best market in the world for raising speculative venture capital, so being comfortable with American English is a useful skill to have for entrepreneurs.
    - antikirez 13y ago
      I seen plenty of american founders with diction problems, lisp or some other speaking impediment. Those are real communication problems recognized by professionals for decades if not centuries, and happens all over the world. However accents are strictly a cultural and socioeconomical difference: someone coming from a very remote country is of course going to have a considerably different accent, and in countries like england the difference between classes has created some very different accents all over the country. In the old days in england having a posh accent was a good way of working your way up the social ladder because being the best steam-engine engineer mattered little if you sounded like an illiterate irish. Same in the usa where even president Clinton got some bs from east coast journalists for his southern accent. Did I say at any point that bad accents mean you are dumb and unintelligible? no, because that's not true. What it does is make you a target of xenophobia because it makes it very clear that you are "not from around here" When that happens it doesn't matters if you are as eloquent as the best orators in history because if your public already has a demeaning attitude towards you they are not going to care one bit about what you have to say, after all you are just one dumb foreigner! hearing you is a waste of everybody's time! pg could have gone for speech impediments instead which are a problem no matter where or what language you speak, and of course if english is your second language those problems are just going to compound. But pg went for the accents and the accents alone, as if the number of white american dudebro founders out there saying your instead of you're all the time were perfect. Then again maybe when they are speaking pg is actually paying attention to what they say.
defen 13y ago
None of your examples are relevant. Andy Grove did not found Intel, and his accent is not incomprehensible. Likewise Tim Cook did not found Apple in China.
- npalli 13y ago
  Grove not being the founder of Intel is a very pedantic point. He was there since day one of the company and had the biggest influence on Intel’s domination of the industry since it was startup (more than anyone else in the company’s history). Also, you need to have a distinct definition of what a strong accent is. If Grove has a clear accent not sure who we are talking about. Every time someone gives a counterexample of a founder with a strong accent, the pro-PG retort is that he actually doesn't have a strong accent (presumably because he is successful).
  - ihaveajob 13y ago
    To be fair (and as an immigrant I was also appalled by PG's logic), he qualifies his statement by saying that he considers it a problem when the accent makes it difficult to understand the person. I think that's a reasonable bias, but a bias nonetheless.
    - zhemao 13y ago
      It's a bias to not want to back a startup because you can't understand the pitch due to a language barrier? I think it's pretty reasonable to say you should be able to speak the native language of a country intelligibly in order to successfully do business in that country.
  - defen 13y ago
    I don't have any recordings of Grove from the late 60s/early 70s, but in every recent video I've seen his accent is about as strong as Arnold Schwarzenegger's. It's noticeable, but it hardly affects your ability to understand what he's saying.
gojomo 13y ago
I suspect any investor or investor group with enough data points to offer such a judgement would have said something similar 30 years ago (1983), or 50 years ago (1963), or 100 years ago (1913). Long-distance communication and migration is becoming more common: native English speakers (especially in North America) are getting more chances to hear and become familiar with the speech of people who do not have English as their first language. (Without familiarity, it's easy to assume that flawed grammar and pronunciation means either flawed thinking or risky cultural differences.) So I'd surmise that the heavily-accented currently have their best opportunities ever to thrive in North American capital/recruiting/selling markets – and earlier generations of investors would have offered even harsher assessments about the impact of strong accents. One of the points I was making with the My Fair Lady-themed joke in another thread (the SayAfter.me accent training offer) was that this is an eternal issue. Look at her, a prisoner of the gutters; condemned by every syllable she utters… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg That film came out in 1964 (winning Best Picture), based on a 1956 stage musical, based on a 1913 play (Pygmalion). The same ideas about accent and career-success go back further, and easily translate to many other languages and cultures. Of course, an uneducated native (or disadvantaged local group dialect) accent is a different thing than a non-native accent. A non-native accent is more likely to indicate someone with the education and drive to dare operating in a non-native language environment. But, it takes a bit of familiarity to internalize that understanding, and stronger accents still signal a risk of slower and more error-prone communication. When someone honestly points out that the strongest accents have been problematic, based on significant observational experience, they haven't "slipped", they've done the listeners a favor by sharing a perceived truth. Even if for some reason their observation is in error (and here I doubt it), by sharing the lesson they're helping, not hurting, the process of describing and understanding the world.
- 001sky 13y ago
  any investor or investor group with enough data points to offer such a judgement This is a self fulfilling prophesy. Like a 'black swan'. If PG meant to criticise (or point out) that poor communication skills are unproductive, his comment would be banal. He chose this as a cute, cock-tail party line. It was just a poor decision on his part. Its not too dis-similar to another famous SV/C who admitted 'he knows no black people'. OK, great. No we have two prominent people in the Valley who use the rule of thumb: no blacks, no funny-sounding people. Quite embarrassing, really.[0,1] __________________ [0] 'I don't know a single black entrepreneur' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS93R1YnK-U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS93R1YnK-U [1] http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/nationalorigin.cfm http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/nationalorigin.cfm National Origin Discrimination & Work Situations The law forbids discrimination when it comes to any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment. National origin discrimination involves treating people (applicants or employees) unfavorably because they are from a particular country or part of the world, because of ethnicity or accent ___________________ Note that investing is not hiring; there is no employer-employee legal relationship. BUT, <Entreprenuers> need to be careful as they do in fact hire employees. So this is pretty ??? advice to entrepreneurs unless it comes pro-bono legal advice.
kyro 13y ago
Let's stop being intellectually dishonest for a second and look at what PG actually said. He said accents are an issue 1) in the context of startups when 2) it hinders communication. He is looking at it from his point of view of what running a startup and startup culture encompasses, that is: an environment rife with competition built on extreme uncertainty that can be transcended with the appropriate communicative abilities to fool investors, founders, employees to believe in what you're doing. In that context, it would seem that having an accent that hinders others' ability to understand you is a huge disadvantage. I do not know about the beginnings of Intel, but Apple in the startup stage had a founding team whose native tongue was English. Steve Jobs was fluent in English and could deliver these great orations about his stupidly crazy ideas to his friends and investors who also spoke English. You can't say that didn't help him. Having a thick accent that prevented him from communicating clearly would've had a multiplicative effect on the unwillingness of others to even listen to his ideas. PG never just stopped at "people with accents can't succeed or be successful in business." And it's incredibly disingenuous of you and others to continue to label him as anti-accent when he has repeatedly stated the context and details of his position.
- npalli 13y ago
  Ok, so let’s take this iteration of what he is supposed to be saying. “If you have an accent that is so strong that very few people understand you and nobody feels like listening to you then it is bad”. That is very anti-climactic, definitely not a surprising top red flag that he seemed to indicate. His initial position (in inc.com) about mastering the language to an extent that you are well versed in the local idioms etc. was strong. It would have indicated a shift in type of founders/companies YC would look for. It would also require immersion in American culture spanning several years, maybe decades. The version you are attributing to him is just weak. Sorry, but even the weak interpretation of his statement actually raises more questions. For starters, how did YC end up funding them in the first place if they had such a strong accents that hinders understanding? Given YC accepts 1 in 25 (or 50) of applicants in a short time frame (going by a short video) what exactly did YC see in the founders. Or did the founders suddenly develop unacceptable accents in the three months at YC. Also, what did the YC team do when they found out about these guys’ accent problem? Did they ask them to partner with someone else? Did the founders refuse to partner etc. If so, is that an accent problem or a pig-headedness issue?
zhemao 13y ago
Did you read his explanation? He basically said that accents don't hinder founders unless they are so strong that they hinder intelligibility. It's not that VCs won't back founders with accents because they have a subconscious bias towards foreigners, it's that VCs won't back founders with very strong accents because they can't understand them when they are making their pitch.

by npalli 13y ago

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.
- crassus 13y ago
  I'm sure that when they are striking deals with local politicians, regulators, and partners, they are careful to do so through representatives intelligible to the local populace. The founders of both firms speak American english well and raised bunches of money in America, so language and accents were not a concern for them with regards to fundraising. Indeed, America is the best market in the world for raising speculative venture capital, so being comfortable with American English is a useful skill to have for entrepreneurs.
  - antikirez 13y ago
    I seen plenty of american founders with diction problems, lisp or some other speaking impediment. Those are real communication problems recognized by professionals for decades if not centuries, and happens all over the world. However accents are strictly a cultural and socioeconomical difference: someone coming from a very remote country is of course going to have a considerably different accent, and in countries like england the difference between classes has created some very different accents all over the country. In the old days in england having a posh accent was a good way of working your way up the social ladder because being the best steam-engine engineer mattered little if you sounded like an illiterate irish. Same in the usa where even president Clinton got some bs from east coast journalists for his southern accent. Did I say at any point that bad accents mean you are dumb and unintelligible? no, because that's not true. What it does is make you a target of xenophobia because it makes it very clear that you are "not from around here" When that happens it doesn't matters if you are as eloquent as the best orators in history because if your public already has a demeaning attitude towards you they are not going to care one bit about what you have to say, after all you are just one dumb foreigner! hearing you is a waste of everybody's time! pg could have gone for speech impediments instead which are a problem no matter where or what language you speak, and of course if english is your second language those problems are just going to compound. But pg went for the accents and the accents alone, as if the number of white american dudebro founders out there saying your instead of you're all the time were perfect. Then again maybe when they are speaking pg is actually paying attention to what they say.

defen 13y ago

None of your examples are relevant. Andy Grove did not found Intel, and his accent is not incomprehensible. Likewise Tim Cook did not found Apple in China.

npalli 13y ago
Grove not being the founder of Intel is a very pedantic point. He was there since day one of the company and had the biggest influence on Intel’s domination of the industry since it was startup (more than anyone else in the company’s history). Also, you need to have a distinct definition of what a strong accent is. If Grove has a clear accent not sure who we are talking about. Every time someone gives a counterexample of a founder with a strong accent, the pro-PG retort is that he actually doesn't have a strong accent (presumably because he is successful).
- ihaveajob 13y ago
  To be fair (and as an immigrant I was also appalled by PG's logic), he qualifies his statement by saying that he considers it a problem when the accent makes it difficult to understand the person. I think that's a reasonable bias, but a bias nonetheless.
  - zhemao 13y ago
    It's a bias to not want to back a startup because you can't understand the pitch due to a language barrier? I think it's pretty reasonable to say you should be able to speak the native language of a country intelligibly in order to successfully do business in that country.
- defen 13y ago
  I don't have any recordings of Grove from the late 60s/early 70s, but in every recent video I've seen his accent is about as strong as Arnold Schwarzenegger's. It's noticeable, but it hardly affects your ability to understand what he's saying.

gojomo 13y ago

I suspect any investor or investor group with enough data points to offer such a judgement would have said something similar 30 years ago (1983), or 50 years ago (1963), or 100 years ago (1913). Long-distance communication and migration is becoming more common: native English speakers (especially in North America) are getting more chances to hear and become familiar with the speech of people who do not have English as their first language. (Without familiarity, it's easy to assume that flawed grammar and pronunciation means either flawed thinking or risky cultural differences.) So I'd surmise that the heavily-accented currently have their best opportunities ever to thrive in North American capital/recruiting/selling markets – and earlier generations of investors would have offered even harsher assessments about the impact of strong accents. One of the points I was making with the My Fair Lady-themed joke in another thread (the SayAfter.me accent training offer) was that this is an eternal issue. Look at her, a prisoner of the gutters; condemned by every syllable she utters… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg That film came out in 1964 (winning Best Picture), based on a 1956 stage musical, based on a 1913 play (Pygmalion). The same ideas about accent and career-success go back further, and easily translate to many other languages and cultures. Of course, an uneducated native (or disadvantaged local group dialect) accent is a different thing than a non-native accent. A non-native accent is more likely to indicate someone with the education and drive to dare operating in a non-native language environment. But, it takes a bit of familiarity to internalize that understanding, and stronger accents still signal a risk of slower and more error-prone communication. When someone honestly points out that the strongest accents have been problematic, based on significant observational experience, they haven't "slipped", they've done the listeners a favor by sharing a perceived truth. Even if for some reason their observation is in error (and here I doubt it), by sharing the lesson they're helping, not hurting, the process of describing and understanding the world.

001sky 13y ago
any investor or investor group with enough data points to offer such a judgement This is a self fulfilling prophesy. Like a 'black swan'. If PG meant to criticise (or point out) that poor communication skills are unproductive, his comment would be banal. He chose this as a cute, cock-tail party line. It was just a poor decision on his part. Its not too dis-similar to another famous SV/C who admitted 'he knows no black people'. OK, great. No we have two prominent people in the Valley who use the rule of thumb: no blacks, no funny-sounding people. Quite embarrassing, really.[0,1] __________________ [0] 'I don't know a single black entrepreneur' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS93R1YnK-U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS93R1YnK-U [1] http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/nationalorigin.cfm http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/nationalorigin.cfm National Origin Discrimination & Work Situations The law forbids discrimination when it comes to any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment. National origin discrimination involves treating people (applicants or employees) unfavorably because they are from a particular country or part of the world, because of ethnicity or accent ___________________ Note that investing is not hiring; there is no employer-employee legal relationship. BUT, <Entreprenuers> need to be careful as they do in fact hire employees. So this is pretty ??? advice to entrepreneurs unless it comes pro-bono legal advice.

kyro 13y ago

Let's stop being intellectually dishonest for a second and look at what PG actually said. He said accents are an issue 1) in the context of startups when 2) it hinders communication. He is looking at it from his point of view of what running a startup and startup culture encompasses, that is: an environment rife with competition built on extreme uncertainty that can be transcended with the appropriate communicative abilities to fool investors, founders, employees to believe in what you're doing. In that context, it would seem that having an accent that hinders others' ability to understand you is a huge disadvantage. I do not know about the beginnings of Intel, but Apple in the startup stage had a founding team whose native tongue was English. Steve Jobs was fluent in English and could deliver these great orations about his stupidly crazy ideas to his friends and investors who also spoke English. You can't say that didn't help him. Having a thick accent that prevented him from communicating clearly would've had a multiplicative effect on the unwillingness of others to even listen to his ideas. PG never just stopped at "people with accents can't succeed or be successful in business." And it's incredibly disingenuous of you and others to continue to label him as anti-accent when he has repeatedly stated the context and details of his position.

npalli 13y ago
Ok, so let’s take this iteration of what he is supposed to be saying. “If you have an accent that is so strong that very few people understand you and nobody feels like listening to you then it is bad”. That is very anti-climactic, definitely not a surprising top red flag that he seemed to indicate. His initial position (in inc.com) about mastering the language to an extent that you are well versed in the local idioms etc. was strong. It would have indicated a shift in type of founders/companies YC would look for. It would also require immersion in American culture spanning several years, maybe decades. The version you are attributing to him is just weak. Sorry, but even the weak interpretation of his statement actually raises more questions. For starters, how did YC end up funding them in the first place if they had such a strong accents that hinders understanding? Given YC accepts 1 in 25 (or 50) of applicants in a short time frame (going by a short video) what exactly did YC see in the founders. Or did the founders suddenly develop unacceptable accents in the three months at YC. Also, what did the YC team do when they found out about these guys’ accent problem? Did they ask them to partner with someone else? Did the founders refuse to partner etc. If so, is that an accent problem or a pig-headedness issue?

zhemao 13y ago

Did you read his explanation? He basically said that accents don't hinder founders unless they are so strong that they hinder intelligibility. It's not that VCs won't back founders with accents because they have a subconscious bias towards foreigners, it's that VCs won't back founders with very strong accents because they can't understand them when they are making their pitch.