The "entrepreneur accent" of Paul Graham Anthology

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Recently, "inc" magazine published an interview with me, which I talked about: YC noticed that some entrepreneurs ' foreign accents were strong and their company's performance was unsatisfactory, both of which were related.

Some people think that this statement does not mean that I am an "exclusive" person, even racial discrimination--in their view, I mean: to speak a foreign accent, which in itself is a problem.

But it's not what I say nor what I believe, and no one in Silicon Valley has the idea. In fact, many of the most successful entrepreneurs have a little accent.

What I want to say is that some entrepreneurs have such strong accents that they don't understand what they are talking about. The problem is not the cultural signals conveyed by accents, but from the point of view of practicality, which is not conducive to communicating with others, thus affecting the entrepreneur's corporate performance.

I've been talking to a reporter from new York Times about this topic:

After sorting out YC's companies in terms of valuations, Graham found a more obvious correlation: "You'll be at the bottom of the list and you'll find that CEOs of those companies have strong accents." How much? Almost hundreds of them. "I asked him to explain more, and he put on a Russian accent (sounded like an evil Soviet dog):" When you start, people think you're from Russia, it doesn't matter if they understand what you're saying. ”

We all agree that the accent is not a problem, is it? The problem is that people don't understand you because of their accent.

We've found a lot of evidence that says: If the founder's accent is strong enough, it's not good for business. Although we haven't fully understood it, I'm personally at least certain: the problem is not just that investors don't understand your presentation day presentation-it's only 2 minutes, 30 seconds, very short, and you just have to remember every word, and we've met many founders who do it.

Talking is a real problem-that's what I've learned in a full-time consulting job. In this job, I'll talk to entrepreneurs about a lot of subtle topics. (Even if you can communicate over the phone, the effect will be compromised.) That's why YC's proposed start-ups are moving to Silicon Valley. My experience is: when communicating with the entrepreneurs who are not good at English, it is difficult to go deep and communication is not ideal. When this happens, I tend to warn them that most of the people they will be dealing with will not spend as much effort as I do to understand what they are talking about.

Founders have to do sales, not only for customers, but also for current and potential employees, partners, investors, and the media. Given the gleam of good entrepreneurial ideas and bad ideas, it's very bad to have a misunderstanding about accents. You need to reach a lot of people as founders, and at first they're either not questioning you or being indifferent-they don't yet realize that your company is going to be a huge development--in their eyes, you're no different than "passerby". These people do not spend their energy to do in-depth understanding of you, you do not expect miracles will happen.

I thought about it, but let's just stop talking about accents, but it suddenly occurred to me why I was saying that in the interview because I wanted to help the entrepreneur. That's what I said in the interview, but it was cut off. Here, I would like to convey an important message to the founders and to the "dangerous people" who misinterpret what I have said: This will mislead the founders, and it is totally out of line with my intentions.

Many years ago I attended a start-up project in Central Europe, when I had a conversation with a woman. She asked me what their company had to do to help others apply for YC's incubation opportunities, I thought: she wanted me to share how to teach about startups, but as I wrote elsewhere, the best way to learn about startups is to start a business ﹝ see how this series can get a startup Idea﹞. My advice at the time was: to her, the most important thing was to speak good English. All along, I am not very concerned about the false accusations of some people, after all, those from the country from afar to Silicon Valley founder is to know my mind: there is no problem with the accent, others listen to understand on the line.