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Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

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Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#21

Post by davidw »

infoseckid wrote: post #14
ngoel36 wrote: post #13

"One quality that's a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent...they must just be clueless if they haven't gotten rid of their strong accent." I'm curious to learn more about this. I'm certainly not accusing YC/PG of being racist in the least, but although I don't have an accent, I feel like I know numerously brilliantly smart people with heavy accents, many of whom happen to be Indian-born Stanfo…

Me too! I would have thought there could be so many things in the number 1 spot ... and then this :)

Err... if you read the article, he says "one quality", not "the number one". Also, it's worth considering that this is something that has jumped at them only after a number of batches of YC, not something that they started out with, so it is, in some way, based on actual data. They probably already filter out people based on any number of more important criteria.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#22

Post by andrewflnr »

davidw wrote: post #15
pg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a very interesting question. I've noticed for a while that the people who are best at giving advice to startups tend to be funny. It's not a job where it would be good to be the humorless variety of smart. I think the reason is not that being funny is important per se, but that being funny and having good ideas about startups are so similar that it's impossible to find one without the other.

One component in humor is taking an idea out of context. This is in some ways related to "lateral thinking" where you try and brainstorm by randomly changing marketing bits (price, place, promotion, product) to come up with a new way of seeing things. I think some people with a creative/entrepreneurial mindset automate this process in their heads. So you could see humor as a similar creative process to that of some i…

More generally, I would tend to say that humor is often about finding odd connections. I can easily imagine that being an important ability for giving good advice to businesses.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#23

Post by bfe »

"Nobody knows what they're capable of until they try it. Maybe half a percent of people have the brains and sheer determination to do this kind of thing. Start-ups are hard but doable, in the way that running a five-minute mile is hard but doable."

Worth remembering.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#24

Post by auganov »

sunir wrote: post #18

I'm really disappointed that this was Paul's top of mind criterion for rejection, "One quality that's a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent." That reminds me of an incident earlier in my career when a recruiter ranked candidates on their 'communication skills', which really was a proxy for whether they were an immigrant or not, in order to try to avoid discrimination laws. http://www.freshbook…

Having a strong accent can make it much harder to communicate. I don't know if statistically true, but from my experience most of people with bad accents tend to use the language less effectively too. If you're in tech you probably use English everyday if not all the time. With that amount of immersion it's just kind of hard not to be at least mediocre.

Also there's this immense sense of quality about people that speak a foreign language super well.

I think pg meant strong foreign accent combined with usage that just doesn't feel native. Which I feel is strongly correlated.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#25

Post by brianjesse »

pg wrote: post #2

That's a very Kate Courteau picture incidentally. She's our architect, and is the reason YC looks so distinctive. It's hard to get simple right, but she does.

I love the way she used a super wide shot to pull in so many graphic elements - beautifully done, Kate Courteau.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#26

Post by unono »

Does anyone know what has been PG's ROI on his investments is, for all we know it could be below industry standard.

Also, by PG's own words he only invests in the relentlessly resourceful. What do they need PG and later round VC's for? I always get the feeling with PG that something hidden is at play, he's a really really clever guy. There's a sucker getting played when he's around. (For example, Zuckerburg is not as smart as PG keeps enthusing, there's a lot smarter guys than him, so I think he's got some sell YC companies to Facebook flow going on. Another, Andrew Mason is just a terrible business guy - why is PG linking with him - probably experience at knowing how to keep investors from realizing what's actually happening).

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#27

Post by mathattack »

akbar501 wrote: post #19
mathattack wrote: post #12

"We were the kind of start-up started by nerds who were really good at programing and really, really bad at sales and business. Now I would know exactly what to tell my previous self, which is that I should be spending all my time selling." Is this a case of playing to your personal weakness, or is it playing to your personal blind spot? In either case, how long until you say, "This is important, but I'm not good at…

In my experience, a good salesperson is either a total drag or big boost. The total drag happens when a salesperson is brought on too soon. When the product is not aligned with the market (pre-product/market fit), there is little a good salesperson can do. In this situation, everyone gets frustrated as success does not happen and costs increase. Post-product/market fit, a good salesperson can certainly accelerate gro…

Fair enough - you don't need them too soon. But in this instance, the starting point is the founder deciding (in hindsight) that spending all of their time in Sales would be good.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#30

Post by pg »

sunir wrote: post #18

I'm really disappointed that this was Paul's top of mind criterion for rejection, "One quality that's a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent." That reminds me of an incident earlier in my career when a recruiter ranked candidates on their 'communication skills', which really was a proxy for whether they were an immigrant or not, in order to try to avoid discrimination laws. http://www.freshbook…

It's not our top criterion. It's just one that I'm willing to talk about publicly, because there's no way to fake it.

We're not against funding people from outside the US, and we fund a lot of them. But 564 startups is enough to see patterns, and the empirical evidence about very strong accents is striking.

And I am talking about failure to communicate here. I don't mean strong accents in the sense that it's clear that someone comes from another country. I'm talking about accents so strong that you have to interrupt the conversation to ask what they just said.

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