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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

#71

Post by jamiequint »

beambot wrote: post #49
soneca wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens all over the world?? In my university (USP at São Paulo, Brazil) there were several foreign - normally Russian - physics and calculus teachers with terrible accents - some were still learning portuguese.

In my undergrad EE, we had an elderly german prof who pronounced "quiescent" as "christian." Awesome professor, but half the class didn't take the initiative to understand (1) the meaning of the word or (2) it's true pronunciation. Could you imagine communicating with these people in industry?! It would've been maddening.

My Electronic Circuits professor pronounced 'threshold' as 's-ratio'. I didn't actually discover until after the semester in another class that there was something called a 'voltage threshold'.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#72

Post by jmtame »

pg wrote: post #35
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…

I talked about this on another thread, but by strong accent I mean so strong that people have a hard time understanding you. It's not a problem if founders have accents as strong as, say, the Collison brothers'.

It's not that bad that Patrick has the accent, but he talks really fast. I struggled to listen to his talk at Hacker School. I have talked to him solo in person and understood him fairly well; maybe it was just the auditorium.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#73

Post by noblethrasher »

arbuge wrote: post #52
unono wrote: post #26

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…

>> Does anyone know what has been PG's ROI on his investments is, for all we know it could be below industry standard. Hell no. Just do the math: http://ycombinator.com/nums.html The total value of YC companies is more like $12B today. That makes their average 6% stake worth around $700m or so. Around 600 companies total, at around $20k each - a total investment of just $12m or so by my calculations. $12m to $700m in…

I thought their 6% stake typically got diluted to much less.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#74

Post by twog »

graeme wrote: post #67

Something interesting: a lot of people thought Airbnb was terrible, including YC and Fred Wilson. I was 23 when Airbnb was founded. I had had many happy experiences with Couchsurfing. For me, and many Couchsurfers, the idea of an upscale, paid couchsurfing was trivially obvious. None of us built it, but I assumed someone would. I'm not sure what the lesson is.

The lesson learned is to build things you love but others don't yet understand. Thats the key to emerging markets

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#75

Post by 1123581321 »

hnriot wrote: post #51
pg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Having now gone publicly on record with this, I wonder what kind of lawsuits this might lead to down the road. I could imagine that any company pg sits on the board of would now have their lawyers scratching their heads how they are going to minimize their risk.

I can help you with both. This will lead to no lawsuits. The legal counsel at any company of which PG is a director will not have to worry. In the remote chance someone believes this is an issue, PG would only need to abstain from a matter involving a person with a foreign accent. Again, this will never have to happen, but it is an easily solved matter.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#76

Post by mbyrne »

auggierose wrote: post #29

What I am wondering about is: would Einstein be a good start-up founder?

History says no. He was never able to build a great business with the fashionable blouses he designed. He never was able to scale his refrigerator company beyond the customer discovery phase and sold the patent to Electrolux... Google these if you think I am joking.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#77

Post by graeme »

twog wrote: post #74
graeme wrote: post #67

Something interesting: a lot of people thought Airbnb was terrible, including YC and Fred Wilson. I was 23 when Airbnb was founded. I had had many happy experiences with Couchsurfing. For me, and many Couchsurfers, the idea of an upscale, paid couchsurfing was trivially obvious. None of us built it, but I assumed someone would. I'm not sure what the lesson is.

The lesson learned is to build things you love but others don't yet understand. Thats the key to emerging markets

I guess what I found interesting is that this was something MILLIONS loved and yet it was a very specific demographic so the wider world missed the potential.

Heck, most people, if you pitch them on Airbnb today, will say: "That would never work". Half the people I know outside the tech niche haven't heard of it.

So something can be quite large, well proven, yet seem like a lousy idea if you have a set of blinders on.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#78

Post by glibgil »

NhanH wrote: post #70
glibgil wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick an accent in English that sounds very extreme to you. Learn to speak that accent. For example, if you live in California learn to speak the difficult words as if you are from Texas or Georgia. Don't aspire to say "there" but go for "thar" instead. Example "can you hand me that book over thar?" Your goal should be to make people think, "this guy speaks good English. When he moved here he probably refined his Engl…

Thanks for the answer, it's an interesting method! The main problem (I think) would be that self-study material tends to be heavily skewed toward either West Coast or East Coast accent, and I don't think I have seen anything on Southern accent. I actually have been thinking about something similar for a while too. In my case, I thought that British accent would be easier for me to mimic. I haven't actually tried that…

Yes, you should mimic a British accent. Your first impression should be correct choice for you. There are different types of accents and some would be considered too strong to be understood, but you probably won't gravitate to those. I recommend you watch all episodes of Peep Show on Hulu. The characters are English with a few Scots. The shots are mostly close ups so you can really study the mouth movements. The characters are very affected and therefore easy to mimic. You should be able to say "right" just like Jeremy or "turkey fucker" like Johnson from the first go.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#79

Post by msellout »

NhanH wrote: post #70
glibgil wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick an accent in English that sounds very extreme to you. Learn to speak that accent. For example, if you live in California learn to speak the difficult words as if you are from Texas or Georgia. Don't aspire to say "there" but go for "thar" instead. Example "can you hand me that book over thar?" Your goal should be to make people think, "this guy speaks good English. When he moved here he probably refined his Engl…

Thanks for the answer, it's an interesting method! The main problem (I think) would be that self-study material tends to be heavily skewed toward either West Coast or East Coast accent, and I don't think I have seen anything on Southern accent. I actually have been thinking about something similar for a while too. In my case, I thought that British accent would be easier for me to mimic. I haven't actually tried that…

Yes, there are plenty of American comedy skits about unintelligible British.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#80

Post by philwelch »

NhanH wrote: post #70
glibgil wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick an accent in English that sounds very extreme to you. Learn to speak that accent. For example, if you live in California learn to speak the difficult words as if you are from Texas or Georgia. Don't aspire to say "there" but go for "thar" instead. Example "can you hand me that book over thar?" Your goal should be to make people think, "this guy speaks good English. When he moved here he probably refined his Engl…

Thanks for the answer, it's an interesting method! The main problem (I think) would be that self-study material tends to be heavily skewed toward either West Coast or East Coast accent, and I don't think I have seen anything on Southern accent. I actually have been thinking about something similar for a while too. In my case, I thought that British accent would be easier for me to mimic. I haven't actually tried that…

Britain has many incomprehensible accents, but as long as you stay in the realm of comprehensible ones you'll be fine.
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