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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

#131

Post by rhizome »

nashequilibrium wrote: post #92
rhizome wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an aspect of association football that depends on language like a CEO in an English-speaking industry does? My impression is that the majority of success-oriented communication in soccer is nonverbal.

"My impression is that the majority of success-oriented communication in soccer is nonverbal." No, if payers wore mic's you would hear it is very verbal as well, just lip read sometimes or in preseason watch a warmup game since the crowd is small you can hear all the calls, "wazza backdoor" etc, is mainly between one to three words, but you use everything you have. Then half-time, the strategy sessions are all talk.…

I'm still not convinced it's an apt comparison.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#132

Post by iopq »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #82
NhanH wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone here share their experience on how they get rid of their accent? As a non-native speaker, there are some phonemes that are just straight up unrecognisable for me : "h" - "x", "war" - "wall", "word" - "world" to name a few. I recognized the problem about a year ago and has been trying to figure it out since then, albeit without much success.

I work in the foreign language education business, and so am naturally curious when I meet someone who speaks English without accent, but should have an accent. I have met 7 people that speak with no accent, but should have one, e.g. moved to the US from Taiwan at age 21, but is now 31 and speaks with no accent. They all told a similar story. They listened to the same piece of audio content thousands of times. For on…

thin and then have a different phoneme at the start

I have succeeded with the academic approach, I can pronounce English sounds without an accent when I try and with a very slight accent when I don't try (most people can't hear minor mistakes when I speak)

I can tell you the difference between apical and laminal consonants and actually pronounce it. There is not just one way to learn. But I doubt most people can replicate my success without putting in as much time into it as I have. You have to be genuinely interested in linguistics

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#133

Post by crucialfelix »

sunir wrote: post #88
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…

Thanks for replying. I guess I should explain further why it is disappointing to me. Accent is intrinsic to a person's sense of self, akin to their religion or ethnicity ( truly ). Asking people to change their sense of self for you is a lot. Imagine I said I couldn't relate to a business person because they were just too, say, Chinese and so I suggest they take lessons to act more Canadian to fit my liking. Yikes. T…

He's talking only about accents that are so strong that you struggle to understand what they are talking about. For a CEO this totally does not work. A CEO is a communicator.

I find it best when somebody has an accent that is enjoyable to listen to. I love a nice elegant German accent. Love listening to a good Indian English accent. But some people are struggling with the language and accent so much that it gets very distracting.

I worked a bit with a Pakistani guy and as much as I liked hanging out with him and talking, it was always a struggle for him when he had to stand up and present. It really blocked him. (actually I am guessing that he's also hard to understand in Urdu)

OTOH I know some Germans who have such a good American accent that its disconcerting. This is an uncanny valley effect. You spend a lot of time just listening to them and trying to spot any small errors. ("Yeah, we've been doing this since 4 years...")

If you took the time to learn English and you took the time to learn all the complexities of building a business (technical, legal, financial) and probably also learned how to pitch, use your hands, communicate, then you should take the time to fix an overly strong accent. Its not that hard.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#134

Post by antimagic »

philwelch wrote: post #118
sunir wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, let me pull the quote and be more direct about my reaction. "One quality that's a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent. I'm not sure why. It could be that there are a bunch of subtle things entrepreneurs have to communicate and can't if you have a strong accent. Or, it could be that anyone with half a brain would realize you're going to be more successful if you speak idiomatic English, so…

If I ever had to live and work in a foreign country, I'd be proud to speak their language so fluently they couldn't quite detect an accent. It would be a little different moving to another English-speaking country, but lots of people end up picking up a slightly different accent after living someplace for a long time. It doesn't have to be a matter of identity unless you choose to make it one.

As an Australian that has tried both, it was a lot easier to sound English than it is for me to sound French. I can almost pull off a decent English accent these days - enough so that I'm not identified as Australian in a short conversation. In French, after 10 years of living in the country, my accent is picked after oh, around about one syllable I think. Maybe two syllables... And yet I'm perfectly fluent, and can write better idiomatic French than a good percentage of the French population. Accents are hard if you don't have the ear for them.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#135

Post by david927 »

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…

Jesters were important in monarchies because they could speak truth to power. I think there's a similar idea here: you have to be very headstrong to do a startup, but at times you also need to pull yourself out of that and really consider other angles/viewpoints. If you can couch advice sometimes in humor, maybe it can be an effective way of getting through to a founder who would otherwise have a hard time hearing it.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#136

Post by segmondy »

sunir wrote: post #88
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…

Thanks for replying. I guess I should explain further why it is disappointing to me. Accent is intrinsic to a person's sense of self, akin to their religion or ethnicity ( truly ). Asking people to change their sense of self for you is a lot. Imagine I said I couldn't relate to a business person because they were just too, say, Chinese and so I suggest they take lessons to act more Canadian to fit my liking. Yikes. T…

Well said. I find it amusing how Americans are not friendly to sexy accents. But they still love Arnold Schwarzenegger and don't object to his accent. Made him governor and even toyed around with the idea of him running for president.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#137

Post by segmondy »

philwelch wrote: post #118
sunir wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, let me pull the quote and be more direct about my reaction. "One quality that's a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent. I'm not sure why. It could be that there are a bunch of subtle things entrepreneurs have to communicate and can't if you have a strong accent. Or, it could be that anyone with half a brain would realize you're going to be more successful if you speak idiomatic English, so…

If I ever had to live and work in a foreign country, I'd be proud to speak their language so fluently they couldn't quite detect an accent. It would be a little different moving to another English-speaking country, but lots of people end up picking up a slightly different accent after living someplace for a long time. It doesn't have to be a matter of identity unless you choose to make it one.

Until you move to a foreign country and speak with their language so fluently that they can't detect your accent. You need to come back to reality. If it was so easy, everyone would be doing it.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#138

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

iandanforth wrote: post #117
znt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had read this reply 3 years ago, I would have called you "racist". But after spending time with engineers from different countries, I believe having an understandable English accent is not a nice thing to have, but rather a professional responsibility. I have personally witnessed people losing their jobs/contracts because of this issue, and although I enjoyed their friendship, I wasn't really sorry for losing a…

Your video uses phrases which are not standard English. The phrase 'a spaghetti' is not used. 'A plate of spaghetti' might be used in that context. Additionally the phrase "Would you please bring some water" would only be used if you have just asked "What should I bring to the game?" or something like that. In the context displayed 'ordering food' you would most likely say "Could you bring me a glass of water?" or "C…

This being HN, I immediately thought he should run it by some speech therapists and see what the market would be for such a tool.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#140

Post by temphn »

tptacek wrote: post #101
statictype wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does sound crazy. But is it much different from an employer bing forced to hire a certain sort of employee?

Yes, it is much different than that.

What is the difference in your view? Very interested to hear this. The sums involved in this case ($20000) are less than those involved in most employment scenarios.
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