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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

#141

Post by webdevsometimes »

abalone wrote: post #130
anovikov wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg is not a politician who must appeal to all to be successful, so why do you wonder? he just thinks of the things that work. I run an outsourcing shop, and if i clearly knew that black gays are 2x productive for the same rate i'd quickly turn worst racist/sexist guy you seen.

Only politicians should be concerned with racial equality? Wow.

Only politicians have to pretend that everyone is 100% equal in every way, because they can't afford to offend anyone. pg, on the other hand, doesn't need to worry about that as much because what matters is whether the startup is successful or not. If there is a pattern indicating that a certain group of people are particularly bad at running a business, why should he take the higher risk associated with investing in them?

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#142

Post by delinka »

weland wrote: post #122
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…

This reminds me of a fun thing that happened to my colleagues a few years ago (weeks prior to me joining them). They were working on a router pimped with some home automation features (Z-Wave/ZigBee interfacing & co.); the baseboard that the HW provider was offering had 2 Ethernet ports, but they wanted four. They informed them they don't have a four-port version, so they asked if a custom one can be made, extending…

I have a Southern American® accent. I work with Indians of various English fluency. I make an effort to reword and repeat certain phrases that I know would cause trouble for a non-native speaker. I don't have any immediate examples because this habit has become second-nature when speaking with others who have heavy accents. Think of it as an attempt at automatic forward error correction.

When I run across someone doing what you're talking about, I just wish they'd repeat the phrase another way: "...hitishu; it get too hot." Problem solved.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#143

Post by jonnathanson »

philwelch wrote: post #119
jonnathanson wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McDonalds' food is awful by what standard, precisely? From a health standpoint, sure. From the standpoint of a foodie, yes. From the standpoint of pretty much anyone who is accustomed to nicer food, in nicer circumstances, sure. But McDonalds isn't competing on the dimension of "quality" as other restaurants might define that term. McDonalds is competing on scale and consistency. A Big Mac [1] in Jakarta tastes ident…

Also, McDonalds is pretty tasty if you're too poor to consistently afford better. Their fries in particular are an amalgam of fat and salt, two of the most pleasing flavors that are available cheaply.

McDonalds' fries are the perfect fat/carb/salt delivery vehicle. I would pit them against heroin in their ability to hit the brain's pleasure centers. :)

I once heard a story in grad school, from a professor who consulted with McD's in Marketing. I'm not sure if this story is apocryphal, or maybe entirely fictional. But it goes like this: why are McDonalds' fries so thin? Why didn't they make thicker fries, which were all the rage back when the first few franchises were getting off the ground? It's because thinner fries can be grabbed by the handful, while thicker fries get picked up one by one. As a result, people scarf down thinner fries and will consume more volume in a single serving.

The story made me think, because suddenly I became aware of the fact that I'm a cluster-grabber of McD's fries. I have friends who pick out one at a time. Every now and then, on those rare occasions we grab fast food, I'll pay attention to who eats fries how.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#144

Post by patrickk »

philwelch wrote: post #114
nashequilibrium wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.…

Sir Bobby Robson spent a good deal of his management career at Sporting Lisbon, Porto, and Barca without speaking Portuguese or Spanish. You might have heard of his translator--Jose Mourinho.

Other interesting tidbits...

Southampton are currently managed by a guy who speaks no English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauricio_Pochettino

Giovanni Trapattoni manages the Republic of Ireland national team (and is one of the highest paid international managers around) speaks notoriously poor english. When he managed previously in Germany, he was also known for mangling the local tongue.

Jose Mourinho is a fascinating character. He is highly educated and speaks 5 or 6 languages fluently. He is one of the most tactically astute managers in the modern game. He's also notoriously paranoid, convinced everything is a conspiracy against him, which seems to stem from an incident in his childhood where an uncle was a wealthy member of the ruling elite, but a peaceful coup meant that the family lost a lot of their wealth. Here's a good documentary covering his recent managerial career:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFdAd6nqQ9Y

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#145

Post by gbog »

znt wrote: post #45
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…

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…

> having understandable English accent

Do you mean American mumbling accent or International English accent?

If the later, I fully agree and this apply the most to US citizens.

Last week I was having beer with two friend (one US one Canada) and a guy from LA came by, and it was completely impossible to me to understand one single word in his sentences (except for "fuck" and variants, which convey no meaning). He didn't seem to imagine that other people are different.

By the way, I'm French, living in China since 10 years, my English is rost because I use much more Chinese, but I usually can understand and make myself understood in International English.

For me the "hitishu" would have been obvious.

There is one thing behind this chitchat: English do not belong to UK or US anymore. It belong to the world. (Reasonably clear) Indian English has as many rights to life as have German English or Texan English or Aussie (which could well be the hardest).

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#146

Post by snoonan »

checker659 wrote: post #124

So, one of the purposes of the application video is to judge a person's accent? Is that fair?

What would fairness have to do with the success of a startup? Put two founders on stage at a conference and the audience won't be fair either. Extend that to other events, web video, TV appearances and other audio/video media. He's not in a position to change other people's prejudice with his investments.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#147

Post by znt »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #138
iandanforth wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I actually talked to a friend and showed him the app who was receiving speech therapy for his stammer. He told me that they are doing "similar" exercises in therapy sessions. So there may be a market, yes. I will research this subject more, thanks for the idea.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#148

Post by snoonan »

tduquette1 wrote: post #104

I hope that Paul doesn't consider a Boston accent to be "a strong foreign accent."

I do! I was born and raised here. I dropped it in high school and am happy I did. America doesn't tolerate regional accent diversity like they did in the past. People listen more if you speak Generican.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#149

Post by tinkerdol »

pg wrote: post #30
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 th…

>But 564 startups is enough to see patterns

This is an interesting point. Beyond happening to notice patterns yourself, have you tried running machine learning algorithms on your data to try to find other characteristics?

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#150

Post by znt »

gbog wrote: post #145
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…

> having understandable English accent Do you mean American mumbling accent or International English accent? If the later, I fully agree and this apply the most to US citizens. Last week I was having beer with two friend (one US one Canada) and a guy from LA came by, and it was completely impossible to me to understand one single word in his sentences (except for "fuck" and variants, which convey no meaning). He didn…

> Do you mean American mumbling accent or International English accent?

I mean anyone who can pronounce words in English without causing you to interrupt them often, and ask to repeat themselves, regardless of their accent.

Another sad thing about this is the lack of "negative" feedback these people get, about their inability to communicate.

Most often native speakers are just too "kind", no one will ever say "I did not understand the half of what you just said, please speak slowly and pronounce words correctly". That is why most people never realize the severity of this issue.

You are correct about English belonging to the whole world, but trying to follow a common standard (British / American English) during education wouldn't be a bad thing.

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