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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

#111

Post by c0mpute »

rhizome wrote: post #87
nashequilibrium wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good thing you not a football manager, imagine Lionel Messi, Ronaldo,Zinnedine Zidane or Ronaldhino coming to your team. These are some of the best footballers in the world, all speak different languages but can walk on a field in England and beat an offside trap, request a pin point pass through top rated defenders at a speed of 100mph. Most people just don't want to take the time to try and understand someon…

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.

Communication is a primary requirement in a team sport and especially football.

His own example, forget the manager, the players themselves have to be on the same page in so many levels during practice. Don't you think Messi, Neymar, and Alexis (all 3 different countries playing for Barca) would have to practice and know precisely about their timing.

I think the key thing here is the who really needs whom. Most entrepreneurs need YC/VCs and so might have to suck up what they expect.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#112

Post by jacques_chester »

NhanH wrote: post #55
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…

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.

When I was learning to speak French, I struggled until my sister said "speak in a French accent".

I know, it seems trite. But the point is: think of someone who speaks your native language. Copy their thick accent into the language you are learning.

So when I began to use ze outrrrageous Franch acc-sont, my actual French-speaking improved.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#113

Post by nostrademons »

patio11 wrote: post #97
unono wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's true, then that's astounding. Why isn't some huge wall street fund swooping in to this? Do people not know. The White House should be calling in PG for advice.

That's a good question. The main reason is that the hypothetical Huge Wall Street Firm doesn't see a way to reproduce the project at scale. They don't have pg et al, and while YC is applying mass-production techniques to startups, by the standards of markets where APIs exist to conduct transactions they're still in the early industrial revolution. If pg was just a decision engine for Startup#fund(amount), a vaguely s…

That's basically exactly what Yuri Milner did. He decided that YCombinator did a great job picking startups and mentoring them, and so he would invest $150K into each one that went through the program, effectively freeriding off PG et al's mentorship & decision-making processes while contributing additional capital.

It unfortunately seems not to scale, as making $150K available to otherwise equivalent founders made for worse outcomes, and so the program's been scaled down to $80K or so.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#114

Post by philwelch »

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.…

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.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#115

Post by philwelch »

nashequilibrium wrote: post #85
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…

It's a good thing you not a football manager, imagine Lionel Messi, Ronaldo,Zinnedine Zidane or Ronaldhino coming to your team. These are some of the best footballers in the world, all speak different languages but can walk on a field in England and beat an offside trap, request a pin point pass through top rated defenders at a speed of 100mph. Most people just don't want to take the time to try and understand someon…

I'm fairly sure all four players you mentioned could make themselves understood in Spanish on the pitch without much trouble. But being a CEO is all about communication and not at all about what you can do with a ball at your feet. Remember, it's fine if the CTO has a thick accent because he can back it up with hacking skills, but the CEO is a professional conversationalist.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#116

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#117

Post by iandanforth »

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…

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 "Could you please bring us some water?"

I fully support your effort and think this is a great tool.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#118

Post by philwelch »

sunir wrote: post #102
ludston wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Accent is intrinsic to a person's sense of self This is a bit of a truism don't you think? > You can still be clearly understood with a strong foreign accent. cf. Gandhi. I hesitate to argue on behalf of someone as esteemed as pg, but surely he is using foreign accent to describe the cause of their communication deficiency, rather than painting persons with foreign accents as deficient.

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.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#119

Post by philwelch »

jonnathanson wrote: post #81
rustynails77 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, this rule doesn't work for McDonalds - as it's an established brand. Their food is awful, but the place tends to be clean and tidy - with a toilet. Interestingly, where I live, Burger Kings tend to be filthy and poorly maintained, with slightly better tasting food. They are also popular - so cleanliness doesn't seem to be a major contributor.

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.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#120

Post by sitkack »

2arrs2ells wrote: post #48
sitkack wrote: post #39

It is amazing how much value and change in the world has occurred because of ycombinator companies, direct and follow on effects. And all of this for the paltry sum of 1.7 billion (ish) dollars. The 1,467 Billion we've spent on the war(s) so far could have made ~850 ish entire ycombinators, on the order of 450k startups. As well as exhausting the entire io and ly domain name spaces.

The limiting factor on YC is not cash.

With the kind of money I present, one can farm and not just spear fish.
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