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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

#161

Post by abalone »

webdevsometimes wrote: post #141
abalone wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Because correlation != causation, and applying "pattern recognition" to race and gender is racist and sexist.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#162

Post by vasilipupkin »

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…

PG: I wonder how well you account for the fact that even though you have 564 data points, you end up having much fewer data points for each type of subsample - and since startup data is by definition highly non-linear and non-normally distributed, you could end up reaching sweeping conclusions from way too few data points

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#163

Post by theorique »

jacques_chester wrote: post #112
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.

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.

My college German instructors told us to imitate Arnold Schwarzenegger's deep Austrian accent when we were speaking German in class. The idea worked for us too.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#164

Post by pawn »

NhanH wrote: post #98
Natsu wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nhan? I'm assuming that sounds like 'non', so it's probably easier to use your real name. I do know some people who abbreviate their names, though, if there's a workable abbreviation (e.g. Siddahrta / Sid).

Take a look here: http://www.forvo.com/word/nh%C3%A2n/#vi The "h" is not a silent sound, and I think pronouncing as "non" is part of the reason why American tends to mix up "Nhan" and "Nahn".

To me, when listening to that, it sounds like "Nyen" or "Nian", which isn't a sound that any English word I can think of correlates with an H. Perhaps sharing one of these spellings with people will help them. You might experiment with different people and see where you get your best results.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#165

Post by gbog »

znt wrote: post #150
gbog wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The common standard exists already! It is international business English and my point is that German or Indian speakers are often much better at it than many Americans I have met. Weirdly enough, Americans who happen to also speak Chinese or another language are much easier to understand in English. Probably having learnt another tongue teaches you how hard it is and how annoying are those natives who make no effort to slow down and clarify their speaking, and no effort to understand others as soon as they pronounce slightly differently from hometown accent.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#166

Post by gbog »

segmondy wrote: post #156
gbog wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You are correct, "Indian English" or any type of english has as much right as say "British or American English" but the issue and reason pg could make such a statement is that American money is calling the shots.

So even after dozens of centuries we are still in under Law of the Jungle, were the ones who have more can bully and look down on the ones who have less?

If it is like so, we should go back to slavery, it made no sense to abolish it.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#167

Post by Natsu »

NhanH wrote: post #98
Natsu wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nhan? I'm assuming that sounds like 'non', so it's probably easier to use your real name. I do know some people who abbreviate their names, though, if there's a workable abbreviation (e.g. Siddahrta / Sid).

Take a look here: http://www.forvo.com/word/nh%C3%A2n/#vi The "h" is not a silent sound, and I think pronouncing as "non" is part of the reason why American tends to mix up "Nhan" and "Nahn".

Interesting. It sounds like nee-han or something. You might be able to get by using "Ian" as a nickname, losing only the initial N sound.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#168

Post by jmtame »

oskarth wrote: post #160
jmtame wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you mean Startup School? I don't recall him talking at Hacker School.

Yes, I meant Startup School.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#169

Post by KMag »

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…

As others have mentioned, there are many different British accents. I wouldn't recommend a Cockney accent. However, a nice neutral British accent, like a BBC newscaster is a very good accent to have. Most Americans perceive people with such accents as being more intelligent and more attractive than people with neutral American accents. As someone who grew up in the Midwest and intentionally made my accent more neutral American while living on the East Coast, I have a pretty neutral American accent. However, now that I'm living in Hong Kong, I'm intentionally trying to pronounce my vowels in a slightly more British manner. However, I'm too attached to my Rs to switch to a non-rhotic British accent.

A slight Southern American accent sometimes does cause many Americans to perceive someone as more trustworthy, and some Americans do find a slight Southern accent to be very attractive. Though, be warned that a Southern accent may cause some Americans to perceive you as more stubborn and slightly less intelligent.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#170

Post by gamegoblin »

dirtyaura wrote: post #110
pg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

Is it just accent or that people make too many grammatical mistakes? Or to put it another way, if you had to choose between two: clear pronunciation with a lot of grammatical mistakes vs a strong accent but flawless grammar. Which one is harder to understand for a native speaker?

I have had a few Indian professors who tend to have perfect grammar but strong accents, and some Chinese professors with poor grammar but better accents. I find the latter much easier. It's easy to correct simple grammatical errors in my head, but if you don't know what words are being said, it doesn't matter if grammar is perfect.
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