While pg's comment may have seemed insensitive to some, it has helped bring to light some of the anxieties that foreign-born founders may themselves have (for instance, about the way the local culture they're founding a company in will perceive them due to their accent, not forgetting their ability to communicate anyway).
Posts like this one are a sign that cultural phenomena such as this will be more visible, and won't just disappear into the detritus of forgotten blogs. Do some foreign-born founders struggle with their accents? Yes. Is a strong accent a barrier to communication? Quite likely, yes. Is it worth it for a founder to do what it takes to communicate her message exactly, and nothing else? Absolutely.
Shouldn't the goal be to either: 1) become excellent communicators, or to 2) find excellent communicators, and get them on "our" team?
Now we can focus on, with our characteristic laser-like ability, and talk about why accents may hold somebody back, as a community, and how we can help people succeed anyway.
Some ideas:
- Schools to help founders communicate better?
- An additional service within accelerator programs to help founders with strong accents become effective anyway? (Maybe YC could just take this and run with it)
Solve that problem and move on to the next one. Isn't that The Rule?
Let me take the opportunity to focus on what, imho, started this whole controversy. While I consider pg's position to be valid, he should probably have explained it better, through his usual channel of the essay form, before talking about it in the media, where his words were much more likely to be taken out of context. He didn't, they were, and we're left picking up the media-transformed pieces of what would have been an otherwise instructive take on what might hold some foreign-born startup founders back. pg seems to have forgotten why he writes essays (explore ideas as fully as possible, while leaving room for improvement), and now he has to pay for that mistake with a (possibly -- I have no way of knowing if he'd prepared an article about this) quickly written piece of damage control, published in the middle of a frenzy of accusations and hurt feelings. The "Founders' Accents" essay is weaker than it would have been if he'd written it before he did the inc.com interview, as the interviewer would have had a more self-contained source to reference, counter-arguments and all.[0]
I must conclude, therefore, that his comment may have done more harm, in the short-term, than good. It remains to be seen whether we can turn this around for the good of all.
We should remember, though, that we're in this together, and pg is not the only one who has a responsibility to make sure the people that matter don't miss out on opportunities because of something that can be fixed. Which is not to say that its trivial. Fifteen years is a long time.
[0] For one, I don't think the discussion surrounding it would have devolved into accusations of racism, though that probably says more about my view of people than about pg's detractors in this case.