
Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth - shakes
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201309/issie-lapowsky/how-paul-graham-became-successful.html
======
sunir
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.freshbooks.com/blog/2007/07/23/immigrant-
quebecoi...](http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/2007/07/23/immigrant-quebecois-
newfoundlanders-not-wanted/)

Besides, it's _failing to communicate clearly and be understood_ that makes a
bad leader, regardless of the behavioural cause (foreign accent, mumbling,
random trains of thought).

~~~
pg
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 that someone comes from another country.
I'm talking about accents so strong that you have to interrupt the
conversation to ask what they just said.

~~~
nashequilibrium
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 someone because the expectation is that
you are in America and you must speak english.

In football, you can't go an complain that you don't understand your teammate,
you getting paid $200 000 a week, so shut up and make it happen. Park Ji Sung
and Patrice Evra became best friends yet one spoke korean and the other
french, teammates would laugh commenting on how they don't know how they
communicate. The issue is that they were both willing to learn to understand
each other, having mutual respect for each others culture but bottom line no
football player can use language as an excuse.

My first language is English, so i was amused when moving to LA, an asian girl
from UCLA was at one of the teller windows and i guess that she could not
fully understand this girl so she just bravely says to here coworkers that
"this asian girl is so dumb, how did she get into UCLA, she can't even fill
out a deposit slip". The amazing thing is that she felt so natural saying it
as she knew other americans will not mind what she said, even though she is a
teller and the young girl is attending a top U.S College.

I would also like to add that many football coaches take jobs where they
cannot speak the home language fluently but are still successful. I feel that
Europeans are more accepting of foreign accents than Americans and i have
worked in Europe and stay in the U.S.

~~~
rhizome
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.

~~~
nashequilibrium
"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 forgot to mention when the coach can't speak english
or any other home lanhuage but still is successful.

~~~
philwelch
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.

~~~
patrickk
Other interesting tidbits...

Southampton are currently managed by a guy who speaks no English:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauricio_Pochettino](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](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFdAd6nqQ9Y)

------
pg
That's a very Kate Courteau picture incidentally. She's our architect, and is
the reason YC looks so distinctive. It's hard to get simple right, but she
does.

~~~
brianjesse
I love the way she used a super wide shot to pull in so many graphic elements
- beautifully done, Kate Courteau.

~~~
brianjesse
oh I see now that she didn't take the actual picture but Jason Madara did that
-

~~~
brudgers
Like food styling, architectural photography is a discipline unto itself.

------
ngoel36
"One quality that's a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign
accent...they must just be clueless if they haven't gotten rid of their strong
accent."

I'm curious to learn more about this. I'm certainly not accusing YC/PG of
being racist in the least, but although I don't have an accent, I feel like I
know numerously brilliantly smart people with heavy accents, many of whom
happen to be Indian-born Stanford students or Google employees. I think we all
know that "brilliantly smart" doesn't necessarily correlate with "great CEO",
but it has to suck that something like your own accent puts you at a huge
disadvantage applying to YC.

~~~
larrys
"they must just be clueless if they haven't gotten rid of their strong accent"

Specifically "clueless". I agree with that but I also think it's an attitude
as well in some people. I think even if it was explained to them they might
not think that it would benefit them. In that case they are not clueless they
are simply rigid in their thinking, right?

As the saying goes "when in rome do as the romans do"

Along those lines I am surprised at the number of people who are foreign born
who don't change their names to something more Americanized.

Back when people came to this country at the turn of the century I believe the
immigration people would give people americanized versions of their names so
they wouldn't experience as much rejection or racisim. Maybe it was for other
reasons as well.

Now you can look at it as wrong that people jump to conclusions or you can
simply do what is practical and attempt to lessen the disadvantage that you
are in if someone perceives you in the wrong way. If I am a member of a
religious group and I know that people that I am selling to are biased against
that religious group I see it as practical not to wear any symbol of that
religious group. It's a business decision.

I'm not saying that someone needs to totally hide the fact that they are
Indian, Chinese, or whatever. I'm simply saying you can make the name a little
easier for people in America (where you live) to remember it. That's in a
sense basic marketing.

Lastly, I've been approached by people trying to sell me with really difficult
names to remember. I am less likely to connect them with others simply because
their name is so hard to remember.

~~~
NhanH
I've actually asked some American (one of them being my boss) on whether I
should be using an American name to make it easier for everyone at work.

I received two "It's weird" answers, and haven't asked the third person yet.

Considering that my name is relative short (the first 4 letter of my username,
Americans tend to remember the "h" and "a"'s position swapped though), would
you consider it a difficult name to remember or not?

~~~
Natsu
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).

~~~
NhanH
Take a look here:
[http://www.forvo.com/word/nh%C3%A2n/#vi](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".

~~~
pawn
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.

------
davidw
> There is a secular trend going on, in which launching a start-up is a more
> common thing to do. It used to be there were two things you could do after
> college: go to grad school or get a job. Soon, I think there will be three
> things: go to grad school, get a job, or start your own company. I suspect
> this will be one of these economic transformations on the scale of the
> industrial revolution.

That's a very interesting topic, and is something I wonder about too.
Historically speaking, the amount of capital required to start an internet
company these days is amazingly low. Will this last? Maybe in the future, to
even get started, people will need more horsepower in terms of servers, or
storage, or something like that, and this low-capital period will be seen as
an anomaly. Or maybe the trend will continue and spread to other fields. Are
there others that are ripe for a similar transformation, where it gets super
easy to start something new?

Also, I like this quote/thinking:

> The way you'll get big ideas in, say, health care is by starting out with
> small ideas. If you try to do some big thing, you don't just need it to be
> big; you need it to be good. And it's really hard to do big and good
> simultaneously. So, what that means is you can either do something small and
> good and then gradually make it bigger, or do something big and bad and
> gradually make it better. And you know what? Empirically, starting big just
> does not work.

------
larrys
"He is brilliant and hilariously funny."

How is being hilariously funny an advantage in terms of working for YC?

~~~
pg
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.

~~~
davidw
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 innovators: being able to see the
world in a slightly different/skewed way. In one case, it makes you laugh
because of the incongruity, in another, it may help you see ideas for
businesses where others do not see them.

~~~
andrewflnr
More generally, I would tend to say that humor is often about finding odd
connections. I can easily imagine that being an important ability for giving
good advice to businesses.

------
larrys
" If a place has really good food, it can be in an obscure location, charge a
lot, and have really bad service, and it will still be popular. If it has bad
food, boy, it better do something really special to get anybody in there."

The "special" can be "location". Food on the NJ Turnpike (or similar) is an
example of a captive market where quality of food is not the key ingredient
but landing the contract and being merely acceptable can still be very
profitable.

Likewise being in Times Square, if you can afford the rent, can be profitable
because you are not worried about repeat business but simply grabbing the
tourists that will only be a customer one time.

~~~
rustynails77
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.

~~~
jonnathanson
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 identical to a Big Mac in
Cleveland. A pack of fries in Moscow tastes identical to a pack of fries in
Istanbul. If you walk into a McDonalds in any part of the world, barring a few
local specialties on the menu, you know exactly what you're going to get, and
exactly when you're going to get it. That's pretty damned remarkable.

McDonalds runs a marketing and logistics company, not a restaurant chain.

[1] Insert Pulp Fiction reference here.

~~~
philwelch
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.

~~~
jonnathanson
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.

------
graeme
Something interesting: a lot of people thought Airbnb was terrible, including
YC and Fred Wilson.

I was 23 when Airbnb was founded. I had had many happy experiences with
Couchsurfing.

For me, and many Couchsurfers, the idea of an upscale, paid couchsurfing was
trivially obvious. None of us built it, but I assumed someone would.

I'm not sure what the lesson is.

~~~
twog
The lesson learned is to build things you love but others don't yet
understand. Thats the key to emerging markets

~~~
graeme
I guess what I found interesting is that this was something MILLIONS loved and
yet it was a very specific demographic so the wider world missed the
potential.

Heck, most people, if you pitch them on Airbnb today, will say: "That would
never work". Half the people I know outside the tech niche haven't heard of
it.

So something can be quite large, well proven, yet seem like a lousy idea if
you have a set of blinders on.

------
unono
Does anyone know what has been PG's ROI on his investments is, for all we know
it could be below industry standard.

Also, by PG's own words he only invests in the relentlessly resourceful. What
do they need PG and later round VC's for? I always get the feeling with PG
that something hidden is at play, he's a really really clever guy. There's a
sucker getting played when he's around. (For example, Zuckerburg is not as
smart as PG keeps enthusing, there's a lot smarter guys than him, so I think
he's got some sell YC companies to Facebook flow going on. Another, Andrew
Mason is just a terrible business guy - why is PG linking with him - probably
experience at knowing how to keep investors from realizing what's actually
happening).

~~~
arbuge
>> Does anyone know what has been PG's ROI on his investments is, for all we
know it could be below industry standard.

Hell no. Just do the math:

[http://ycombinator.com/nums.html](http://ycombinator.com/nums.html)

The total value of YC companies is more like $12B today. That makes their
average 6% stake worth around $700m or so. Around 600 companies total, at
around $20k each - a total investment of just $12m or so by my calculations.

$12m to $700m in <10 years is about as good as it gets in investing.

~~~
unono
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.

~~~
patio11
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 specified
API which could put hundreds of millions of dollars to work on _any given day_
and which didn't require artisanal mentorship and connection-making of the
fledgling startups, you would expect somebody from Wall Street to already have
said "We can offer you an _arbitrarily high_ amount of money to do that for
us."

~~~
unono
That's a good point - PG is essentially decision engine.

All YC investments are public and some investor could go through and build
PG's model using videotapes of all those founders. Collect all this data, put
a few data scientists on it, and build a virtual PG.

The connections don't matter if you're a huge fund, you can buy your way to a
meeting with Presidents, silicon valley types are puny in comparison.

This is a golden opportunity for oil tycoons (tesla and google are going to be
demolishing them in the next few years with electric self-driving cars, they
better get in the tech game, and so far PG has been most reliable at it).

~~~
rmc
_you can buy your way to a meeting with Presidents, silicon valley types are
puny in comparison._

Ah, but how do you know who to talk to? What presidents of companies, what SV
types?

------
pcunite
With hands in pocket he has not been captured mid motion. He is therefore
purposefully guarding entrance into the "Y". The blue _exit_ door is for
anyone who cannot answer his questions three.

~~~
gfodor
"What have you made?" "Who wants it?" "How do you know?"

------
mathattack
"We were the kind of start-up started by nerds who were really good at
programing and really, really bad at sales and business. Now I would know
exactly what to tell my previous self, which is that I should be spending all
my time selling."

Is this a case of playing to your personal weakness, or is it playing to your
personal blind spot? In either case, how long until you say, "This is
important, but I'm not good at it. I have to bring someone in to do it while
teaching me." My impression is a good salesperson quickly pays for themselves.

~~~
akbar501
In my experience, a good salesperson is either a total drag or big boost.

The total drag happens when a salesperson is brought on too soon. When the
product is not aligned with the market (pre-product/market fit), there is
little a good salesperson can do. In this situation, everyone gets frustrated
as success does not happen and costs increase.

Post-product/market fit, a good salesperson can certainly accelerate growth.
The use of the word "accelerate" here is deliberate as the founder(s) should
be the ones to spark growth.

Initial sales should always be made by the founders for several reasons: 1\.
Your initial idea is likely misaligned with the market. The only way to figure
this out is to be listen directly to customer's rejections and stall tactics.
2\. Customer's will initially be positive (before you ask for money or ask
them to do something), and watching this change from positive/supportive to
neutral/negative forces a good reality check. 3\. The founder(s) bring the
most excitement to the sales process. You need to be the spark for
interest/excitement about the solution. Salespeople will then feed off of your
excitement.

~~~
mathattack
Fair enough - you don't need them too soon. But in this instance, the starting
point is the founder deciding (in hindsight) that spending all of their time
in Sales would be good.

------
bfe
"Nobody knows what they're capable of until they try it. Maybe half a percent
of people have the brains and sheer determination to do this kind of thing.
Start-ups are hard but doable, in the way that running a five-minute mile is
hard but doable."

Worth remembering.

------
sitkack
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.

~~~
2arrs2ells
The limiting factor on YC is not cash.

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

------
jgalt212
Is anyone else digging the Tevas with long sleeves look being sported by PG?

------
photorized
Everybody got excited about the foreign accent thing, but my favorite quote
was actually "it's easier to be an investor than it is to start a company". So
very true. I just launched an incubator, and I've been telling VCs to drop the
attitude.

------
auggierose
What I am wondering about is: would Einstein be a good start-up founder?

~~~
mbyrne
History says no. He was never able to build a great business with the
fashionable blouses he designed. He never was able to scale his refrigerator
company beyond the customer discovery phase and sold the patent to
Electrolux... Google these if you think I am joking.

~~~
auggierose
I found the patents for the blouses / refrigerators, but it seems to me that
this was more of a hobby of his, not a serious startup endeavour.

My imaginary scenario is more like this: let's assume that there is something
like the relativity theory of programming, i.e. in order to build programs of
a certain size and complexity you HAVE to use the relativity theory, otherwise
you'll fail. Now, could Einstein have built a software company that takes
advantage of this?

------
infoseckid
Funny --- next time when YC rejects a company with foreign founders, you
should ask them "Was it the idea or the accent?" :D Hilarious ...

------
6thSigma
Has there ever been a bubble in low liquidity assets like startup equity? I
would think high liquidity is a huge piece of a bubble.

------
checker659
So, one of the purposes of the application video is to judge a person's
accent? Is that fair?

~~~
snoonan
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.

~~~
checker659
By "Is that fair", I meant: Is that fair to say? As in, is that what it means
(?).

------
tduquette1
I hope that Paul doesn't consider a Boston accent to be "a strong foreign
accent."

~~~
snoonan
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.

------
ballard
I cackled to myself 4.6x.

Honesty is the sniper of the mind.

Thanks 'pg.

------
swah
In the tradition of Dijkstra...

