[mechanical_fish]

I believe I've heard of linguistic studies which demonstrate that the use of "filler" words like um is, in part, a form of "code switching". For example, when teenagers talk to their peers, or to people they don't particularly respect, their speech will tend to be peppered with ums and you knows and likes [1], as in: "I'd, um, you know, prefer to watch something, like, interesting.". But when talking to respected elders, or working as waitstaff in a restaurant, the same people suddenly prove capable of uttering perfectly fine sentences in formal English. The "reversion" to the broken-up speech pattern is not necessarily because the speakers are thinking too hard, or drinking too hard, and it's certainly not because they don't know how to speak: It's often a subconscious but deliberate technique for setting an informal mood.

Some languages actually have a syntactically-distinct informal mode; English has the word um.

Why do I tell this random anecdote? The usual reason: I love to ramble. But also because my point is: Stop worrying about the "ums". They're fine. Your listeners were probably already interpreting them as a sign that you've become really engaged in the conversation.

(Now, of course, the above comment will be added to the YC FAQ, and teams will be competing to see how quickly they can get PG to utter the first um of the entrance interview. ;)

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[1] At least, this is what informal teen speech sounded like years ago. These days, it may be different. It usually is.

[bane]

This is a good point. One thing I always get when I've heard pg in an interview is that he seems comfortably informal, and also wonderfully excited about what he's doing. The uhms get kind of infectious and convey that excitement to some extent.

[supercanuck]

I've also heard somewhere, this is why Canadians say "Eh" a lot, because it leaves the sentence with a positive, softer connotation.

[Alex3917]

"It's often a subconscious but deliberate technique for setting an informal mood."

This is interesting, but I doubt it applies to when people do it when speaking in front of a large group of people. Public speaking tends to require a lot more cognitive resources than answering basic questions from supervisors.

[dennisgorelik]

Teenagers' speech still sounds exactly like that.

:-)