[wildwood]

If you were born in Bulgaria, Hungary or a hundred other places and your first exposure to English in bulk and attempts to speak it started at the age of 10 or later you'll have a fairly strong accent no matter what.

Sorry, but this is just wrong. Anyone who first learned English as an adult can improve their accent from strong to mild over time, with effort, if they choose to. If they live in an immersive English-speaking environment, this will often happen without conscious effort, as long as they value communication.

Anyone whose strongly-accented English doesn't improve after a few years in-country doesn't value communicating well. (Either that, or they just spend all their time in a native-language enclave.) And someone who doesn't value communicating well should not be in the role of CEO.

[jacquesm]

I know quite a few foreigners here in NL that have worked very hard at getting rid of their accents and in spite of all that hard work they've reached a plateau.

We're not talking 'English' or 'Australian' wants to get rid of their accent when living in the US. PG specifically states that the accent of the person speaking is so thick you'd have to interrupt them several times for clarification just because of that. Such a thing does not fade away in a short time. That takes many years, if you work hard at it.

Take into account here that those that apply to YC will often do so from abroad, without significant practice in speaking English.