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For context here is the original source of the quote from an NYTimes interview: Several years ago, Paul Graham — whom everybody calls P.G. — began to film the interviews he and his partners held with prospective Y.C. inductees. When reviewing the footage, he focused on the interviews with start-ups that ultimately failed. Like any savvy marketing executive, he wanted to isolate patterns that portended ill, which he called “negative predictors.” He was already aware of a few — investors tended to be biased against older founders, for instance. “The cutoff in investors’ heads is 32,” Graham says. “After 32, they start to be a little skeptical.” And Graham knew that he had his own biases. “I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg. There was a guy once who we funded who was terrible. I said: ‘How could he be bad? He looks like Zuckerberg!’ ” Watching the video footage, Graham noticed another correlation: the longer he took to decide a group’s fate, the less likely the group was to succeed. “When you have to talk yourself into something, it’s a bad sign — that’s true also of relationships, hiring and so many other parts of life.” (Graham has a rhetorical talent for moving swiftly from the valley to the universal.) But after ranking every Y.C. company by its valuation, Graham discovered a more significant correlation. “You have to go far down the list to find a C.E.O. with a strong foreign accent,” Graham told me. “Alarmingly far down — like 100th place.” I asked him to clarify. “You can sound like you’re from Russia,” he said, in the voice of an evil Soviet henchman. “It’s just fine, as long as everyone can understand you.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y-combinator-sili... It's pretty easy to see how the quote wasn't received as a joke. |