[kazinator]

Maybe this will help you:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Paki

Starting with the very first sentence under "Usage notes".

In summary, a strict prefix of some place name or nationality is not automatically a harmless contraction. For instance, "Jap" is not a word which has exactly the same nuance as "person of Japanese descent".

[pm]

Fair enough, but it's not a US-centric thing (which is the bulk of YC companies), so I highly doubt that "fired a synapse" for the founders when they came up with the name.

When the Pakistan cricket team tours down here in Australia, they're colloquially referred to as "the Pakis", but that's because we colloquialise EVERYTHING, and has nothing to do with slurring anybody.