Correlation between Founder's Accents and the Success of Their Compaines Abroad

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Founders' Accents

August 2013

Recently Inc published an interview in which I said we'd noticed a correlation between founders having very strong foreign accents and their companies doing badly.

Some interpreted this statement as xenophobic, or even racist—as if I'd said that having a foreign accent at all was a problem.

But that's not what I said, or what I think. No one in Silicon Valley would think that. A lot of the most successful founders here speak with accents.

The case I was talking about is when founders have accents so strong that people can't understand what they're saying. I.e. the problem is not the cultural signal accents send, but the practical difficulty of getting a startup off the ground when people can't understand you.

I'd already explained that when I talked about this issue with a New York Times reporter:
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 ...

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