This feels like a common sense argument, and I mean that in the worst possible way.<p>Firstly, despite the temptingly scientific word "correlation" appearing out of nowhere, there is no statistical analysis happening at all. Graham reckons that there aren't a lot of CEOs with accents, indeed he once rigourously went through a list of CEOs in order to draw this conclusion. This is at best an initial observation, at worst something closer to an anecdote. What this isn't is data, or analysis, or anything approaching correlation, at least not in the sense that one could begin to draw any meaningful conclusion from it.<p>And that's the second flaw - not only does Graham fail to gather _meaningful_ data, he fails to recognise what the data he _has_ gathered can actually tell us. Correlation is not causation, yet Graham asserts that he can pinpoint the cause of the problem merely by eye. This ignores other causes, be they direct (prejudice against certain accents or dialects) or indirect (American businesses are more likely to be run by Americans from a certain class and status, who are more likely to share a certain accent).<p>The problem here is essentially one of common sense reasoning. Paul Graham describes an intuition here that communication is important, and that strong foreign accents hinder communication. Except rather than truly test this intuition, he instead has found data that matches his intuition, and because it feels like common sense to him, it must be true. The intuition may work as an explanation of the data, but that doesn't mean that we can conclude that's it's the only explanation, or even the most significant explanation.
In previous times, rather than being a piercing insight, this would be considered commonsense.<p>There really is something very weird about Silicon Valley.
Of course, YC could also have people that can speak other languages then only English. Like German, French, Spanish etc To me, it also sounds like a lack of wanting to communicate with people/Founders less versed in American English.