Female Russian founder. Should I talk in Y Combinator video?

I can't speak for YC applications, however day to day in my workplace I am surrounded by engineers for whom English is a second language (and, for that matter, also native speakers with strong regional accents); I also regularly interview such.

I find that speaking with an accent is generally independent of the ability to clearly, fluidly communicate, which is actually what is important.

Do you frequently find yourself pausing mid-speech to think of the term you need? Do you frequently find yourself struggling to understand idiom-laced speech? Do you frequently find yourself talking at cross purposes with people because you have used a term with a different meaning to the one you intended, or have failed to correctly understand a term they have used?

These and similar problems can represent genuine failings of communication that may become an issue. It is usually obvious partway through a discussion or interview if this sort of thing is likely to be a problem: they hinder the candidate telling you about themselves and/or answering the questions they are asked.

If you do not experience this class of problem - if you are merely concerned about unusual stress/pronunciation or similar, but do not have trouble making yourself understood, understanding your interlocutor, or speaking at a sensible rate - then I suggest you should not worry about your accent, and it would actually be to your benefit to contribute significantly to the video, in order to demonstrate that there are no significant communication issues to anyone who may otherwise be concerned.

EDIT: PG says similar things here: http://www.paulgraham.com/accents.html

If this were a video to market to customers or clients, I would suggest letting him speak the whole time. Because your accent might get in the way of selling the product.

But when you're applying to an accelerator, the product you're selling is your team. You're an integral part of that team, and you need to show the YC folks what they're getting with you as part of that team.

YC seems to be trying to address the gender gap in startup founding, so I don't think that being female will put you at a disadvantage. And there are plenty of other foreign founders of successful startups.

Try to relax, speak slowly and as clearly as you can, and record as many takes as you need to feel confident that you can be understood. You'll be fine.

Yes, you should speak in the YC video.

If your startup finds any reasonable degree of success in the US (given you are applying to YC, and perhaps other accelerators in the US) you will need to speak to prospective investors, and perhaps industry or trade groups, if not consumers directly. Consider this the first the first step getting comfortable doing it, which seems to be the problem.

As far as YC and rejection, the video, in part, is supposed to give them a read on how you guys interact. Not speaking certainly limits the amount of information you give them to do that accurately.

In the context of the team and how you guys interact I recommend considering your partner's input very seriously. If he is in favor of you speaking, and there is a significant practical reason, such as specific domain experience, you have to balance your discomfort against submitting the best possible application.

There will likely be many more items such as this and it's best to confront them, fail, learn, move through them and move on.

Talk. I wouldn't worry about the "accent" in the sense of vocal register or overall "sound" (which is after all you), but (in the spirit of "don't make people think") it wouldn't hurt to get a precise script of you want to say corrected to be 100% grammatically (and idiomatically) correct, with the help of a native speaker. And to try to get the pronunciation smoothed over to be as correct as you can get it, also. Then practice it enough so that it sounds perfectly natural and not forced (resting for a few days in between, to let it seep in). Basic theatrical technique, in other words.

Because there's something about talking to people in their language on level that's 100% correct (while still not trying to hide the fact that you're a foreign speaker) that somehow really impresses people and makes them want to listen to you. (Which shouldn't be too difficult for you, because going by your writing, your English is really quite good already).

English is spoken by over a billion people. Many of those people, even ones who are native speakers, have accents that are nearly incomprehensible to American English speakers. There are even debates about whether some dialects of English are actually separate languages at this point.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_the_Englis...