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The English of Entrepreneurs: A Language of Broken Rules and Unlikely Poetry

I once watched a startup founder pitch his idea in broken English to a room of investors in Shanghai. His grammar was a train wreck, his pronunciation a minefield—yet by the end, three VCs were leaning forward, nodding. Meanwhile, the Oxford-educated consultant next to him, with his polished “business English,” got polite smiles and zero follow-ups.

This isn’t about “good” or “bad” English. It’s about something far more interesting: entrepreneurial English as its own dialect—one that prioritizes momentum over perfection, storytelling over syntax.

1. The Unwritten Rules of Hustle-English

Traditional language learning obsesses over error avoidance. But watch founders in action, and you’ll notice their English follows different priorities:

– Prepositional anarchy: “We disrupt to the market” – technically wrong, but the urgency transmits.

– Verb tense rebellion: Mixing past/present/future mid-sentence to emphasize trajectory: “Last year we are small, now we grew 300%, tomorrow we dominate.”

– The “because…boom!” rhetorical structure: No subordinate clauses. Just rapid-fire cause/effect: “AI healthcare. Big pain point. We fix. Boom.”

This isn’t laziness—it’s linguistic MVP (Minimum Viable Product) theory. When speed matters more than precision, you optimize for understanding, not correctness.

2. The Hidden Power of “Bad” English

Paradoxically, non-native fluency can be an asset:

– Scrappiness signals grit: A founder wrestling with English often reads as someone who’ll bulldoze other obstacles too.

– Forced simplicity breeds clarity: Limited vocabulary kills corporate jargon. You get blunt truths like: “Our tech makes old tech look stupid.” (A line I’ve seen land $2M in seed funding.)

– The “underdog advantage”: Investors—especially in emerging markets—sometimes distrust too-perfect English, associating it with consultant types who “talk like textbooks but can’t ship product.”

3. When It Backfires: The Line Between Charisma and Confusion

Of course, this has limits. I’ve also seen founders lose deals because:

– Critical terms were misunderstood (“We avoid regulations” vs. “We align with regulations” – a $20M difference).

– Cultural nuances backfired (a German founder joking “we work like slaves” to Americans).

The sweet spot? “Strategic brokenness”—knowing which rules to break:

– Break grammar, not logic. Investors forgive “he go” but not fuzzy unit economics.

– Sacrifice articles (a/the), not key differentiators. Nobody cares if you say “we are the leader” or “we are leader”—but they do care if you can’t explain why.

4. The New Status Symbol

Among global founders, I’m noticing a shift: heavily accented but supremely confident English is becoming a badge of honor. It screams:

“I’m too busy building to care about your preposition rules.”

There’s even a meme in some founder circles: the worse your English but the bigger your traction, the more legendary you become. It’s the linguistic equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie—a deliberate rejection of old-power signals.

Final Thought: The Best Pitch Isn’t in English—It’s in Outcome

The most successful founders I’ve met treat English like they treat everything else: as a hackable system. They focus not on sounding “correct,” but on making listeners feel one (or more) of these:

– “This person will outwork everyone.”

– “They see something I don’t.”

– “I need to be part of this.”

And that—whether in perfect Queen’s English or something closer to “startup caveman”—is a language anyone can understand.

(Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go “unlock synergies” with my “learnings” from this “thought leadership.” Or as a founder might say: “Me write. You read. Boom.”)