Paul Graham, the brains and investment personality cult leader behind Y Combinator, is very vocal about what he doesn't like. Foreign accents are a no-no—but as a buried blog post from 2005 shows, the great part about running a startup is that you can let your prejudices run wild.

Y Combinator founder Paul Graham is listed as a "major contributor" to FWD.us, Mark Zuckerberg's powerful lobbying firm whose primary focus has been immigration reform. But just because Graham wants to bring foreign workers to the U.S., doesn't mean he'd let them into his fabled Silicon Valley accelerator.

If you're part of the elite Y Combinator startup cabal, you recently received this list—"57 startup lessons"—in your inbox. There are a few bits of decent, generic advice. It's also a tidy explanation of why startup creators are making terrible mistakes over, and over again.

If you read Nathaniel Rich's half-skeptical orbit around Y Combinator—one of tech's trendier cash camps—there's one important takeaway: the guy in charge really doesn't like foreign accents.