"If you move to the valley and send a letter home to your mom about how you bumped into Fred Wilson in a coffee shop, she would probably not run off to tell all her friends about it."

Yeah, but Fred Wilson is the Silicon Valley equivalent of a Harvey Weinstein. And, while I'm sure some people know who the Weinsteins are, they're not as famous as, say, Tom Hanks.

Ask your random sample who Steve Jobs is. Then, you'll get some traction. He would be the SV equivalent of Stephen Spielberg. Or, perhaps Bill Gates or Michael Dell, the respective George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis equivalents the tech world.