This is yet another thing I hate about the brogrammer culture of VC-istan: the idea that if you can't get an introduction to that person specifically, you're garbage. Perhaps that applies to upper-middle-class males who were in Silicon Valley since they were in junior high school. But there are a lot of good people-- 40-year-old programmers who spent their career-building years Milwaukee for family reasons, but who studied on their own and became really good-- who end up at front doors because it's all they have. It's not fair to assume that he's an idiot and a loser just because he's at a front door.

You need social proof to get around all the purple squirrel requirements. A company that mandates 5 years of experience in a 3-year-old technology won't be able to hire outside of its immediate social network... which is sometimes fine, and sometimes crippling.