"One of the biggest misconceptions about us is that you need to have pre-existing connections to get value from the network. Remarkably, you don’t. "
If Sam had said "you need them in Silicon Valley much less than anywhere else" it would be a true statement. But in an article I strongly agree with, this sort of thing... I'm not even sure what to call it, misinformation? Makes the rest ring hollow.
The networks here have vastly lower costs of entry and way fewer secret handshakes. But they still have them, and for many groups of people those costs are much higher than the median. It would have been easy to acknowledge that without diminishing the core point.