I live in SV for two years now (moved from NY, and from Ukraine before that). You can send a cold e-mail to almost anyone here asking for advice, and if you're polite, sound intelligent, and have sensible expectations, nine times out of ten you'll get a meeting. I'm talking about people whose bank accounts are as large as budgets of some small countries. These folks do it because they genuinely love the startup world and want to help out. This sort of openness is unheard of in the finance world in NY, for example.
Some people are inaccessible (you likely won't get a meeting with Steve Jobs by sending a cold email), but it's an exception rather than the rule. I also suspect it has more to do with his schedule than his attitude (unlike other parts of the world).
That being said, people will be people, and there's plenty of VIP-type nonsense going on here. The thing is, you can't think of these things in absolutes - you have to compare with the rest of the world, and SV is by far the most open place I've ever seen. That being said, I'd really like the culture of disrespect for the respectable here to get even stronger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kirzr6lnSs&feature=playe...
Some people are inaccessible (you likely won't get a meeting with Steve Jobs by sending a cold email), but it's an exception rather than the rule. I also suspect it has more to do with his schedule than his attitude (unlike other parts of the world).
That being said, people will be people, and there's plenty of VIP-type nonsense going on here. The thing is, you can't think of these things in absolutes - you have to compare with the rest of the world, and SV is by far the most open place I've ever seen. That being said, I'd really like the culture of disrespect for the respectable here to get even stronger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kirzr6lnSs&feature=playe...