[ghaff]

I think you and I (also east coast) seem to have similar philosophies. I'm more retired than not these days. I'll certainly respond to a query by email or talk at a conference about my various former professions/experiences (which more often than not never get responded to). But I'm not going to refer someone just because we went to the same school but I've never met or because we had coffee for 30 minutes (unless they really impressed me in some way).

[cobbzilla]

maybe that’s the point. in the SV mentality I wouldn’t refer someone solely based on their credentials or a superficial connection either. It would be because I had an engaging conversation that made me think of you, and then thinking that you would also find value in having conversation with that person.

Because I know you’re curious and want the latest new ideas, it’s perceived as a gift in SV-land. I wouldn’t offer an experience that wasn’t win-win.

EDIT: thinking further about this, it’s really a difference in sampling techniques to ascertain reality and strategy.

In SV, you want to gather as many wild and crazy ideas as possible. You’re not upset if you have the occasional low-value conversation, because you have so many conversations with so many people that you can synthesize a hi-res picture of what you’re looking at.

I feel maybe the East Coast mentality is the inverse: I want to sample from few sources, whose quality is guaranteed to be very high.