[fearless]

It's not an entirely unreasonable heuristic. The supply of startup pitches is vastly greater than the demand for them. Investors have to filter somehow. Getting a first meeting with any VC is pretty easy, even for someone with no connections whatsoever. There are hundreds of possible paths you can take to get that intro. It's not a big stretch to assume that any entrepreneur with a good chance of success should be able to clear that low hurdle.

Building a successful startup is 1,000 times harder than hustling your way into a VC meeting. If you can't do the latter, it's pretty likely you won't be able to do the former.

[wisty]

It's also 1000 times harder than playing the national anthem on a recorder. But that's not a very useful filter.

To some extent, being able to work a social network (or cold call a contacts friends, and get them to introduce you) is an advantage to a start-up. But it's not really sufficient, and may not even be necessary (since it's something founders will learn as they go).

If it's an enterprise sales company, it's certainly a requirement though.