Silicon Valley cares very much about your background. 50% of VC's are Harvard/Stanford. FB, Insta, MS, Snapchat, Amazon, Google etc. - Ivy League or Stanford.

Silicon Valley cares very much about your background. 50% of VC's are Harvard/Stanford. FB, Insta, MS, Snapchat, Amazon, Google etc. - Ivy League or Stanford. (Ok, Amazon and MS are not 'Valley' but ...) So the industry is more open to 'outsiders' of the cliques than say, banking - definitely, but it's still a clique, don't kid yourself.