Or just start building your company without anybody else's money at all, or money raised outside of SV... and then become, as they say, "so good they can't ignore you." At the end of the day, these people are pragmatic... get enough traction and I'm pretty sure the "in the club or not" distinction disappears in the wash.

Of course, the best scenario is one where you never wind up needing VC money at all, whether it's from the Valley or elsewhere. But that might not work for everybody. Still, you can start without those guys in most industries, especially if you can code and are building a software product.

Obviously if you're doing a pharma play or something with huge initial capital costs, the equation changes, but I doubt the majority of this audience (HN readers) are founding pharmaceutical companies...