If you read the biographies of famous British people, you soon get used to reading that X or Y did okay&#x2F;miserably at Oxford or Cambridge, but one day as they happened to bump into A or B who knew them from Oxford or Cambridge who said &quot;I&#x27;m looking for someone to do something. Do you want to have a go?&quot;<p>In the US, we already know from numerous surveys that after the first graduate intake, most software hires are made by personal recommendation - which is obviously going to exclude anyone who isn&#x27;t part of a network.<p>So those are two examples of the value of networks.<p>As for &quot;grit&quot; - what does the word even mean? If someone gambles everything in startups and loses everything three times in a row before giving up, do they have grit or not?