A column in the Mercury News last week got me thinking about this topic that is near and dear to my heart. Chris O’Brien wrote a piece about the new VC start up that Marc Andreessen and Benjamin Horowitz founded. They are confident that they can crack the top 10 VC firms pretty quickly and O’Brien asked them why? The reply may not surprise you. They said they don’t have any dramatic new approaches, no “secret sauce” so to speak. O’Brien wrote “Instead, they think that too many in the industry are professional VCs, rather than former entrepreneurs such as themselves. It’s a kind of “back-to-the-future” mindset, hearkening to the early days of the valley when most venture capital flowed from entrepreneurs.”

And I agree with Marc and Benjamin. Experience does count. That’s exactly why I founded STRe Solutions. Because we are a team of former operating executives that have been there, done that. We’ve walked in your shoes. And our experience benefits both candidates and clients. We have a perspective that professional recruiters don’t have. And it works. But most importantly I love what I do, and so does the rest of the team of STRe. It keeps us engaged in the “real world” and allows us to leverage our skills and expertise.