Yes, it is if you are an out-of-towner. There is no Caltrain stop at the airport. You have to figure out BART and then figure out Caltrain. The shared van shuttle to MV sucks too ... especially if there are any Stanford students on board. On some days, the line up for rental cars is insanely huge. Plus, the rental car depot is at the far end of the airport. If one values their time, taking the $120 cab to MV isn't that big of a deal.
Though to be frank if you are not willing to drop an extra $100 on getting to a potentially lucrative meeting like that then you probably were not confident enough the meeting might be a success that you should be going in the first place.
So "how the hell are we going to get there?, what if public transport like?, sod it I'll get a taxi" doesn't seem an unnatural situation to me.
Also the problem with rental cars is you have to drive down 101 which can be a nightmare especially if you don't know the road, in a cab you can at least sit in back and decompress/prep.
One of the YC App questions involves detailing a story of a real life hack. I know he didn't fill out the app, but I certainly hope that figuring out public transportation falls above the bar.
Figuring out how to use a system as designed isn't much of a hack...it would be more of a hack if he figured out how to reconfigure the system to route a bus or train directly past the front entrance of the building he was trying to get to.
