Oh it's worse than that, it's what you know and who you know.

It's not who you know, it's who knows you.

If you see humanity as a brain and a human like a neuron, the network produces outcomes unimaginable from looking at the individual. Which is easy if you look at an individual stone-age human, and even they are actually more advanced thanks to culture and groups (tribes) than an individual human would be (which would be more akin to a "Mowgli", grown up without learning from and support of the group).

So it's no surprise who you know is important - the brain is mostly about connectivity, not about the individual neuron.

Just a model for thought, obviously not a complete description ("every model is wrong"). I think the value of this model, if you can warm up to it, is that you stop worrying that "it's all about the connections" - because it really is and it's useful that way because that's a major point of how a network works. So do work on your connectivity! And also just like in the brain, a few high-quality connections are worth much more than a thousand low-quality ones.