Yes and he was also part of the boys club by knowing a bunch of VCs. Who you know is more important than what you are building in the modern game of venture capital.
Your amount-of-luck is the surface area of a rectangle. A side is the interestingness of what you do, B side is how many know about it. The bigger the rectangle, the more opportunities you get.
This is how you get opportunities when you aren’t even in the room. Someone says ”Oh yeah I know <ksec>, they’re doing cool things X in the area you just mentioned an interest in”. Or ”Oh yeah for problem Y, you should ping <ksec>, they’re the expert”
Networking is all about who knows you, not who you know.