Being good at making connections and being seen as capable and trustworthy enough by your existing connections is absolutely a form of merit, an important one if you want to marshal enough people and resources and investors to build a successful company. My point was that the seemingly common mentality of "you have to be born into it, the rich only help the rich, etc" is not true, it's not a useful belief, and the counterexamples are not rare. It can help, certainly, but it's not a requirement by any stretch.