It could, but you know what makes even more of a difference--to the business? Having customers and recurring revenue.
I know that funding is kind of like a nice additional checkbox on your list of upper-middle class elite treadmill objectives, but outside of sanfranistan we've somehow managed to build entire empires of real value without having to rely on venture capitalists who happened to get drunk in the same dorms that we did.
So, the assertion was "may make you more successful in funding"--you're moving the goalposts to "successful" after the fact.
Success and funding are not necessarily correlated, right? We saw that back in the 90s and are seeing it again.
I don't disagree that having these connections can ease certain parts of the fundraising (and even customer acquisition!) process--that said, I'm concerned that the emphasis placed a lot of times in the ecosystem is on funding and not the boring part of, you know, business.
My cynicism stems from the fact that, to me, the hip path these days has you going to an Ivy-league school or Stanford, starting a company, going through a well-known accelerator, raising funding from VCs, and then -~=magic startup time=~-. And for a lot of people, this path isn't about actually doing business--it's simply the thing that they're supposed to do and which it is implied is expected of them. All the while, spouting rhetoric about how they're going to "change the world" by chasing the same boring set of business concepts. I find it irritating.
I know that funding is kind of like a nice additional checkbox on your list of upper-middle class elite treadmill objectives, but outside of sanfranistan we've somehow managed to build entire empires of real value without having to rely on venture capitalists who happened to get drunk in the same dorms that we did.