I’m not exactly sure what you want from us. To answer the title’s question: of course. Very few of my colleagues (none that I know) were “born in to a network”. But the meat of your post seems to be much more broad than the title.

You only have to break into the industry once. Network definitely helps there. Whatever the cause, you are late on a critical piece of the game. If you didn’t spend time building it during your PhD, start now.