Site Management Do your connections from admin forums help you when starting a new forum?

[Baw$e]

When starting a new forum, does your past connections from admin forums help you grow your forum?

I started a poker affiliate forum a few days ago, and we already got 5 members who I either know from my poker forum, or other admins/forum owners. One of my new members recently started a new crypto poker site, and they found the site from a discussion on my forums.