From my experience (non-technical), it's more about who you know rather than what you do. But, people don't know you unless you do something. It's a vicious circle.
That's not really a vicious circle. People not knowing you shouldn't prevent you from trying to do something.
Do something cool and show it to an online community related to whatever you did, or even Hacker News or Reddit if it has general appeal. If it isn't cool enough to impress them, you'll generally at least get some feedback with which you can make your next attempt better.
If you keep at it and care enough to improve, people will start to know you.
Maybe that's true for non-technical people (though I have strong reservations). But for coders and other techy types there's a rock solid metric of how good you are, which is to look at what you've built. Who knew Mark Zuckerberg before facebook? Who knew Patrick Collison before Auctomatic/Stripe?
If you are passive, people dont know you unless you do something. If you are active in seeking out interesting people, then you can be somebody who "knows people."
