GREENWICH, Conn. — When he was campaigning for governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont talked frequently about creating a tech-friendly business culture.

What he did not mention as often was that he had a secret weapon — his wife, Annie Huntress Lamont, a leading venture capitalist whose deep Silicon Valley connections could help the financially struggling state become a bigger high-tech player.

Ms. Lamont, a founder and managing partner of a firm that has raised billions of dollars in venture funds for health care and financial technology start-ups, has sat on dozens of boards and been involved in the sale of 75 companies. It is a business that thrives on relationships, and she has a long list of friends.

“For me, the best thing I can do is be an advocate for the state, working with people and trying to bring businesses here,” Ms. Lamont, 62, said.

That would be a boost for a state that has ranked at or near the bottom in economic growth in the country over the past decade, where lucrative insurance and financial industry jobs have been replaced with lower-paying service industry positions and where public sector employment is 10,000 jobs shy of pre-recession levels.

Mr. Lamont, a Democrat whose inauguration is Wednesday, said that new jobs were his top priority and that start-ups were key to his plan.

“This used to be the start-up capital of the world,” Mr. Lamont said, noting that Sikorsky helicopters, Pratt & Whitney engines and the Frisbee were all created in Connecticut. “We lost a little bit of our entrepreneurial edge in this last generation. Annie and I have both been in that start-up world, so maybe we could get a little of that juice back.”

Ms. Lamont’s goal is to promote new businesses by setting up angel communities — a kind of investment club that pools its resources and provides capital to entrepreneurs.

“Boston and New York have thriving angel communities,” she said. “If you can advocate and provide some money to people who are interested in doing start-ups and also provide the mentorship, there’s a lot of talent in the state.’’

Still, some have expressed doubts that start-ups can change the trajectory of a state whose economic output is about the same as it was in 2005.

“The Lamonts are talking about innovation, but if, say, we get start-up companies here and they grow at a rate of 60 percent a year, that’s too slow,” said Fred Carstensen, director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut.

“In terms of scale, what you really want to do is get a Pratt & Whitney to put a facility with 1,500 jobs here,” Mr. Carstensen added. “What Connecticut really needs is big hits.”

Mr. Lamont, 65, started a cable television company in the 1980s, but he is better known for his political campaigns. In 2006, he beat three-term incumbent Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary for Senate, but lost to Mr. Lieberman, who ran as an independent, in the general election. He sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010, but lost to Dannel P. Malloy, the outgoing governor.

Mr. Lamont, whose great-grandfather was a business partner of J.P. Morgan, spent $38 million of his own money on his campaigns, including $12 million to win the governor’s race in November.

Now he inherits a state striving to reverse its financial fortunes.

General Electric dealt the state a particularly harsh blow when it announced in 2016 that it was moving its headquarters to Boston in search of a deeper pool of high-tech workers. When Mr. Lamont learned the news, he called a Yale classmate and neighbor in Greenwich, Indra Nooyi, who was the chief executive of PepsiCo.

“We were talking about losing companies because we can’t get the tech talent here, and she goes, ‘Talk to my friend. He runs Infosys,’” Mr. Lamont said.

Ravi Kumar, the president of Infosys, the India-based information technology giant, was considering an American expansion. Mr. Lamont recruited state officials and corporate leaders to sell him on Connecticut.

In December, Infosys opened offices in Hartford with 700 employees and a promise to add 1,000 more jobs in exchange for $12 million in state tax incentives.

“In terms of network, Ned has people in every walk of life,” Ms. Lamont said, ticking off his establishment ties from his days at Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College and Yale, as well as from his involvement with the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ms. Lamont’s network extends to newer corporate powerhouses.

During the campaign, one of Ms. Lamont’s closest friends from her college days at Stanford University came for an event.

The friend, Ruth Porat, the chief financial officer of Google and its parent, Alphabet, spoke at District New Haven, a business incubator.

“The value of public-private partnerships is great,” Ms. Porat told the crowd. “If we want to actually infuse and get some flight velocity in here, there are real opportunities to work closely together.”

Built in a former bus depot, District New Haven is a co-working space that houses two venture capital firms, law and accounting practices that provide advice to entrepreneurs, a soon-to-open school for software engineering, and a gym.

Angela Lee, an adjunct professor and chief innovation officer at Columbia Business School, was more skeptical about start-ups as, noting that investors often lose money.

“The fact that she can involve government and investment is great, ’’ Ms. Lee said, referring to Ms. Lamont, ‘‘but you also need to involve schools.”

In New York City, where Amazon says it plans to hire as many as 25,000 workers and Google announced that it would double its work force, highly regarded universities were part of the lure.

Connecticut could also leverage its public and private colleges, Mr. Carstensen said.

“We need to pull together the institutes of higher education to work collaboratively to support aerospace, biomedical development and information technologies,’’ he said. “Those are three areas where Connecticut can be competitive.”

Even before Mr. Lamont takes office, Ms. Lamont has been busy polishing Connecticut’s reputation, talking the state up to anyone who will listen. During a meeting with a businessman who was considering leaving Manhattan for a bigger home, Ms. Lamont suggested Connecticut. He later sent her an email saying he had started house hunting in the state.

“I’m selling Connecticut, one house at a time,” she joked.

Though she grew up in Wisconsin, Connecticut is where she met her husband the week she arrived, married him a year later — in a ceremony in 1983 catered by the not-yet-famous Martha Stewart — raised her family and established her career. The Lamonts, who live in Greenwich, have three adult children.

Her husband teases her about news reports that frequently refer to her as the family breadwinner.

“There are so many ways to define success,” Ms. Lamont said. “But Ned is probably more successful than 99 percent of America, and so I think we both contributed financially and in every other way.”

Mr. Lamont cut in.

“She’s pretty good,”he said, exaggerating her success. “I started up two companies. She started up 102 companies.”

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