Field note · July 2026

Why network size is the wrong metric

Most people size up a deal router the way they'd size up a salesperson: by the length of the contact list. Bigger network, better router — goes the assumption. It's the wrong measure, and it's wrong in a specific way.

A router isn't paid to know more people than the next router. Anyone can buy a list. A router is paid to catch the moment when two independent parties have each, on their own, arrived at the same conclusion — that they need exactly this kind of counterpart — before either one has started dialing.

A cold intro to a thousand contacts converts worse than a warm one to two people who were each a phone call away from starting their own search.

That moment is narrow. It doesn't show up as a database field. It shows up in what's actually happening to a company right now — a facility citation, a restructuring filing, a plant closure — the kind of event that quietly starts a clock nobody announced.

The work, then, isn't building the biggest address book. It's filtering out the ninety-five percent of the market that isn't at that moment yet, so the five percent that is gets found fast enough to matter.

Network size is a vanity number. Timing symmetry is the actual business.

— Robbert van Dommelen routes B2B introductions wherever two sides are already circling the same conclusion.