Networking by Numbers

Yesterday, I was listening to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar being interviewed on The Economist Boss Class podcast. He spoke about his eponymous —Dunbar Number—which defines the upper limit of relationships a person can meaningfully maintain. Networking in the financial sector has a similar math.

(And read to the bottom to learn why food is the ultimate deal fast-track.)

As Robin explains: if you walk into the Heathrow airport lounge at 3:00 a.m., spot someone across the room, and feel comfortable says hello with a slap on the back while they (importantly) recognize and welcome your slap—that person is one of your 150. These are your core social contacts. Your true network.

Dunbar looked at pre-industrial societies and found that traditional villages, clans, and military units tended to hover around the 100–150 mark.

Interestingly, Gore-Tex, famously applied this in the wild before Dunbar. It capped the size of each factory team at 150 employees. Rather than expanding a facility, Gore, the founder of Gore-Tex, built a new one or splits teams, ensuring that everyone knew each other by name. This approach fostered trust, open communication, and a flat organizational structure without traditional hierarchies. The result was a culture of collaboration and innovation, widely credited as a key factor in the company’s sustained success.

Within the 150 limit, our social networks break down into concentric circles:

• ~5 intimate friends
• ~15 close friends
• ~50 collaborators
• ~150 meaningful contacts
• ~500 known acquaintances

Of course we know more than 150 people; however, beyond the 150 magic number, relationships tend to become transactional. Familiar, yes. But shallow. And in finance—where trust, alignment, and credibility are currency—depth beats breadth.

CLA’s Network Architecture

At the CLA we have tried to make networking the core KPI of our community.  Canadian Lenders Association is made up of over 300 financial service companies, spanning traditional lenders, fintechs, banks, and vendor partners.

We’ve intentionally structured our community architecture to align with how people build trust:

• 5000+ CLA Community Members: Representing the full membership ecosystem.
• 150-person Roundtables: In order to drive engagement with have broken this down into under 150 people. We run over 15 sectoral and cross-sector roundtables—from Auto Finance and Real Estate to BNPL and Servicing—each with 50 to 150 participants, enabling meaningful exchange.
• 15-member Working Groups: When an issue demands deeper collaboration—like regulation, fraud, or open banking—we break down into small action groups that align with Dunbar’s most productive tiers.
• 1:1 Summits: At our four annual summits, we use networking apps and numbered table assignments to schedule targeted lender-to-lender and lender-to-vendor meetings—maximizing the ROI of in-person interaction.

Research shows that opportunity often comes not from our closest contacts, but from our “weak ties”—those just beyond our core circle, who offer different perspectives, networks, and ideas. CLA roundtables are weak-tie accelerators, helping members turn loose connections into strategic relationships.

At the same time, randomness alone doesn’t scale. That’s why we embed structure into every engagement—so that every room, breakout, or table has purpose. We don’t believe in networking for its own sake. We believe in working networks.

The CLA continues to push to develop more effective networking tools. This year, we are completely revamping our networking app and incentive system to better connect lenders with the broader ecosystem.

Here’s how we currently measure what matters:

• For every meeting between a lender and a non-financial services company (e.g., fintech or solution vendor), we donate $25 to charity—because meaningful partnerships should create shared value beyond the business table.
• We track and reward the most active networkers in our community with prizes, recognition, and exclusive opportunities.
• Most importantly, we evaluate our success based on actual partnerships formed, deals closed, and solutions implemented. Networking is not a side benefit at CLA—it is a core performance metric.

In finance, as in life, more is not always better. The most powerful relationships are forged through repeated, relevant, and real-world interaction.

As Canada enters a new era—defined by open banking, generative AI, embedded finance, and climate-aligned capital—the ability to find the right person at the right moment will be your strategic edge. Serendipity demands structure.

Food 👉 Networking

One thing the CLA does well is feed our friends. All events have exceptional catering. This is not by chance. Robin Dunbar most compelling finding is that sharing food is a key mechanism for networking. At a prosaic level, eating together triggers endorphins, the same chemicals involved in social bonding during grooming in primates. Shared meals help reinforce trust and cohesion, especially in groups around the 3–15 person range (close collaborators, friends, and family).

Food = networking:

• A Summit coffee or lunch network isn’t just a formality — it’s a neurological fast-track to building trust.
• Hosting small group dinners can be far more effective than large networking mixers = our famous CLA CEO Dinners.

Would you like this idea turned into a follow-up LinkedIn post — perhaps titled “Dunbar, Dinner, and Deal Flow”?

It is proven, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where Einstein once worked, communal lunches were a key reason many attribute free food to new ideas ideas and shared solutions. Similar stories exist at Oxford, Cambridge, and other research-heavy environments.  Sandwiched at the office or shared ideas at a well-heeled cafeteria. Sign up for a summit below 👇

Sign up for the CLA Finance Summit Series