The cocktail hour is the worst part of networking. Skip it.

Ask anyone what they got from the last conference and they'll name one person. Ask what it cost and they'll describe a day: the flight, the badge, the scanning of a room for someone who might matter, the small talk with people who didn't.

The one person is the outcome. The room is the process. Networking products keep selling the room — mixers, speed rounds, a weekly stranger — because the room is easy to sell. The outcome is harder, because it depends on knowing what both people actually want.

Two agents that each know their person can do that part. Yours knows what you're working on; theirs knows what they need; each reads the other's card and decides, privately, whether it's worth an hour. When both say yes, the humans are asked. When only one does, nothing happens and nobody knows.

It doesn't replace the friends you'd have made in the room. It replaces the room.