The Founders Betting on the Return of Offline Connection

The pivot is rooted in a shared critique of the last decade: that technology has eroded human connection. Putnam, who sold her fitness company Mirror for $500 million, has launched Board, a touchscreen table designed to bridge the generational divide in play. Walker, the architect behind Walker & Company Brands, is building Heirloom, a network of trade schools focused on manual crafts like leatherworking. Both ventures aim to monetize the act of gathering, a strategy gaining momentum as loneliness is increasingly categorized as a global health crisis by the World Health Organization.

This trend extends beyond individual projects to include veterans like Bonobos founder Andy Dunn and Audrey Gelman of The Wing. Dunn is developing a social life operating system called Pie, while Gelman’s Six Bells Countryside Inn uses immersive murder-mystery events to foster interaction. While these startups operate on a smaller financial scale than Adam Neumann’s $450 million-backed real estate venture, Flow, they reflect a broader shift in founder sentiment. Having already navigated the pressures of venture-backed exits, these entrepreneurs are betting that the next wave of value lies in analog experiences that resist the isolation of the screen-first era.