A small but number of founders are betting on bringing people together offline

Brynn Putnam and Tristan Walker have already done something that most founders only dream about: created companies so compelling that bigger outfits bought them. Putnam, a trained ballerina with a small chain of boutique studios, built the connected-fitness company Mirror and sold it to Lululemon for $500 million in cash less than three years later.

Founders tend not to love working inside other people’s companies — Putnam has said that life as a GM inside Lululemon wasn’t for her, while Walker lasted five years inside Procter & Gamble before striking out on his own.

Putnam’s new company, Board, which makes a 24-inch touchscreen table that recognizes physical game pieces as well as gestures, was built explicitly for a group sitting around it together than one person alone with a screen. Walker’s Heirloom is buying up and scaling fine-craft trade schools, starting with a leatherworking school in San Francisco founded by Hermès’s first American artisan-ambassador.

In June of last year, the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Connection formally classified loneliness as a defining global health challenge, estimating that one in six people worldwide are affected and linking the condition to about 870,000 deaths a year.

In a Harris Poll survey sponsored by Marriott Bonvoy earlier this year, two-thirds of Americans said they were prioritizing experiences, like travel, over material purchases this year.

Along with Putnam and Walker, two other founders whose newest businesses are focused on connection include Bonobos founder Andy Dunn and Audrey Gelman of the Wing.

One exception is WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann from Andreessen Horowitz, dwarfing everyone else in this story combined.