Putnam's new company, Board, has developed a 24-inch touchscreen table that recognises physical game pieces and gestures, built for group play rather than solo screen time. Walker's Heirloom is acquiring and scaling fine-craft trade schools, beginning with a leatherworking school in San Francisco founded by Hermès's first American artisan-ambassador. Walker also runs Collaborative Holdings, a fund carved out of Collaborative Fund to give founders more time to build.
They are not alone. Bonobos founder Andy Dunn's company Pie, now five years old, has evolved from a friend-matching app into what he calls a "social life operating system" anchored by "Community Homes" — permanent digital hubs for recurring groups such as run clubs and watch parties. Audrey Gelman, who previously founded the women's co-working space The Wing (which folded during the pandemic amid equity accusations), now runs the Six Bells Countryside Inn, an 11-room guesthouse in the Hudson Valley that hosts monthly murder-mystery dinners where actors blend in and, by dessert, a character is found dead.
The timing aligns with growing concern about social isolation. In June 2025, the WHO's Commission on Social Connection estimated that one in six people worldwide is affected by loneliness, linking it to roughly 870,000 deaths a year. A Harris Poll survey sponsored by Marriott Bonvoy earlier this year found that two-thirds of Americans are prioritising experiences such as travel over material purchases, and the same percentage felt retail shopping had become too generic.
For now, the trend appears concentrated among East Coast entrepreneurs. Whether a touchscreen game table, a leatherworking school, a social platform or a murder-mystery inn can scale into sustainable businesses remains to be seen, but all four founders are betting that the demand for genuine offline connection is both real and profitable.