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

On the surface, a game console and a leathercraft school don't appear to have much in common. But both founders think there's money in fostering the kind of connection that technology has eroded over the last couple of decades. 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.

Walker, who interned at Twitter while at Stanford business school, built the popular men’s grooming brand Walker & Company Brands, selling it five years later to Procter & Gamble for undisclosed terms (reportedly in the range of $20 million to $40 million). That both of them are at it again is less surprising than the fact that their dramatically different new startups share the same north star: bringing people together, offline, in the same room.