Getting physical.

As we’ve been recruiting guests for season two of “The Build” I’ve found myself steering toward founders who share my bias for shipping physical products or creating real-world experiences. As much as I love writing and developing, something really amazing happens the first time you see something you wrote or designed show up as a physical item on your doorstep.

If you’re working on something totally virtual, it’s still important to find a way to manifest this — either getting some company swag, or orchestrating a real-time meetup for your customers. There’s nothing like the experience of seeing something you made actually manifest itself in the real world, especially when all of us spend so much time behind our screens.

Here’s a flashback to one of my favorite episodes from season one of the show, when Yasmine Mustafa told me about making the leap from developing software to designing the prototype product at ROAR for Good:

I’ve never done drugs, but I imagine if I did that would be the feeling that I had wash over me when I 3D printed the first prototype and I held it in my hand thinking, looking at it and thinking, “Oh, my God. You were just an idea a few months ago and now you’re a thing that I’m holding.”

Join me for more outstanding conversations with company founders at The Build. We’re dropping new shows every Tuesday for the next few months. Follow this link to subscribe in iTunes, or with your favorite podcatcher app.