The smartphone might be humanity's most essential device, but according to True Ventures co-founder Jon Callaghan, we'll barely recognize how we use them in five years—and might abandon them entirely within a decade. It's a bold bet, but one backed by two decades of early-stage investing that turned Fitbit, Ring, and Peloton into billion-dollar companies. True is already hedging by backing alternative interfaces like Sandbar, a voice-activated ring designed as a 'thought companion' rather than another computing device.
Jon Callaghan doesn't mince words. "We're not going to be using iPhones in 10 years," the True Ventures co-founder said flatly in a recent interview. "I kind of don't think we'll be using them in five years." That's not idle speculation from some Twitter contrarian. It's a thesis True Ventures is actively betting tens of millions of dollars against.
For a firm managing roughly $6 billion across 12 core seed funds and another four opportunity funds, making that kind of call carries real weight. Over two decades, True has backed an almost prescient roster of hardware bets that seemed questionable at the time—Fitbit when wearables were a niche, Peloton after hundreds of other VCs said no thanks, and Ring when founder Jamie Siminoff was nearly broke and even Shark Tank judges rejected him. The firm boasts 63 profitable exits and seven IPOs from a portfolio of roughly 300 companies. When Callaghan talks about the future of human-computer interaction, people listen.
His core argument is refreshingly straightforward: smartphones are terrible at being the interface between humans and intelligence. "The way we take them out right now to send a text to confirm this or send you some message or write an email—that's super inefficient, and not a great interface," he explains. "They're prone to error, prone to disruption of our normal lives." As AI becomes the layer people interact with most, fumbling with a touchscreen feels increasingly outdated.
True's been quietly exploring alternative interfaces for years—everything from software to hardware. The latest bet is Sandbar, a startup building what Callaghan calls a "thought companion": a voice-activated ring worn on the index finger designed to capture and organize your thoughts through voice notes. It's not trying to be another AI Pin or compete with health-tracking rings. "It does one thing really well," Callaghan says. "But that one thing is a fundamental human behavioral need that is missing from technology today."
