The phone is dead. Long live life. . . what exactly?

True Ventures co-founder Jon Callaghan doesn’t think we’ll be using smartphones the way we do now in five years – and maybe not at all in 10 years.

For a venture capitalist whose company has had some big winners over its two decades – from consumer brands like Fitbit, Ring and Peloton, to enterprise software makers HashiCorp and Duo Security – it’s more than just theory; this is a thesis that True Ventures is actively betting on.

True didn’t go that far following the crowd. The Bay Area firm has largely operated under the radar despite managing about $6 billion across 12 core seed funds and four “select” opportunity-style funds that it has used to pump more capital into portfolio companies that are gaining momentum. While other venture capital firms have become more promotional — creating personal brands on social media and podcasts to attract founders and deal flow — True has gone in the opposite direction, quietly cultivating a tight network of repeat founders. The strategy appears to be working: According to Callaghan, the company has 63 exits with gains and seven IPOs amid a portfolio of some 300 companies amassed over its 20-year history.

Three of True’s four recent exits in Q4 2025 involved repeat founders who returned to work with the company after previous successes, Callaghan says. Yet it’s Callaghan’s thinking on the future of human-computer interaction that really stands out in a sea of ​​hype and mega-tours around AI.

“We won’t use an iPhone in 10 years,” Callaghan says flatly. “I don’t think we’ll be using them in five years – or let’s say something different, a little safer – we’ll be using them in very different ways.”

His argument is simple: our phones are not used to interface between humans and intelligence. “The way we’re pulling them out right now is to text to confirm this or send you a message or write an email – [that’s] super inefficient, [and] “It’s not a great interface,” he explains.[They’re] prone to errors, prone to disruption [of] our normal lives.

He is so sure of this that True has spent years exploring alternative interfaces – software-based, hardware-based, everything in between. It’s the same instinct that led True to make an early bet on Fitbit before wearables were a no-brainer, to invest in Peloton after hundreds of other venture capital firms said “no thanks” and to back Ring when founder Jamie Siminoff continued to run out of money and even the judges on “Shark Tank.” sent him back. Each time, the bet seemed questionable, Callaghan said. Each time, the bet was on a new way for humans to interact with technology, more natural than the previous one.

The latest manifestation of this thesis is Sandbar, a hardware device that Callaghan describes as a “thought companion” – or, in more mundane terms, a voice activated ringtone worn on the index finger. Its sole objective: to capture and organize your thoughts using voice notes. It’s not about being another Humane AI pin or competing with Oura’s health tracking. “It does one thing very well,” Callaghan says. “But this thing is a fundamental human behavioral need that’s missing in technology today.”

The idea is not to passively record ambient audio but to be present when an idea arises, serving as a thought partner of sorts. It’s attached to an app, leverages AI, and, according to Callaghan, represents a very different philosophy on how we should interact with intelligence.

What attracted True to Sandbar founders Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong wasn’t just the product. “When we met Mina, we absolutely agreed on our vision,” recalls Callaghan. The True team had already been thinking about alternative interfaces for years, making targeted investments around this possibility. They met dozens of founders. But the approach of Fahmi and Hong – who previously worked together on neural interfaces at CTRL-Labs, a startup acquired by Meta in 2019 – stood out. “What is it about? [the ring] allow. It’s about the behavior it enables and which we will very quickly realize we cannot live without.

There’s an echo here of Callaghan’s old line about the Peloton: “It’s not about the bike.” For some, the bike – even its first iteration – was compelling. But Peloton was really about the behavior it enabled and the community it created; the bike was just the vessel.

This philosophy of betting on new behaviors – not just new gadgets – also explains how True has managed to stay disciplined when it comes to capital. Even though AI startups raise hundreds of millions at multibillion-dollar valuations up front, True insists she’s able to stick to what she does best, writing $3 million to $6 million seed checks for a 15 to 20 percent stake in startups she often gets to see first.

Callaghan says True will raise more money to fund what works, but he’s not interested in raising billions of dollars. “Why? You don’t need that to build something amazing today.”

That same measured approach colors his view of the broader AI boom. While he says (when asked) he thinks OpenAI could soon be worth a trillion dollars, and even though he calls it the most powerful computing wave we’ve seen, Callaghan sees warning signs in the circular financing deals supporting hyperscalers and their $5 trillion in planned capital spending on data centers and chips. “We are in a very capital-intensive part of the cycle, and that is worrying,” he notes.

That said, he is optimistic about the real opportunities. Callaghan believes the greatest value creation lies ahead – not in the infrastructure layer but in the application layer, where new interfaces will enable entirely new behaviors.

It all comes back to his core investing philosophy, which seems almost romantic — the kind of perfect venture capital wisdom that would ring hollow to most people: “It should be scary and lonely and you should be called crazy,” Callaghan says of early investing done right. “And it should be really vague and ambiguous, but you should be with a team that you really believe in.” Five to ten years later, he says, you’ll know if you were on the right track.

Regardless, based on True’s track record of betting on hardware that many others have missed — fitness trackers, connected bikes, smart doorbells and now thought-catching ringtones — it’s worth paying attention when Callaghan says the phone’s days are numbered. The key is to be early – and the trend lines support his thesis: The smartphone market is indeed saturated, growing at just 2% per year, while wearables – smartwatches, rings and voice-activated devices – are growing in double digits.

Something is changing in the way we want to interact with technology, and True is betting accordingly.

Pictured above is the Stream ring from Sandbar. To read more about our conversation with Callaghan, tune in to Strictly VC Download podcast next week; new episodes come out every Tuesday.