The smartphone, long regarded as the center of modern digital life, may be approaching a turning point. Jon Callaghan, co-founder of Silicon Valley venture capital firm True Ventures, believes the way people use phones today will look radically different within five years—and could fade almost entirely within a decade.

For Callaghan, this is not casual speculation. It is a core investment thesis shaping how True Ventures deploys capital. Over the past 20 years, the firm has backed some of the most influential consumer and enterprise technology companies, including Fitbit, Ring, Peloton, HashiCorp, and Duo Security. Now, it is wagering that the next major leap in technology will not come from better phones, but from entirely new interfaces between humans and intelligence.

“We’re not going to be using iPhones in 10 years,” Callaghan said. “Even in five years, we’ll be using them in very different ways.”
Founded quietly in the Bay Area, True Ventures has built a reputation for avoiding hype while consistently producing results. The firm manages about $6 billion across 12 core seed funds and four opportunity-style funds, which allow it to double down on promising portfolio companies. Unlike many venture firms that lean heavily into social media visibility and founder branding, True has taken a low-profile approach, cultivating a close-knit network of repeat founders.

That strategy appears to be paying off. According to Callaghan, the firm has recorded 63 profitable exits and seven initial public offerings from a portfolio of roughly 300 companies. Notably, three of True’s four exits in the fourth quarter of 2025 involved founders who had previously worked with the firm and returned after earlier successes.

Beyond the numbers, however, Callaghan’s views on the future of human-computer interaction stand out in an era dominated by artificial intelligence hype and billion-dollar funding rounds. He argues that smartphones are fundamentally inefficient as interfaces for interacting with intelligence.

“The way we pull out our phones to send a quick message or write an email is inefficient,” he said. “They’re prone to error and disruptive to our daily lives.”
Convinced that better alternatives are coming, True Ventures has spent years exploring new interface models—ranging from software to hardware and hybrid systems. This instinct mirrors the firm’s earlier contrarian bets, such as investing in Fitbit before wearables gained mainstream acceptance, backing Peloton after numerous investors passed, and supporting Ring when its founder struggled to secure funding and was even rejected on the television show Shark Tank.

In each case, Callaghan said, the investment was less about the device itself and more about the new behaviors it enabled.
That philosophy is now reflected in one of True’s latest investments: Sandbar, a wearable device Callaghan describes as a “thought companion.” The product is a voice-activated ring worn on the index finger, designed to capture and organize ideas through spoken notes. Unlike multifunctional wearables or experimental AI gadgets, Sandbar focuses on a single task.

“It does one thing really well,” Callaghan said. “And that one thing addresses a fundamental human need that technology hasn’t met yet.”

Rather than constantly recording ambient audio, the device is intended to be used intentionally, capturing ideas at the moment they arise. Paired with an app and powered by artificial intelligence, Sandbar reflects a different vision of how people might interact with digital intelligence—one that is less intrusive and more natural.

True Ventures was drawn not only to the product but also to its founders, Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong, who previously worked together on neural interface technology at CTRL-Labs, a startup acquired by Meta in 2019. Callaghan said their shared vision and understanding of alternative interfaces set them apart from dozens of other founders the firm had met.

“It’s about what the ring enables,” he said. “It’s about behaviors we’ll soon realize we can’t live without.”

The idea echoes Callaghan’s long-standing view on Peloton. “It was never just about the bike,” he said, explaining that the real value lay in the habits and community the platform created.

This focus on behavior rather than hardware also informs True’s disciplined investment strategy. While many AI startups now raise massive sums at lofty valuations, True typically writes seed checks between $3 million and $6 million, aiming for 15 to 20 percent ownership. Callaghan says the firm will raise additional funds to support what is working, but he sees little value in accumulating capital for its own sake.

“You don’t need billions to build something amazing today,” he said.

Although Callaghan acknowledges the transformative power of artificial intelligence—and even suggests that OpenAI could eventually be worth a trillion dollars—he remains cautious about the broader funding environment. He points to concerns around capital-intensive infrastructure investments, including trillions of dollars projected for data centers and chips.

Still, he believes the most significant value creation lies ahead, particularly in the application layer, where new interfaces could unlock entirely new ways of living and working.

At its core, Callaghan says, successful early-stage investing requires conviction in uncertain territory. “It should feel scary and lonely,” he said. “It should be blurry and ambiguous, but you should believe deeply in the team.”

Given True Ventures’ track record—spotting opportunities in fitness trackers, connected bikes, smart doorbells, and now thought-capturing rings—Callaghan’s prediction that the smartphone era is nearing its limits is difficult to dismiss. With smartphone growth slowing to low single digits and wearables expanding at double-digit rates, the shift may already be underway.

How people interact with technology is changing, and True Ventures is betting that the future will move beyond the phone.

Source: Techcrunch