John Callahan, co-founder of True Ventures, doesn’t think we’ll be using smartphones the way we do now in five years, and perhaps not at all in 10 years.
For a venture capitalist whose company has had some big winners over two decades — from consumer brands like Fitbit, Ring, and Peloton, to enterprise software makers HashiCorp and Duo Security — this is more than armchair theorizing; It’s a thesis True Ventures is actively betting on.
True, he didn’t get this far by following the crowd. The Bay Area firm has operated largely under the radar despite managing nearly $6 billion across 12 core funds and four “select” opportunity-style funds that it has used to pour more capital into portfolio companies gaining momentum. While other venture capital firms have become more promotional — building 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 Callahan, the company boasts 63 exits with wins and seven IPOs amid a portfolio of about 300 companies amassed over its 20-year history.
Callahan says three of True’s four recent exits in Q4 2025 involved recurring founders who returned to work with the company again after previous successes. However, it’s Callahan’s thinking about the future of human-computer interaction that really stands out in a sea of AI hype and mega tours.
“We won’t be using iPhones in 10 years,” Callahan says emphatically. “I don’t think in five years we’ll be using it — or let’s say something different, safer — we’ll be using it in very different ways.”
His argument is simple: our phones are poor at being an interface between humans and intelligence. “The way we go out now is to text you to confirm it or send you a message or write an email – [that’s] very ineffective, [and] “It’s not a great interface,” he explains.[They’re] Prone to error, prone to disruption [of] “Our normal life.”
To be sure, True has spent years exploring alternative interfaces — software-based, hardware-based, and everything in between. It’s the same instinct that led True to bet early on Fitbit before wearables existed, invest in Peloton after hundreds of other venture capitalists said “no thanks,” back Ring when founder Jimmy Siminoff kept running out of money and even judge “Shark Tank.” I sent him away. Each time, the bet seemed questionable, Callahan says. Each time, the bet was on a new way for humans to interact with technology, which seemed more natural than what had come before.
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The latest manifestation of this thesis is the Sandbar, a device Callahan describes as a “thought companion” — or in more mundane terms, a voice-activated ring worn on the index finger. Its sole purpose: to capture and organize your thoughts through audio notes. It’s not trying to be another humanistic AI staple or compete with Oura’s health tracking. “She’s doing something really good,” Callahan says. “But that one thing is a basic human behavioral need that is missing from today’s technology.”
The idea is not to passively record ambient sound, but to be there when an idea arises, to serve as a thought partner. It’s tied to an application, takes advantage of artificial intelligence, and represents, according to Callahan, a completely different philosophy about how we interact with intelligence.
However, what attracted True to Sandbar founders Mina Fahmy and Kirak Hong wasn’t just the product. “When we met with Mina, we were completely on board with the vision,” Callahan recalls. The True team has been thinking about alternative interfaces for years, and is making targeted investments around this possibility. As a result, they met dozens of founders. But the approach taken by Fahmy and Hong — who previously worked together on neural interfaces at CTRL-Labs, a startup acquired by Meta in 2019 — stood out. “It’s about what [the ring] He managed. It is about the behavior it enables, which we will soon realize we cannot live without.
There’s an echo here of Callahan’s old line about Peloton: “It’s not about the bike.” For some, the bike – even in its first iteration – was compelling. But Peloton was actually about the behavior it enabled and the community it created; The bike was just a ship.
The philosophy of betting on new behaviors — not just new tools — explains how True has managed to stay disciplined with capital. Even as AI startups raise hundreds of millions at multi-billion-dollar valuations, True insists she can stick to what she does best, which is writing $3 million to $6 million in seed checks for a 15% to 20% ownership in startups that she often sees first.
Callahan says True will raise more money to fund successful projects, but he’s not interested in raising billions of dollars. “Like, why? You don’t need that to build something amazing today.”
The same considered approach colors his view of the broader AI boom. While he says (when asked) that he believes OpenAI could soon be worth $1 trillion, and while he calls it the most powerful computing wave we’ve seen, Callahan sees warning signs in the circular financing deals backing hyperscalers and their expected $5 trillion in capital spending on data centers and chips. “We are in a very capital-intensive part of the cycle, which is worrying,” he points out.
However, he is optimistic about where the real opportunities lie. Callahan believes the greatest value creation lies ahead – not at the infrastructure layer but at the application layer, where new interfaces will enable entirely new behaviors.
It all goes back to his basic, almost romantic, investing philosophy — the kind of utopian venture capital wisdom that might ring hollow to most: “It should be scary and lonely and you should be called crazy,” Callahan says of early-stage investing done right. “And it has to be really nebulous and ambiguous, but you have to be with a team that you really believe in.” After five to 10 years, you’ll know if you’ve found something, he says.
Either way, based on True’s track record of betting on devices that many other companies have missed out on — fitness trackers, connected bikes, smart doorbells, and now thought-capturing rings — it’s worth paying attention when Callaghan says the phone’s days are numbered. The point is to be early – and the trend lines support his hypothesis: the smartphone market is already saturated, growing at barely 2% a year, while wearables – smartwatches, rings, and voice-enabled devices – are expanding at rates exceeding 10%.
Something has changed in the way we want to interact with technology, and True is placing its bets accordingly.
Pictured above is the Sandbar Stream Loop. For more on our conversation with Callaghan, follow us on Download StrictlyVC Next week’s podcast; New episodes drop every Tuesday.
