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We cover topics on healing, health, happiness, growing wealth and living wise in a world that often sabotages you.
Hey everybody. I am so excited to do this in person
episode here today at Reno Startup Week. And we all have our Reno Startup Week
badges. I am here with. You guys are just my favorite
startup ever.
So Brennan Jordan and Austin
Boer. I'm saying the names correctly, he told me. And it's the
first day of October, so this is so thematic. Boer,
right? It's your name, so it is your name. But they. I
followed them a little bit along on their journey since I got here a year
ago and so I'm gonna have them tell it in their own words.
So why don't you guys kind of introduce how you know each other
and tell us a little bit about your story. Yeah, it started when
we met at the University of Nevada Reno here in reno.
Was it 2016? Yep. Oh my gosh, you're so old
now. Yeah, yeah. Way back in 2016.
We met at. We met here at school and
finished school up. We took off across the world. I
moved to China right after school. This all relates, I promise.
I moved to China right after school and then Brendan ended up following me out
there and we spent. We had one conversation in
what, 2019. And in China they have this app called
WeChat and it brings so much functionality, so much utility, but
at the same time there's still games and social media on it and it makes
living life in China very easy, especially as a non interesting
at the time, a non Mandarin speaker. And for
us we saw all the utility in communication and how helpful it can be, but
you also see all the distractions. And for us, we had one conversation
just wanting to delete social media off our phones and
really that was it, one conversation. There wasn't anything where
we could like delete Instagram, for example, because that's where all our friends and
family knew to communicate with on.
So we brought it back up a couple years later
and we saw that nobody was making a phone that
had all the communication utility and super helpful functionality without
any of the distractions. So no one's making it.
We drew up our idea on a note card and we found a huge online
community of people looking for exactly what we just
drew. So we're like, well, there's a market for it, so we might as well
just make it. And here we are. I love it. I love
it. Well, and also I think it's super interesting that because you
guys are, you know, Gen Z's, right? Would you
consider yourself Gen Z's very young though? I'm on my own Cusper. You think
you're still okay, well, they're a Cusper 30. But they're
30. I'm 30, so okay, to me
30 is Gen Z. But whatever. They're on their cuspers, whatever.
But young. So it's like. And usually we think of this
generation as being the ones who are so phone addicted they never get
off their phones. But I think that actually might be Gen
X, which is my generation. I don't know,
like it's just, you know, I think it can hit every generation. So
you guys call a dumb phone Brennan, I'll have you. Like, right.
Dumb smartphone. Is that right? There's a. Call it what you
want. What people search for when they're searching for product like
ours is dumbphone Is Dumbphone? Okay. Yeah, It's kind of counterposed
to smartphone because it's supposed to have less functionality
than a smartphone. So that's why people call it a dumbphone. There's
a Reddit, a subreddit called R/Dumphones where if
you're looking for a product like a flip phone or anything up to a sleek
phone, you're probably going to find grassroots
research conversations around what phone's good for what, what
feature set do you need? Here's my experience using it here I bedazzled my flip
phone. Look how cool it is. So that's fun. And that grew
from like 30,000 two years ago to I think it's at
130,000 members as of today. So
it's a 130,000 members on what. Is that the subreddit
R/dumphones? At least 130,000. Oh wow. Yeah, that's awesome.
So it's a growing movement and people are one
realizing how
much too much technology can be and the dangers of that and what that
looks like and making more and looking
for more viable options to get off of them or
other phones that are opposite to what
smartphones fully entail. Yeah. So what does your phone
do? What can your phone do? Yeah, so we can
we break it down by the 5M's maps, money,
messaging, life management and music. So
kind of all the essentials. So basic calling, messaging.
But now we need more things for today's technological world.
So we need to be able to scan QR codes, we need to open links,
we need to be able to send friends money on Venmo or book an Uber.
And that's making a lot of some of the super dumb phones
kind of inaccessible for some people just because there's too much
friction and it doesn't fit in their lives. So they want something with a bit
more functionality, which is where we come in. Yeah, I love it.
Two big differentiators as well, especially when we started
is people who are looking for us is
people who want to use a flip phone
but their lifestyle prohibits that possibility because they
have work apps, they need access to their banking apps or they're not willing
to sacrifice on the comfort, so they're willing to take the hit to their attention
span and all that just because the comfort that they have now
with the applications available on the phone, they're just not willing to live without. Two
big ones for our generation is
Instagram messages and just messages on
a lot of these social platforms. That's pretty huge, isn't it? Yeah.
So there is this company that was founded just about when we were founded
called Beeper. What Beeper does is they're like
similar to how Apple aggregates all your emails into one
unified inbox across Gmail Outlook.
Beeper does that for your DMs. So they have Instagram DMs,
they have Facebook DMs, LinkedIn, Slack,
Signal Discord. And so but just the messaging component. So you
can have that. You can keep all your chats, your group chats, your work chats
without needing the full social apps. So that's
helpful. And then people wanted to search the Internet as well. They wanted
to, you know, there are so many times in the day you're going to want
to do a quick Google. And so how do we give that to people in
a dumb phone format without exposing them
to the entire Internet? What we did is we gave them
a tool developed by a company called Perplexity,, which
is one of the first companies to do the Google AI
search results at the very beginning, which is what you might be familiar with.
So basically you search the web, it gives you an
answer based on real up to date web results. And so you can
get answers to your little everyday questions without having to have
a web browser. So that's kind of extra special sauce in what
we Kindle. That's very cool. That's kind of. Those are different things from
when I know I first talked to you guys last year. So it's basically all
the usability is there without the doom scrolling right
before bed for three hours. So not that I know
anything about that. No, no, we're all very responsible
at that time. I am not always very responsible. Right. I think
I can sometimes go, oh my gosh, there went two hours on doom scrolling
or whatever. Maybe not doom scrolling, but scrolling one way or the other.
So it happens very fast. It happens very fast, for sure. A big
part of it, too, is. I mean, what's your experience? Do you think that you
consciously make the choice to do that? Open Instagram or. Right.
You know, it's just habit or just. It's addiction, probably
of some kind. I imagine there's different levels. But, I mean, the
amount of times that I can remember when I was using my iPhone, just like,
I'll open Instagram, do something, put it away, and then
just for five seconds to take it out again and press the app
without me even thinking about it. Yeah. Such an
interesting sensation. Well, it could be like, it's just, you know, we're sitting around and
there's people around, but we're anxious. It could be an anxiety thing, like, oh, social
anxiety. So let me pull up my phone. I think that's a big thing, too.
It used to be we just sat awkwardly in silence in the
80s. But no, we were also taught that.
Boredom was a bad thing and that we
should be doing something constantly. And if there's any sort of downtime, we
need to fill it with something. And that only got
magnified with smartphones, because now, even when I'm going
up an escalator, it could be 10 seconds. You pull out your phone to
fill that time. You can no longer sit in silence. And
what boredom does is it helps with being creative, and it helps
bring new ideas upon us. And you look at kids and they
create these magical kingdoms that they think of out of boredom.
And you only get there through that boredom and them trying to find that time.
So we are getting rid of all of that time. And even now with kids,
they're also getting more. Getting rid of that time now to sit there and just
be creative, think outside the box and just do stuff? Yeah.
Yeah. So how is it going? Like, I know you guys have.
People are starting to buy these all over the place. Tell me a little bit
about the process you've gone through to build it.
So our strategy we've taken is working with different
strategic influencers in the market. We found
we don't really have that big of a following. We're kind of new at this
whole space, so why don't we go to the people who
already have huge followings, who have ideas, who are trying
all the different phones and can give us feedback. And if anything, it was more
for feedback initially because they've tried everything so they can tell us
how our idea compares to everybody else or what we're doing. Are we
on the right track? That Seems smart. And we found
with our first influencer worked very well. So we kind of just
kept doing that with more and more influencers and now we went out of
the minimal and dumb phone space and now we're in more tech. We kind
of, we didn't grow out of the tech space, but we're also exploring lifestyle at
the same time. So we have different influencers in these different niches to
kind of reach their own audiences on their own value ads. So you mean
you're in those spaces with the influencers. The influencers are in those space talking
about your phone. Correct. So they'll sit there, they'll use it for
whatever their purposes are because everyone uses phones to
differently. Right. And for sure they'll share
it, say how it fits in their life and then
their audience relates with them. Oh, this is something that's practical for
me as well. I can possibly use this. Right. I love that.
So you guys have used services I know with Reno Startup Week or different
things like that. What is, what is. So we're at Reno Startup Week and you
guys did a talk here, but tell me first, first,
Brennan, I'll ask you, so what have you used from services
for anything in Northern Nevada or here? Services
in Northern Nevada? I think everything starts from
people's willingness to
lean into the community for people who want to
pour into Northern Nevada just to make it a richer
culture, as well as to bring business, non profit, just
social and commercial activity to the area. And so there's a
great grassroots community of people who are trying to start things,
help people who are trying to start things. And then there are a whole bunch
of different services like the Innovation center attached to the University
of Nevada that they've made to let these people gather
and to support each other. So the biggest advantage is probably
the grassroots in the community here and just the openness.
Yeah. So this is the third year of Reno Startup
Week. First year we came with just an idea. We had
no code behind it. We just came with an idea. We didn't even
know if this was the right place for us. And quickly we found a
niche of other people like us and a lot of our friends
now today who grew out of this space. And we all
got together once a week, get together, just co work together.
Well, that's cool. Quickly magnified, year over year.
Yeah, we. Okay, there was a fun,
here's a fun, very community oriented example for
why like Reno Startup Week is really helpful.
We. The first year there was a challenge.
Go take these pictures at all of these locations.
Post them on your Instagram to get this prize, which
was. It was like a spa retreat at
the Grand Sierra or something like that. Oh, fun. Yeah, it was awesome. See, I
missed that one. Well, we're like, alright, you know what, we could parlay the
spa retreat into something else. So we busted our butts, posted
all the pictures, ended up beating one of our good friends now who's
also. A. Person creating really
cool stuff in the science space. We beat her. Don't feel bad. But
we got the spa retreat. And we're like, hey guys,
whoever can get us the most emails onto our email list will get
the spa retreat. Oh, that's so smart. Yeah. So
there was a war between two of our friends and
they were always texting us like, hey, what's this person at? Hey, what's this person
at? So we grew our initial email list pretty well
off that. That's amazing. The best part is we had
a launcher version, so just kind of. It mimics the UX UI
or mimics the design of our phone. There's nothing really behind it,
but it mimics our phone. And we
didn't have Instagram or it was
Instagram posts. So we had to go and connect to WI fi wherever we were
to be able to upload the post by a certain time every day to be
within this, this running.
And the last day I was, we went, took the
picture and I was racing back the Innovation center to connect to their
WI Fi because the coffee shop we were at, their WI Fi was down. So
I had to race back to get the last posted so we could end up
winning the competition. So it was like
the, the hoops were already. And the frictions were already there for us. Trying
to post things online without having having social media on their
phone. That is. That's wild. It was also
a good teacher and you get what you give. Because
they were trying to promote Reno Startup
Week, they were trying to get engagement with all these things that they were trying
to build around getting this thing off the ground. And we were
willing participants in the stuff. They were doing that along with other
like, hey, how can we help you? Oh, hey, can we move this food? Can
we move this table? Even though we weren't volunteering with them now, Austin is
twice in a row now, but because of that,
you are generous with your time, your attention and your energy and then you get
that energy back. And so that was a really good teacher
for us. Yeah. And this whole thing is free, which, you know, I think
someone had. I told someone I was speaking Yesterday. And
they're like, well, how much does it cost? I'm like, no, the whole thing's free.
And then I've seen some business owners post on Facebook. They're like, well, we don't
even know anything about this. How come no one invited us? I'm like, well, they,
they're, they're promoting it as best they can and it's free, so
come on and come, you can come. This is open to the public and that
is really, I think, remarkable. I don't know that there's that many. I don't know
how many communities really have this, but I have, this is the first time I've
heard of it. In a community, that's for sure. Yeah, it's,
it is, it is interesting because on the startup or small
business side, you also need to be doing everything you can looking for opportunities
like this. Yes. You don't know it exists, but you
really try. And for us, you look for every
opportunity to increase your statistical chance of success. Right.
And Reno Startup Week for us was a huge step in
the right direction for that. Yeah, it's amazing. So what was the
talk on? Who talked, who talked? A lot of us. You both did. All right,
what'd you give the talk on? I missed it. So we were on a panel
with two of our advisors, Saf and King,
and it was about doing good versus doing well. And it's all about
leading mission driven, vision driven
companies and startups. And then on our other advisors time, he's
a mission impact investor. So we got both of the mission and
vision central decisions being made on
both sides of the spectrum. That's amazing. So tell me about the
advisors. Who the. How, when did you get them? How did you get them?
What's that about? Is that like someone who's come in and invested with you guys
in their time or money or. Yeah, what they do. A lot of time. A
lot of time. A lot of time. Nothing. Yeah, nothing money wise yet.
But the. Another one of the events in town,
I think it was Launch Reno or
it was one of these events where it's a speaker series.
So somebody from some facet of the startup community
goes and speaks and you just have drinks and then you go and hang out
with other founder types, anybody interested in the community. And
on this particular one, King, who is the impact investor,
was giving a talk about a fund he had just raised and examples of
companies he had funded. And what is an impact
investor do? What does a company look like in the
portfolio of an impact investor? And for us we're like, oh,
we're pretty socially oriented. Let's check this out. So then we met him and we
sent him an email and we just kind of said
hello. We weren't really asking for money, but it was more like, hey, let's introduce
ourselves. You seem to be in the same orbit of something that we're trying to
do. I love that other guy. His
name is Saf. Really cool dude. We
met him through a pre accelerator called G Beta, which.
Awesome. Yeah, G Beta. Yeah, yeah. It's through the
Generator program. And tell everyone
about the generator program because not everyone's from Reno and probably even if they are
from Reno, they don't know what Generator is. So Generator is an accelerator program.
What an accelerator is is they invest money into your company
in exchange for equity and you get not only that money, but you get
business mentorship, you get connections in the community.
If you're looking to make connections with all investors as well, they help
make connections for you. So it's super beneficial if you're
trying to get your company off the ground. Yeah. And we did the free
version of that. So we got no money, but we didn't have to give up
any of our company. But we got all the mentorship and all the business
connections. And for us at that time, that's what we wanted. We weren't
raising any money where it was called bootstrapped or we're paying
ourselves our way through. We're funded by sales of our
phone. So we went through that version and for us, that was
more beneficial what we wanted to do. We got into that program
and we met one of our other advisors
along with a lot of other people in the community. We were are willing to
work with early stage companies and help out. I love that. And I was at
that talk. Yeah, that. How long was that last year? Was it a whole year
ago? About now? Ish. I've been to two of your talks. Yes. I just missed
the one this time. But you know, at our launch party, which was May
4, 2024 there and then October
4. G beta. Yeah, which it was a little over a year
now. Yeah, sounds right. We were presenting. Yeah. Yeah. That's
why it's so fun to watch you guys do this because you've really like
jumped in and kept the ball going.
So tell me about sales. Like, how is it going? We went through.
I mean, it's a cold start problem. I think there's a book written about it.
But how do you go from nothing to something
like Austin said we did, we're exclusively
influencer based right now. I guess the industry term would be
gifting campaigns. So what we do is we give people a phone
and not even asking for a video, just say like try it
out, you have expertise. And then eventually if they give their input enough,
then they're bought into the project and they deem that that would
help their users and thereby help their viewership,
they'll make a video about it. I love that in that process
more videos would come. As we develop the product more. As we develop the
product more, we went from alpha, which we call it a
beta alpha, very early stage, alpha.
And beta, all the same critical bugs. So
basically the first step was we couldn't, you know, we were making
sales. We started with
one sale and oh my gosh, just some, some person in a
state that we hadn't discussed ever. Probably just like,
wow, this person really. Believes that they just, they found you. Yeah. And then
you get a couple a month and we still
had to put our own money or go do all these side jobs to continue
funding the business. And then over time we would get maybe
one or two a week and then it's like, okay, now maybe we
can really scrape by, only put a little bit more money
in ourselves. And then we would start to just
flatline, just start to pay our bills through sales, which is kind of where we're
at right now. So it's really, you know, that's amazing though. I mean, that's amazing.
You know, it's really hard to do a startup, it's really hard to do a
startup where it's not an idea that's proven. This is a new
idea that, you know, maybe some other people somewhere have had
that still is really relatively not being used
or tried or anything else like that. And to take that and then make it
something that, you know, hey, it's, it's, it's
rolling. That's. And paying bills. That's. I think that's. Give yourself a pat on the
back. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Benefit of how we've gotten
this far bootstrapped is by talking with all of our
users. And this is extremely important because with
limited resources coming in, we need to use those resources
very methodically. Yeah. For us taking the time,
speak with our users, making ourselves available, we don't guess
what we need to build. We know exactly what we need to do to get
to that next step. And then if you sit there, you listen to them and
then you implement what they asked or what they said, there was an issue,
they're bought in even more because like, oh, I'm being listened to. They're actually
turning this a part of development and you just create more evangelists. And
then they're starting to spread the word with friends and we're starting to see that
more. More now is like people are spreading the word with friends and family
and bringing them on board. Or we've had a lot of people buy
phones in multiples so they're buying two or three phones because they're like I'm
doing this with my husband or I'm doing this with my wife or I'm doing
this with my rest of my family or one of my friends. So they're doing
it in kind of groups to kind of one maybe holding, hold each other
accountable because it is, it's easier to create a community. Yeah,
yeah, there is. There's a lot of like minded people who are looking
to make the switch. And one thing we heard a lot in those
initial interviews is I've tried a complete dumb phone and I felt very
isolated because one texting on it is difficult
and everyone's on social media and so messaging. So for us
trying to cultivate and create a community where people know that they're
not alone on this journey has been very beneficial. That's
awesome. That's awesome. And you've done that through influencers. Through
influencers. And then we have like an online. And your own thing.
Yeah, we talk every, we try to talk to all of our users once a
month. It's a little bit less possible now with all of the users that we
have and all the different countries we have. So it does make it a bit
more difficult. But we do everything we can. And they all have my personal number
and get a hold of me. Oh wow. We've
built it into the product too. Like right on the home screen there's a button
that you put push to tell us if there's a bug or you have a
suggestion or you want an app. So in addition to texting, in addition to
the group chat that we have for all the users, it's literally in the product
to encourage people to say like, hey, talk to us, we care. I think that
sends a strong signal to them about like how much we want
to input. So how many countries, different countries is
this in now? 10. 10 different countries.
Do you want to tell the story of that? You guys have some interesting
stories because I've heard some over the years, the year and a half that I've
been here. I guess I say years but it's not been that long. So it
was an accident that we went international.
One company who is a dumb phone, minimal phone retailer,
they buy a bunch of phones from us, put them on their website, and then
they sell to their user base. They
bought 10 or 15 phones initially for our first
go around. And I got an email, or we got an email
for a couple of Swedish apps. This guy's like, hey, I just
bought your phone. Can you add these apps to the app
store? We're like, oh, well, I guess we're in Sweden now. I guess we're now
an international company. So it was kind of an accident. It's so
funny. But it just kind of kept going and building on itself. And
it shows that this isn't just a problem here in the states of like people
wanting to disconnect or use this intentional tech. It's
a worldwide thing and people are becoming more aware of it. Yeah, that's amazing.
So tell everyone how you started with getting the technology
side of it's interesting. And how you got the phones to
even start selling them. You,
and this is for any endeavor, have to just really understand
the problem. And if you really study the problem
and it helps if you have the problem yourself, you understand what the
solution needs to look like. So when we were looking at. Man, that's
really great wisdom, actually. Yeah, I almost want to say it again when I hear
really great wisdom. So it's like when you really know what the
problem is and you know what it is you want to see,
because then you know what you're looking for and then that drives your
decision making. Yeah, exactly. I love that. And so when we were looking
for. Thank you. Yeah, we were looking for
just a way to reduce our screen time, but we need Uber, WhatsApp,
Venmo, all this. We went to look at the market and everyone
innovating in the intentional tech space
making these dumb phones. They were all kind of making their own
hardware or optimizing for like,
build these, this subscription for like family communities,
which is cool. But the product was moving away from what the core
needs to be, which is a software problem. Like, we have a specific
set of, like software requirements and a specific set
of softwares we want prohibited. So to make that happen, that's fundamentally
software. So then when we went to look at like, what tools
exist to bring this product into
existence, we're like, okay, let's just start
with software. And then from there, do we do an app? Do
we do like a full operating system? And then we say, okay, with an app,
there's workarounds screen time limiters. You can just get around them really
easy. So how do we make it impossible for someone to escape our
framework? You gotta go all the way down, make your own operating system
and then you make these small decisions and then they add up over time
to what we have now, which is an operating system that we built
that is based on the Android open source project. And we said, well
we need some hardware because you can't just hold an operating system.
You really can't. This is super hard to do that.
We just took the millions that we had from our
family and we made it fun. Just kidding. Nice. There's no millions from this. I
know, I know. That's why this is so cool. Like you hear. I just, I
think I saw a post today on social media because I'm still on social media.
Whoops. But no about you know,
the self made millionaires kind of thing.
We're not self made. They were very much funded by their family.
So. Yeah. And to be honest, like yeah, our families have given us a lot
of support. Yeah. Like we were able to stay with my parents.
Like a big lore thing that we have is like one of my
things can help. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. So it was great. We were
bunking in the early days. And that's a good deal.
But hardware, refurbished hardware is becoming very popular.
It's the fastest growing, one of the fastest growing segments in consumer
electronics. So we just said okay, what
hardware smartphone are out there that we can put our operating system on?
And we decided to go with the Google Pixel. Super high quality
cameras, high build quality, reliable name
and very developer friendly. So we decided, you know what, if it ain't broke, don't
fix it. Let's put our operating system on Pixels. And
that's what we're doing now. Oh, that's awesome. There's so many good
phones just sitting in warehouses that one take a lot of
materials to create in the first place and for them just to sit there and
not be used again. Which the whole recycling phone market is kind
of meant to do. Right. It's kind of a no brainer to
use these at least until anymore. You know, eventually
they will break eventually, you know, new tech comes for us to innovate
on and build, build upon. Maybe it will be our own phone one day but
right now, you know, it is, it's very reliable. It's great.
Why use anything else? Yeah, I love that.
It just seems very smart to me. And you're making it work.
So what is next for you? Guys, what's your next goals and
visions with this? The directions, full release.
We are trying to shoot to get to full release by the end of the
year. We're doing a lot of things and. Tell
me what full release means. Basically just the phone is completely ready for
consumer use. It's out of the testing trial period.
Okay. Because you're still been doing that, but it's more like you feel like it's
about to wrap up then. Yeah, we're getting closer. A lot of the critical bugs
are gone. We're getting closer and closer to a little
bit more frictionless experience. So there's not as much friction. It's
easier for the user to swap over, it's easier to use.
But there is some things we will always continue to innovate and build upon.
But there's a couple of things that we're trying to finish for us to get
past that finish line. Yeah, I love that so much. And
I do definitely see a market in different. Well,
it's not just, you know, you guys who are just like, you know, we don't
want all those distractions, but then there's also people who are like,
you don't want. There's other. Maybe I can't even say it, but I see it
as a mother, I see it for kids. I know maybe you can't market directly
to kids like that, but, or to families. But you know, I see that as
someone who's like, I would like limited use because there's too many
war stories, horror stories, for things that happen to kids.
And you know, sometimes boomers don't want all that technology either,
you know, so, you know, that might be another, you
know, I know everyone's age and every.
I think of an aunt and an uncle, different sides of the family,
but who were in their 80s and it's like they will receive a text,
they will not necessarily respond, you know, so, you know, like, it's just like
just the different technology things and maybe just people don't want to deal with it.
So there's a lot of people I think that are just like, I just don't
want to deal with all this stuff. Yeah, people, people from all these different areas
are reaching out to us. Like, when is this ready for kids?
When is this ready for older adults? We have a lot of companies,
small to medium sized businesses that we're in conversation with and they want it for
their industry and benefits for them. So we have people reaching out
for us in all these different areas. For us, it's just getting it past that
finish line so we can start exploring these other areas. Yeah, I love that.
I love it. It's exciting. It is so exciting. So
anything else? Any other fun stories you guys want to share or
thoughts before we wrap up? I just, I love talking to you guys so much
and I've been. It's so been so much fun following you. So I'm gonna keep.
I'm gonna keep interrupting you just like that. Just for fun, folks.
Go ahead. We'll have a follow up episode. Interruptions only. Yeah,
interruptions only. That's right. No, I have a bad habit
of cutting people off mid speech. I think that's how I like. Everyone's got a
different. This is such a tangent. I'm just doing it to you right now. Just
for fun. Exactly. Like some people, it's just a different conversation style.
But it doesn't work for everybody, huh? No, but
we talking a lot about the tech and the come ups of like
how we've done it, but kind of at the end of the day, the reason
that we're doing it and the reasons why the customers buy the phone is
the it's on theme of why Reno Startup Week
is such a beautiful place. It's like comes down to the community and what you
can do with other people. It sounds cheesy, but
literally what we're trying to do is to just get, pack, get people back from
focus into real life with the people that they love and the things they love
to do or used to do and maybe they forgot. And that's
actually what's happening. All we have to do is give them the phone and the
people do the rest. And so that's kind of the mission of
what we're doing, which is important to really shout out. Yeah,
for sure. People want to spend more time with family, friends
and hobbies and doing hobbies that they love or a new hobby that they,
they've always wanted to try but they always said they didn't have the time for.
It's just that time is being allocated other places. So to help give
them an opportunity to go after that. Hobbies, it's giving people
their life back, right? Yeah. A lot of fun to see because.
That'S what we want to see. We want to get together and talk and
do stuff and go on hikes and
enjoy hobbies, things that you said. And not necessarily just everyone's
in their own little room or
their apartment or their just space within a house, just, you
know, detached from the rest of the family or everyone they live with. And
on Their screen, which is what happens. That's been
going on for. Since screens, really. Yeah. Tv.
Yeah. But especially since phones because, you know, phones having all these capabilities
is a rather new phenomenon. Yeah. Like when you guys were born, it was not
a thing. Thing. And you guys are young. Last 10 years. Yeah, you guys are
young. So I think we just don't think about the effect,
but we're in the middle of all these effects of what the technology is doing
to us, so. And it just keeps increasing. Of course it keeps increasing. And when
we were at CES this last year, there's so much amazing new
technology. Tell me what CES is. The Consumer Electronic Show.
Okay. And it was down in Vegas. And it's cool to see a lot of
the tech coming out, but a lot of that tech is
trying to now mimic the human interaction. Well, it's only trying to
mimic the human interaction because that's what we're missing with
technology. So now we're trying to use technology to fix a problem that
technology has created when at the end of the day it's just like trying to
go out and have conversations. Technology is made
to make our lives better. And it's become so much more than that. Full
fledged entertainment. 24 hours, 24 7. Always
on not giving us a break when initially technology was supposed to be
a tool. You don't carry a hammer around with you 24/7. You
only use it when you actually need it. And that's what we're trying
to bring the phone back to again. Yeah. And I love that. Well, I know
with my kids who are Gen Z's, so
they will just put their phone away and forget
about it for. For hours. So it's really the opposite of what people
say the younger generation does. And I think there must
be some kind of. We're missing something here. Like
there is something, I think in that generation in particular, when you were
little, there wasn't this. And then it became a thing as
you were through the teens and early twenties. And now it's like,
don't. You know, I don't. You know, when you grow up with it, you don't
think about it. But that's, that's a curious thought to me. A question
of as humans, how much are we going to
lean out and lean in? Is it going to control us or are we going
to control it? Which is maybe what you guys are bringing to the table.
Really interesting problem to study for sure. It is, isn't it?
Yeah, that's probably what the study should be on. Versus
maybe some things we study. But you know, I don't know about that. I don't
know too much about that. There might be some stuff coming out
soon. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for your
time. I so appreciate you and it's so fun to watch your journey and
much success to you in the years to come. So thank you.
Thank you again.