voice-activated ring<\/a> worn on the index finger. Its singular purpose: capturing and organizing your thoughts through voice notes. It\u2019s not trying to be another Humane AI Pin or compete with Oura\u2019s health tracking. \u201cIt does one thing really well,\u201d Callaghan says. \u201cBut that one thing is a fundamental human behavioral need that is missing from technology today.\u201d<\/p>\nThe idea isn\u2019t to passively record ambient audio but to be there when an idea strikes, serving as a kind of thought partner. It\u2019s attached to an app, leverages AI, and, according to Callaghan, represents a very different philosophy about how we should interact with intelligence.<\/p>\n
What drew True to Sandbar founders Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong wasn\u2019t just the product, though. \u201cWhen we met Mina, we were just absolutely aligned on vision,\u201d Callaghan recalls. True\u2019s team had already been thinking for years about alternative interfaces, making targeted investments around that possibility. They\u2019d met with dozens of founders, as a result. But the approach of Fahmi and Hong \u2013 who previously worked together on neural interfaces at CTRL-Labs, a startup acquired by Meta in 2019 \u2013 stood out. \u201cIt\u2019s about what [the ring] enables. It\u2019s about the behavior it enables that we will very soon realize we can\u2019t live without.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an echo here of Callaghan\u2019s old line about Peloton: \u201cIt\u2019s not about the bike.\u201d To some, the bike \u2013 even its earliest iteration \u2013 was compelling. But Peloton was really about the behavior it enabled and the community it created; the bike was just the vessel.<\/p>\n
This philosophy of betting on new behaviors \u2014 not just new gadgets \u2014 also explains how True has managed to stay disciplined about capital. Even as AI startups raise hundreds of millions at billion-dollar valuations out of the gate, True insists that it\u2019s able to stick to what it does best, which is to write seed checks of $3 million to $6 million for 15% to 20% ownership in startups that it often gets to see first.<\/p>\n
Callaghan says True will raise more money to fund what\u2019s working, but he\u2019s not interested in raising billions of dollars. \u201cLike, why? You don\u2019t need that to build something amazing today.\u201d<\/p>\n
That same measured approach colors his view of the broader AI boom. While he says (when asked) that he believes OpenAI could soon be worth a trillion dollars, and while he calls this the most powerful compute wave we\u2019ve seen, Callaghan sees warning signs in the circular financing deals backing hyperscalers and their $5 trillion in projected CapEx spending on data centers and chips. \u201cWe\u2019re in a very capital intense part of the cycle, and that is worrisome,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n
That said, he\u2019s optimistic about where the real opportunities lie. Callaghan thinks the greatest value creation is ahead of us \u2013 not in the infrastructure layer but in the application layer, where new interfaces will enable entirely new behaviors.<\/p>\n
It all comes back to his core investing philosophy, which sounds almost romantic \u2014 the kind of pitch-perfect VC wisdom that would ring hollow from most people: \u201cIt should be scary and lonely and you should be called crazy,\u201d Callaghan says about early-stage investing done right. \u201cAnd it should be really blurry and ambiguous, but you should be with a team that you really believe in.\u201d Five to ten years later, he says, you\u2019ll know if you were on to something.<\/p>\n
Either way, based on True\u2019s track record of betting on hardware that many others missed \u2013 fitness trackers, connected bikes, smart doorbells, and now thought-capturing rings \u2013 it\u2019s worth paying attention when Callaghan says the phone\u2019s days are numbered. Being early is the whole point \u2014 and the trend lines support his thesis: the smartphone market is effectively saturated, growing at barely 2% annually, while wearables \u2014 smartwatches, rings, and voice-enabled devices \u2014 are expanding at double-digit rates.<\/p>\n
Something\u2019s shifting in how we want to interact with technology, and True is placing its bets accordingly.<\/p>\n
Pictured above, Sandbar\u2019s Stream ring. For much more from our conversation with Callaghan, tune in to the StrictlyVC Download<\/a> podcast next week; new episodes drop every Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image Credits:Sandbar True Ventures co-founder Jon Callaghan doesn\u2019t think we\u2019ll be using smartphones the way we do now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[85627,127582,111,139,69,47740,145,81895],"class_list":{"0":"post-209594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-callaghan","9":"tag-jon-callaghan","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-peloton","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-true-ventures"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}