True Ventures bets on a post-smartphone future

True Ventures is positioning its investment thesis around the decline of the smartphone, backing Sandbar—a voice-activated ring device described as a “thought companion”—to replace current mobile interfaces. The firm’s co-founder, Jon Callaghan, argues that the smartphone market is effectively saturated. He suggests that the era of the mobile screen is ending, stating that people will not be using iPhones in 10 years and adding that he kind of doesn’t think they will even be using them in five years. Instead of relying on what he views as inefficient mobile interfaces, True Ventures is betting on alternative hardware like Sandbar. Founded by Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong, who previously worked at CTRL-Labs before its acquisition by Meta in 2019, Sandbar is not designed to compete with Oura in health tracking or act as a broad alternative like the Humane AI Pin. Instead, it focuses on capturing thoughts through voice notes.

The Bay Area firm maintains a disciplined investment strategy, writing seed checks of $3 million to $6 million for a 15% to 20% ownership stake. This model has supported a portfolio of some 300 companies, including past investments in consumer brands like Fitbit, Ring, and Peloton, as well as enterprise software makers HashiCorp and Duo Security. Three of True Ventures’ four recent exits in the fourth quarter of 2025 involved repeat founders who chose to work with the firm again.

The firm’s financial track record includes:

• Roughly $4 billion in assets under management across 12 funds, consisting of eight core funds and four “select,” opportunity-style funds.
• A portfolio that has yielded 63 exits with gains.
• Seven IPOs over its history.

While the broader tech market faces $5 trillion in projected capital expenditure (CapEx) spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure, True Ventures is focusing its attention on the application layer. Callaghan notes that while OpenAI could soon be worth a trillion dollars, the massive capital intensity of the current cycle is worrisome. Instead of backing expensive infrastructure, the firm is betting that new interfaces will enable entirely new human behaviors, making the saturated smartphone market—which is growing at barely 2% annually—obsolete. For Callaghan, early-stage investing requires taking uncomfortable risks on unproven concepts. “It should be scary and lonely and you should be called crazy,” he says, describing the process of backing teams that build what others might initially dismiss.

Why it matters

True Ventures is betting its investment thesis on a shift away from smartphones toward alternative interfaces like the Sandbar voice-activated ring. The firm argues that current mobile devices are inefficient interfaces for human-computer interaction, creating an opportunity for new hardware to capture consumer behavior.