Tin Can

Beepers for kids: screen-free paging for the anti-smartphone wave

Inspired by Tin Can, a Wi-Fi landline for kids that sells a $100 phone with a $10/month plan and has raised $15.5M, Ari pitches beepers so kids can reach each other away from home without a smartphone. Shaan imagines voice-to-text buzzes at a penny a message, and both hosts voted it the episode's best idea.

“But this reminded me of a time a few years ago where I was like, you know what, I'm not I'm gonna get rid of my smartphone. And what ended up happening with that was that I was like, okay, well now I need a Garmin GPS. I need an alarm clock. I need to get a camera. You have to, like, unbundle all of these things. So when I'm looking at this, I'm like, okay, so these kids can reach each other at home, but how are you gonna catch 'em? So I was like, how about beepers for kids?”

Steal thisUnbundle the smartphone for kids: pick one function parents trust and sell it as a screen-free device with a subscription.