Hi friends, on last week's episode we discussed how people can become addicted to social media, how cognitive biases that we don't know even exist in our brains are being manipulated by almost every social media that exists and how your phone is essentially a hacker in your pocket. The feedback this week has been absolutely fantastic. I've got so many tweets and messages from people saying that they are trying to reduce their phone time and this has helped open their eyes to why it's not necessarily their fault. This week I'm sitting down with Kai Wei, who is the CEO of the Litephone.com and they think that they have developed a product which can enable us to spend more time off screen.
I do think that there's an important question to be asked here and it is, can we fix the problem of too much technology with more technology? That's a question you'll have to answer yourself. Also, I do want to say that I was not sponsored or paid to interview Kai and I found him off my own back because of how interested I was in the product and I wanted to hear his philosophy on it. I also want to say that I'm considering buying one after my conversation with him, but that's completely independent.
So here we go. Kai Wei. Hi, welcome to Modern Wisdom. Very good to meet you.
Thanks for having me. Thank you very much for coming on, man. You are CEO of the Litephone. That's correct.
So I got introduced to the product from a friend who just linked me to online and I had a browse around and it seemed it's a real unique device as far as I can see. For those people who think that technology is moving in one direction which is more functionality, more integration with our lives and you guys have come up with the product which kind of goes in the complete opposite direction. Do you think that would be fair to say? Yeah, actually a lot of press mentioned us as anti-smo-phone but we always want to clarify that we're not anti-technology anti-smo-phone which is trying to be more human about how we approach technology, specifically the smartphone that we all have 24.7.
Yeah, I understand that. So can you give us some background to yourself and how this concept came about? Yeah, of course. So my background is in design and design research.
Four years ago, five years ago, I could my job and joined this incubator that Google started in New York specifically for designers just because they had buses that they think designers when they put designers on the founding table that part of it created with empathy can really create social impact. So we were my co-founder Joe and I met in a space and we were encouraged to do mobile app just like any other startup. So the very soon that we realized for both of us that creating another app is the last thing we want to do. We were doing research about how human, how people interact with smartphone.
We just kind of freak ourselves out. I'm sure you see this everywhere, not just in New York, in a subway, in a train station, in the airport. Everyone is looking 80% of the time looking down. It doesn't matter who they are or where they are.
They're just swiping away on the screen. We know that we check our phone 200 hours a day. Is that the average figure? Yeah, that's the average figure from research that we can find.
Two hundreds. Two hundred times a day and six hours a day on average. I mean, with teenagers, even worse with social media that could be on their smartphone 10 hours a day. It is not a human from our perspective.
We can't really stare at the screen 24-7. That's crazy. I'd seen how much truth there is in this. I read a quote from an article that said something like, in one week, humans get more stimulation, more visual stimulation than they would have gotten in an entire year, typically, during their evolution.
You are right to look at it, to step back a little bit from typical smartphone use and look at it as an alien, I suppose, looking down on Earth. You have all of the complexity and the beauty and the uniqueness of day-to-day life going on. We all spend so much time staring down at our phones. What year was this when you first went into the project?
It's in 2014. We started to, after research, we started to think about how do we create something, that create a physical object that could encourage, inspire more people to take a break. So can you say, like we go ahead? No, no.
Just can you take us through the research that you did on into people's phone use? Can you explain how that was conducted and who it was on and what it consisted of? Yes, of course. So we basically invited random people, friends we know, and we take away the smartphone for, say, like six hours or entire day and we keep them, you know, the flip phone at a time and ask them to spend a whole day or six hours without their smartphone.
And then what's interesting is that when they came back from the trip or after the day, they have comments coming to be about the first half hour or first hour was extremely difficult because you have this anxiety that you don't know what to do. There's nothing on me. I can't pull out my smartphone and I'm sweating. I'm getting bored.
What do I do? What do I do? In the first 20, 30 minutes, however, what's magical is that after you get over that formal, you know, the fear of missing out of the audience, once you get over that, what's going to happen is you started to pay attention to other people, to the building, to the cloud, you know, like talk to strangers sometimes when you're waiting for a bus or wait for a subway. It is fascinating.
And they reported back, it's like, you know, I have a lady confessing that's the best day of her week just because she remembers what happened during the day, like literally. Absolutely. I think there's definitely a parallel that is run between how much of your day has been spent on your phone and how not mindful you have been throughout the day. Like anyone who is undergoing mindfulness practice and trying to be more present, the first place to look, I think, that will be able to improve your ability to be present is to put your phone down because by its very nature, having your phone out and in your hand is not to being present.
You're not where you are. You're somewhere else in a virtual space. Yeah, we got a lot of, you know, feedback when we started Lifelong, you know, like the most logical common question would be, Hey, why do I need Lifelong? I'll just turn on Flymo.
I'll just, you know, leave my smartphone at home. Why do I need Lifelong? I think there are apps out there that that could limit notification or turn off notification. You know, that isn't that, you know, possibly achieve the same purpose that Lifelong is offering.
And my answer is always be that we, I think we as human, we need object to inspire actions. And I think that's how it's also how religious work. You know, you have all kinds of books and stuff that is in Nicholas. It just needs something to inspire you, to encourage you, to take actions.
Yeah. You can also say, Hey, why can I use a Molola flip phone? No, Kia phone, 20 years ago. My argument is, okay, so how many people let you know actually do that?
Yeah. Not many. It's not special. Like no one really do that because the experience of using those, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, ventrici devices are not special.
All we're trying to do is creating an object, a brand, an out brand message to make this connecting, to make, you know, uh, uh, uh, say away from a smartphone special. Yeah. Well, if you take a break, you know, we're not, we're not trying to replace smartphones saying, Hey, you're smart phones bad. Don't use your small phone at all.
We're not saying that. We're just saying, Hey, you know, it's like we have different shoes, different clothes for different occasion. Your smartphone is great for emails for FaceTime, your family or gaming, whatever that you want to do with social media. But what if sometimes all you want to do is, you know, take a walk down the street or spending two hours with your family in the park or just, you know, be creative, try to concentrate or, uh, just sitting on a beach, watch his own set.
Why do you need a mini computer with you all the time? Yeah. And that's a really good analogy to say about the different clothes because you're right. We have our loadout, so to speak, to you, a gaming analogy is different based on what the situation is that we're going into.
You know, we wear different clothes and we have a different bag pack to go to the gym versus to go to the office versus to go away on holiday. And you know, when you're talking about a piece of, um, a piece of technology, which takes up to six hours of your day. So, you know, not far off a third of your waking life is spent on this one object making the more appropriate for the situation, gearing that in the same way as you do your outfit and your bags and your food and everything else. You know, you are right.
It does seem like a, like an odd thing to not be doing. So let's roll back. So you've taken people's phones off them during your, your research. The people who have had an older phone with less functionality have noticed that they have an improved quality in their day.
Was that the from there on did that kind of kick off right? We need to try and do something about this. We need to try and mirror the reduction in apps in a device. Or where did it go from that?
Yeah, pretty much we just find it fascinating that pretty much everyone comes back saying that's the best hours best time to happen or week just because, just because we're being bombarded with so much information all the time. And we, and I think that's why we decided, hey, like that's, that's what we want to do. You know, if you look at current state of technology, like everything that's everyone else, Google, Apple, Samsung, whoever, they all building product to move us to what more connected like. But there's no violence.
No one's offering the healthy violence in the tech world to offer a better option. I mean, why, you know, the other argument will be why would they? None of the none of the companies inherently believe that there is anything wrong with too much phone use, the attention economy and advertising, which is what is paving the way for most of the apps that are on the phones. It's advertising time at the time on screen is what these people are concerned about.
So if you can make a device which goes longer and more immersively and is more seamlessly integrated with your life, that's more time on screen. That's better, right? You know, that from one side of the fence, that's the way that they're going to presume, whereas it would appear that what people actually value in terms of what they consider to be time well spent is time off screen. Yeah, I think that's exactly what in my opinion, that's a huge, it's almost quite sort of human human being.
Like we are so blindly willing to give up what we have in front of us, give up our thoughts, give up boredom that boredom is supposed to be feeling bored is how you be creative, how you, you know, looking to yourself and start a conversation with yourself right now, because of attention business, because of all the business model in the app, not some model app, all of this is modeling your app. It's trying to grab your attention while your time so they can make money out of it, because either you know, putting more advertisement or you to subscribe service, there's nothing wrong with that. That's how company work. But the problem is like when everything's doing that, you know, devices just, it's not, it's, we're putting ourselves in this, this advantage as a human.
Absolutely. Absolutely. We are vulnerable. And I think one of the big, one of the big things I listened to, what kind of got me onto this, this topic specifically was a podcast that Tristan Harris from Time Well Spent did with Sam Harris halfway through last year.
And I know that that was really eye opening for a lot of people. And for me to see that and to look at the persuasive techniques that are being used by app developers and the companies that are behind some of the most highly used and highly engaged social media sites in the world, it feels, it does feel like you're being tricked. I know that it's not that there's some evil cabal of people in hooded robes sat behind you know, in some dark dungeon somewhere. That's not the way it is.
But it kind of, it kind of does feel a little bit like that. You know, as a user, you, you're kind of this rat in a maze getting, getting forced around this app loop and you know, you before you know it, you've spent 45 minutes in bed on a morning and you're late to make breakfast and you, you're late to go and do the things that you actually want you to do with your day because you've been stuck in a loop. Yeah. And as a designer, it's like when we design app, if we were to design app, you always want to make sure like every step of the way is enticing.
You create this page, the next page, it all makes sense. It's so interesting. So people spend more time on your app. It follows through complete your process.
You know, as a designer, that's how we design. If we're designing app, that's how we design app. And that's why business, that's how business is modeling the app benefit from it too. Absolutely.
We're just so vulnerable as human that I think with the life from that we wanted to also know, start a conversation of, you know, why can we have different options, right? Why can we, how would a smartphone just, you know, use something else so that we won't be hijacked? We're using something that actually designed to respect us. It's not designed to grab your time, attention or, you know, make you spend more money on it.
They just want to sell you something. What can we design something beautiful and I respect human time? Yeah. I think, I think what's interesting is that there's kind of two sides to looking at this or three sides should I say to looking at this problem as far as I can see.
One of them is what Tristan Harris appears to be focusing a lot of his time on, which is coming out from an ethical design perspective. So he's trying to have a change in the culture on a designer side so that they're thinking about what they're doing with the apps. I think on another side, there is tactics that normal people and normal smartphone users can use in terms of reducing their time on screen or improving the quality of their time on screen. And then there appears to be a third, a third side of that, which is looking at solutions to the smartphone, to smartphone use overall.
And I think that to me that appears to be where the light phone fits in. Yeah. I think Tristan's approach is very interesting and it might be able to create a long-term impact, but in my opinion, it's a business model that draws the thickness of our app. It's not a designer.
It's not, if business model is not trying to force you to spend more time enticing you to spend more time making money, designer won't do that because they won't usually design as following what's helping with policy and they're usually not the one making the final decision. So you're saying that for as long as the attention economy is driving revenue through time on screen, the app developers are going to continue to do that. So all they're doing is meeting a brief, right? Yeah.
And you also have an app. You just, we think the ecosystem, the smartphone app, it would be also a psychology study that we learn that only the presence, just the presence of the smartphone on the table changed our conversation. If I'm sitting right across you and I have my phone out, that changed our conversation because we both expect our conversation will be interrupted. We will pick up our phone and text and look at you and talk at the same time.
We'll look at the notification. I think just the presence of your smartphone really changed our behavior. That's so interesting. Yeah.
It's crazy how smartphone immersed into our daily life and it's also fascinating how we are not fighting back. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
For sure. I think what's really interesting is you said there having a smartphone out on the table, you're not the first person who cited this actually use if one of the co-hosts mentioned this on a previous podcast, really funny that you've both come up with the same story. So it's really interesting. It's not funny such ubiquitous part of our lives, but yet in the same sentence, having it out changes our behavior.
So that shows that although it's accepted, it's not natural. If it was natural, it wouldn't make any difference, but it's not. It is an impingement. It is a restriction on our time and on our normal discourse.
Yeah. Because this is so addictive, we all have this nervous habit to just check it every couple of minutes, every couple of seconds. It's extremely powerful over so much power over us. Yeah, we just don't.
We just feel like we need to do something else to help out. I agree. I agree indeed. But yeah, like you say, the Tristan's approach from time while spent in the Center for Humane Technology, both of those check them out if you're listening and the links will be in the description below, those are important systemic changes, but they're a cultural change.
And I do think that's going to come about through understanding, through disseminating information and you are right that the economy at the moment is driving people in that direction. So it's not a fix which can be reached very quickly. I don't think that it's the sort of solution which is going to manifest itself or it's a destination, should I say, which is going to be reached very quickly. Yeah.
I mean, I obviously wish that could bring like immediately impact as well. I think we assume what we need to fight back with the life of. I think our philosophy, what we started designing, designing and creating a vision, we don't really see like from us as a solution to smartphone addiction. The life of us, it's actually, it's a question that we want to post to our users.
Well, what is the question? The question is when you go out with life, you have no smartphone, you have no social media, no game, no message, no notification. What are you going to do? What's important in your life?
What are you going to think about? Who are you going to talk to? When you get bored? What's essential to you?
I think all this profound question that we right now, especially nowadays, that we have smartphones all the time, you just take it out and then spend time on it. We forget to do all that. That's so important to us as humans to really have time creating, learning and creating the time for us to have a conversation with ourselves. I think that having a conversation with yourself is such a really important message.
We were discussing in LifeHacks 101, one of the podcasts that we recorded not so long ago. We discussed that during meditation and mindfulness practice a lot of the time when you quieten down the mind, you end up having thoughts and ideas that come to you and they never come to you at any other time of the day. That's absolutely due to the fact that you do not have this distraction, this barrage of stimulus that's taking you away from being with your thoughts and taking you into a world that you've seen a million times before. The images are different and maybe the text is different, but the experience is the same.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that's what makes us human. We can't forget about it. That's why we're human.
We're not AI. We're not machine. We ask ourselves a stupid question. We ask ourselves silly questions.
We get bored. We get jealous. That's so important to humanity. So actually, we've been, you know, it's been three years since we started LifeHacks.
We have 10,000 users around the globe and now we're asking ourselves, how do we encourage people to go live more often? Go live meaning leave your smartphone and go out. How do we do that more often? How do we stay away from smartphone?
Yeah. We've danced around it. Can you take us through what the iPhone is from bottom to top? Yeah, so technically, a light phone is quite a cross-size mobile phone that only makes and receives phone calls.
There's nothing else on it. No messaging, notification, no internet, no social media. So how it works is that you basically pair a light phone with your smartphone and when you want to use a light phone, you could try to find a light phone, find a smartphone, leave a smartphone behind and go out without all the distraction and noise. So you are able to enjoy the moment and be more present.
But when someone calls you on your smartphone, the call will get forwarded to your light phone. So you won't miss important calls. But it means there's no distraction, no noise. Right, I understand.
So I've done a little bit of reading and had a look around. Am I right in thinking that you're allowed to call nine people? Is that right? Yeah, we allow users to save up to nine speed dials on our light phone.
So you've got the one to nine on the keypad and you can call the one through nine as outgoing as well. Yes, that's the initial intention. The reason that we make that design choice is that doing research, when we ask people to go out with Lisa's smartphone behind and go out with the voice phone or old mobile phone, we also ask our participants to write down the numbers they need for the day and no one has more than six. No one has more than six.
No one has. Why do we have thousands of contacts in our phone? Yeah. That's why we make that decision.
It's so right. You are so right. You have to talk to 20 people that you call. They would be or if you're in a phone book, you're right.
95% of the people that you're going to call most regularly are going to be a very small number of phone numbers and some of those are probably going to be pizza deliveries and takeaways and stuff like that. So I'm right in saying that you keep your own number as well. It's not a separate phone. It's kind of like an extension of your existing phone.
Yeah, we offer that cold masking feature in US only. So in US, when you get a light phone, you could pair a light phone with your smartphone and the light phone will basically use your phone number. So when you make a phone call with a light phone, it will still show us your view of a different number. Yeah.
Okay. So what is the rollout at the moment of the light phone? Where is it available and where is it functioning? Yeah, we ship internationally and at the moment, I think we shipped roughly 10,000 plus light phones to 50 different countries.
Wow. Amazingly, we learned this problem is so universal. It was not just US or UK. It's like everywhere, especially in Asia, countries too.
We were in Hong Kong airport, like when we, meaning when I went to Hong Kong to be suppliers, we saw the speakers everywhere in the airport that asked people to look up because it's become safety issues everywhere in the airport. They were just like staring at the phone and bumping to each other. Well, it's such a big issue. People looking at the phones that it's an actual safety hazard.
It's been classed as a safety hazard that people aren't looking up as opposed to looking down. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, we all have so much enlightening our life, my friends, family, you know, like trees, clouds, buildings, architectures, beautiful stores, but we just will give it give those all up.
So, yeah. You're really right. I think something that one of my, one of my work colleagues said to me about a year ago on a similar subject and he asked what was the last three things that you liked on any social media? Yeah.
And if the listeners can try and do that unless they've got the phone in front of them now, if you can try and think about the last three things that you click like on on on Instagram or Facebook, I have absolutely no idea. You know, those things were so worthy of my time that I sacrificed some of my life to go on to this device and look at them and then give a judgment of positivity in response to it. And yet upon being asked to recall it 20 minutes later, I can't even tell you what it was. Yeah.
We just think so quickly. We don't really spend time digesting. You just put the thrill. We have so much information all the time.
Right. Yeah. It's almost such an information overload as people go through through the phone that the depth of interaction has to be by very nature shallow in order to fit the breadth of consumption in. Do you think that's fair to say?
Totally. And I also think it's because it's easy. We always, we human always want we lazy. We want easy way out.
That's why you have smart phone. But when you feel challenged, when you feel awkward, when you feel bored, you have a way out. Same thing with social media, same thing with anything like when you have the difficult thought, you just want to, you know, instead of like really diving into it, really like think about it. You just go blindly consuming information without even thinking about it.
The boredom, the boredom thing is a really interesting one as well. I'd seen a study online that said something like more than 60% of people admit to using their phone on the toilet. And I honestly saw that and thought is it only 60% like I don't know anyone. I don't know anybody that goes to the bathroom and doesn't take the mobile phone with them.
Like that bathroom thing is such a big deal. Like, you know, that's the one time where you probably can afford to be alone with your thoughts and would, you know, would having a swipe through Instagram and we're doing all bits and pieces like that. You think, well, yeah, the boredom is part and parcel and the silence is part and parcel as well. And I think that the rates of anxiety, mental health and suicide is the number one killer of men in the UK under the age of 40, you know, rate of anxiety to mental health week this week, actually, in the UK.
And in a society where we're trying to reduce anxiety, reduce depression. And I'm going to guess that there will be some studies that I'm not aware of is smart phone use. And scientifically linked with anxiety and depression yet? Or are you aware if it has?
I am not, but I might. We always believe that being more connected, more makers and happier. Looking at people's feet, more make you happy. It's going to make you more anxious.
You're going to compare and for teenagers, for young people that didn't really realize that, you know, social media or internet, just one side of just one small angle of this person's life. Like you see, you see, like, oh, I'm always pottering on my face, pottering on Facebook. I'm always out traveling on my Facebook or Twitter or social media, but that's not real life. That's just a reflection of one angle of this person's life.
We always want to show the positive side. Always want to show that we're laughing. We're having fun. No one's noticing our face was saying, my boyfriend just stopped me on my girlfriend's film.
I had a really, I had, or even on the other end of the scale, like, you know, at least at least that's interesting. No one is going on and saying nothing really happened today. Today was a little bit dull. Like, you know, it's not, it's not newsworthy, is it?
But there's a really good quote that I read and I reiterated this on a recent podcast that said, social media shows you the best of everybody else's lives whilst you view the worst of your own and you compare it to the worst of your own. It's the best of everyone else. And what's the worst of you? No, it's not at all, man.
So going back to the light phone, I think what was, what's interesting is there's a couple of, a couple of big podcasts that some of my friends follow who do a, either a phone free afternoon or they have actually created a rudimentary version of what the light phone does by getting like an old, you know, a pay as you go, 10 pounds, knock your phone and they've tried to cobble together a solution like this and a couple of the issues that those guys have come up against. So one of them, the problem with not having a phone on you at all is that I think there's definitely a level of safety of knowing that you've got your phone with you. Like, you know, you, there may be an emergency, either you needing to contact someone or someone needing to contact you. So I think, I think going completely phone free holds so much anxiety for some people that whatever level of freedom they would gain by not having a smartphone would be nullified and then probably actually even made worse by shitting the pants that something bad had gone wrong and that they weren't able to be contacted or that they couldn't contact someone.
So I think going completely phone free, because phone free isn't the issue, isn't the issue. The phone isn't the issue. It's the overuse and it's the immersion in apps. That's the issue.
The phone is just a tool. It's supposed to be a tool. It's not an entertaining social media device. It's a tool that you use to talk to people, to communicate with people.
That's what I want to do. You are exactly right. That going completely phone free, it's dangerous because what if you want to run to something that you need to call people? What if something emergency happened?
And life went to us. We all started creating a piece of mind when you go out with our smartphone. So almost knowing that I could call my family if I need to. My friends can reach out to me if they want to, but other than that, nothing else.
I was just recently had a conversation with a woman in our working space and she was telling me that life went away from it. She was like a quarter. I'm not sure if you get it. It's a quarter.
It's a 25 cents coin. It's like a quarter in old days. I was like, why is it a quarter? And she was like, because in the old days without a smartphone, you always want to have a quarter on you so you can use the paper.
Just in case you need to make it. Yeah, that's such a good analogy. Yeah. There's a piece of mind.
That really is. And then I think the second solution that a couple of people come up with was to get like you know, like you did with the during your study, you gave people like an old flip phone. But I think another one of the issues is when you're asking people to make a lifestyle change like this, it needs to be as convenient as possible. It has to stack the deck in the favor of doing the thing that you want them to do.
And obviously if you, one of my friends tried to do this in the UK and he got a £10 pay to go phone, then realized that because he's got a micro sim from an iPhone, he then has to go and buy an adapter to make the micro sim into a normal size sim so that you can fit that into the phone. And that means like taking his iPhone apart every time he wants to do it, taking the back of his cell phone, taking the battery out, you know, fitting it into the new micro sim adapter and putting it in. You just think, well, I'm not surprised that he only stuck up with it for like one day a week for three weeks because I couldn't be bothered to do that. It's not convenient.
And the thing is that the disparity between moving from a situation of such hyper convenience with Google Maps and Wikipedia and Google on, you know, on a device to think right, not only have I got to give this up, but I've got to get through all of these really shitty hurdles, fiddly hurdles to give myself less functionality. You know, it doesn't surprise me that that wasn't a very successful approach. Yeah, like I said, it's not special enough for you to actually want to do it. I mean, to successfully encourage people to stay away from smartphone.
I mean, I think that's why I would be like, well designed, it's beautiful. So you might, you know, for people that have never thought about going out with a smartphone, might, it might be intriguing to say, Hey, this thing was cool. I'll go, I'll go, I'll go. For sure.
It looks aesthetically the smartphone looks really, really cool. It's just a little bit bigger than a credit card, right? Yeah, it's a credit card size and it's a bit thicker than the actual credit card, but it's easy for you to put in a wallet, just pocket so you don't actually feel it's on you. Yeah.
That's the purpose. When we designed the iPhone, tried to decide what the phone factor we tried to think about. What does that think? What is the thing that we always have on us so that we don't really notice that we have them?
It's a credit card ID. Yeah. So that's why we make the design decision. You've matched the phone with something that already exists, which is the credit card.
I think it was interesting what you said at the very start about it needing to be something that was beautiful, that is kind of a little bit like planting a flag in the ground, so to speak. It's making a mark and you're attaching your desire to go phone free and to do less tech usage to something which you can almost feel proud of a little bit. You have something and you feel proud of it and you think, Oh, this is a physical representation, a manifestation of my desire to better myself and to be more present. Yeah, I feel I mean, it's reflected on our users as well.
I feel really proud or honored that a lot of our customers that who bought a iPhone, like they share, like it's almost, they share the moment when you get a iPhone and they just feel proud obviously sharing on social media is kind of ironic, but you can see that the proud that they want to share that, Hey, I decide to do something. I make this choice. I'm going to live this life from time to time. I'm going to use my life on time to time call me if you need me.
We see that happening a lot of social media people sharing life on with their friends. It's just fascinating to me. Like it's almost become a lifestyle symbol. I want to say, and we just feel really great.
And through that, I think what we want to do is just to encourage more people to try to do that, you know, to try to stay away from stuff which you never do. Like no one does that. So we want to just hopefully inspire more people go away to try different solutions, different fields, different quotes, why not? I think the different shoes and different different outfits and allergies, the best one that I've heard so far.
I think that what was interesting is, you know, there's an argument to be made that fixing the problem of too much technology with more technology seems a little bit circular. But that's like saying that there is a problem with riding a bike. So why buy a car or why have a pair of walking shoes? It's the same.
Yeah, it's within the same realm, but it's a different route to meeting a similar goal. I mean, we like, different shoes, different clothes. It's how we always say it. We always, you know, like if you compare life onto your smartphone, smartphone, it's like a toolbox again.
It's like all kinds of tools. It's thousands of tools we don't need in life. Life only is a school driver. Yeah.
So you could choose what you need. We can choose what technology we need in a specific condition, a situation. We don't have to take it all in. We need to make a conscious choice.
The right now is no choice. It's all a smartphone. Everyone's making a smartphone. Everyone's having a smartphone 24.
And it's the last thing you see when you go to bed. If this is not a picture, what is it? Oh, man, I think that's a really good point to be made. That it is your right.
It's the last thing that we look at before we go to bed. It's the first thing that we look at in the morning. It's there. There was a video that got put up the other day of a girl's 21st birthday.
And there was a Snapchat of her birthday cake coming over to her in an nightclub. And as this cake's come along and obviously someone spent a lot of time making this cake and organizing this big procession to arrive with her. And the camera pans around to her sat on this table. And she's watching her own 21st birthday cake arrive through the lens of her phone because she's not desperate to get the Instagram story to put up about that.
And you think, we've all been there. We've all done something, you know, videoing a gig or a videoing a concert or something beautiful that was happening. But who's it for? Because the memory of that happening for you will be much more valuable than the video that gets shown to your friends.
I know. It's like the total counselor, everyone's putting their phone out, recording and blocking your view. I mean, I was like, oh, God, watch this answer. Yeah, there's a really funny meme that I saw that was floating around on the internet.
And it said something like, I was sat down on a subway looking at the man across from me and he didn't have his phone out. He wasn't sat there texting or swiping through Instagram. He just sat there looking out of the window like a psychopath. That's such a comment on modern society that that's the weird thing to do.
Yeah, it reminds me of a story, a story. So, so, me and my co-founder, we a couple years ago, we were in San Francisco doing this, you know, retail relationship things. Anyway, we were in line from a restaurant and the line in front of us is a dad and his daughter just, you know, keep shouting and screaming. He's like, I don't want to be here.
This is bored. I'm bored. I don't want to be here. So typically you will expect him, you know, that just like give her a smartphone.
I'd have something to take her attention away. Just even do that. He sat her down and actually say that, hey, we talk about this boredom is the chance to learn. I was like, wow, wow, I need a videotape.
This is so good. Yeah. Expect him to say anything like that. But like, wow, I need to give you a light bulb right now.
Yeah, for sure. Well, you know, I think that that man's daughter has got a good chance of growing up to be a very mindful and well-balanced human being who's going to be able to deal with awkwardness. She's going to be able to deal with her emotions coming to the forefront with sadness and it's not going to need numbing or hiding away by. Exactly.
By getting behind the phone. So the light phone at the moment, I'm writing saying that you guys raised quite a lot of money on Kickstarter projects, right? Yeah, so three years ago we raised 400,000 Kickstarter and then we go on raised another 3 million from private investor. Just to steal.
Yeah, building a phone from scratch, like from two individuals, it's just not easy. We're not. I can't imagine it to small undertaking. So three and a half million dollars.
Yeah, pretty much went into it and especially with all the design backgrounds, we want to make sure like packaging on its phone itself, on the cable, it's all designed and made well because it's an inspiration. It can be a shitty, cheap alternative options. Like I just throw away, it can be, it has to be beautiful. It has to be expiring the packaging through a week.
I'm not sure if you started managing that with it. It's a book. Yeah, we have seen it. If anyone has it, if you see it online, it's absolutely beautiful.
Yeah, we want to tell people that we get a life phone. If you get a question that is not about feature, not about screen size, it's about a little moment of your life that if you put down a smartphone, that you will notice like a picture of a bird that flying through top of tree, a picture of old men sitting on the beach, you know, we want to tell people, hey, life phones are not about phone. Obviously we're selling a phone, but it's not about the phone. The value is the value of life on this leaves your smartphone behind.
Go out, enjoy your day, enjoy your time. Like, you know, enjoy, enjoy time when it passes through. Like, just don't occupy yourself. But with with feet.
Yeah, for sure. It's weird, isn't it? Because the light phone could probably be replaced with the life phone. You know, you're allowed, you're allowing yourself to have life as opposed to a phone.
Yeah. So where is the phone's functional, like fully functional with the call forwarding and everything in the US? Am I right? Is what about Canada?
What about Europe? What's the plans moving forward to make this more accessible for people in other countries? Well, we actually, 50% of our customers are from international users. So for international users, you can still do call forwarding.
The only issue, the problem that, the only thing that you don't have as international user is that we won't be able to mask your life on number. So you will essentially have to leave the numbers. Okay. But people, when they call in, it'll forward on to the life phone.
So that kind of doesn't matter. And then on the outgoing calls, there's only maybe nine people that need to have your second number in any case, right? Yeah. So we were worried that this would be a stop international customer from buying life or using life phone.
But to my surprise, it's not really changing the decision. So like I said, 50% of our customers are from UK, EU, Asia, different countries still. It's amazing. I think that a lot of people have identified that time away, time off screen, even if they haven't looked into this and I'm talking like normal, everyday person on the street hasn't delved down the rabbit hole of persuasive, of cognitive biases and persuasive techniques and time on screen reduction and all that.
The normal person, I think, appreciates that they're using their phone too much. What's natural is there's only really two options. It's either go phone free or kind of get a burner phone. And neither of those are tremendously attractive.
So when the only hurdle that you do need to overcome is to have a second number, to me, that doesn't feel like a tremendously big problem because you were at the very least, you were going to have to have a second number anyway for the players you go and knock it out. So 23 times that you were going to look to use as a replacement. Yeah, you also potentially get the do some car. Do you think I was sent number?
I think I believe the phone or other carrier in Europe does offer that. So Chris, I feel bad if I didn't mention it. We are actually launching a iPhone 2 today. No way.
Yeah, today on the go-go, the thought is being 10,000 phones in three and a half years. Like I said, we keep asking ourselves, how do I make it? How do we encourage people to go like longer, to go like for good, not a pair secondary device? But how do we do something that encourages a lot more people to go like for good?
That's the first thing. So come on, tell us what iPhone 2. Tell us what iPhone 2. I have no idea that this is happening.
Yeah, so if I use this technology, that smartphone with a toolbox, Lifelong 1 is a screwdriver. Lifelong 2 is a Swiss Army knife tool. Okay. So the Lifelong 2, I would go this to position it as a primary phone.
It's not a second phone I pair with smartphone. We want to have this device to potentially replace your smartphone. It's a 4G, quality of our size phone. It's the same as the same phone factor.
We add e-link as the display. And we're like a candle, right? Yes, like a candle, black and white, beautiful UI, simple UI. We add messaging to the second generation.
We're also potentially adding the ability to go over and along clock direction. But that's it. We're not going to do like, not going to become smartphone, but it's a Swiss Army knife phone that I think a lot of people globally are ready to make a switch. So when you say messaging, are you talking SMS?
Yes, SMS. Okay. So do you see smartphone 2 as being a replacement for smartphone 1? Or do you see it as being an alternative?
Like you'd have a different scales of a car and a scooter. They perform the same task, but people don't necessarily. Some people will want one and some people will want another. Yeah, exactly.
We're not replacing iPhone 1, which is because we've got a lot of customers. We're not saying, hey, I love iPhone 1, but can you just add text message? I want to use the iPhone all the time, but without text message or direction or ability to call a taxi, I can't go like all the time I can use in a daily tool. And that's exactly how we position iPhone 1.
iPhone 1 is a take a break from. It's a vacation phone. It's a phone you use when you're sitting on a beach watching sunset. We like to create a different option that, hey, for those people that are ready to give our smartphone, give up being a slave or technology, this is an option.
It's not old school, Nokia, old school. It's being displayed, quality cost size with all the essential tool that you need in your daily life. Yeah. Do you think that you guys are at risk of receiving criticism from people who think that it's just a nefarious route to try and sell another piece of technology to people?
Maybe, but we started life on TV watching the survey asking our customer, hey, do you think it will be difficult for us to try and do a Swiss Army knife tool and 80% of customers saying no, because they believe that adding more features and allow them to stay away from the smartphone longer without social media, without internet, without all the distractions. It's actually going to be a good point. So the extra features and that are positive? Yeah.
It's an essential tool. I guess we're not trying to become a smartphone. All I want to do is invite more people to stay away from this mini computer we have with us 24-7. We don't need that.
We have our iPad. We have iPhone 2. We can basically do anything else on your laptop, iPad, and you have the iPhone 2 for calls messaging going to XC alarm clock. That's it.
Yeah, I understand completely. I think it's been absolutely fascinating, Jack. Would you be able to explain where everyone can find you? So the original iPhone, where the campaign for the new one is going to be and how they can contact you online?
Yeah. If you could check out livephone2.com, that's where our campaign is. You can find our website through the campaign as well. I'm happy to answer any questions from your listeners.
I email kaiway at the livephone.com. K-A-I-W-I. The live on the com. Fantastic.
Kai, I really, really appreciate your time, man. Am I right in thinking, are you guys in stock for the live on one at the moment? Are you waiting on a new batch to be delivered for shipping? Yeah, we actually sold out live on one.
We have no inventory left at the moment. So we'll be taking reservations for live on one at the moment. And we'll also take a reservation live on two at liveon2.com. Amazing.
Thank you very much for your time, Kai. I really appreciate that. Links to everything will be below in the description. Good luck with your indigo campaign.
I really do think that what you're doing is born of a place of goodwill. I know that there is a criticism to be made fixing too much tech with more tech. It's not a solution, but I don't think that you guys are trying to achieve a money-making. Obviously, it needs to be a commercially viable business, but I don't think that you guys are aiming to do this from a place of bad faith.
I think that it is genuinely something that's born of the desire to make people's lives more livable. And I think it's a very noble pursuit. And I think that I hope that you do very, very well with it in the future. I appreciate it, Chris.
Thank you. Thank you very much, man. Thanks for chatting.