While big tech tries to become more and more ingrained in our lives, Challenger brands like Light Phone are refusing to fall in line. Rejecting the need to play by the attention economy rules, they are changing the criteria for choice — and building a loyal following as a result. We spoke with founder and CEO Kaiwei Tang to understand what they’re challenging, how they think differently about product development, and why rejection is actually a good thing.

First off, could you please tell us about Light Phone? What is it and how does it work?

Light Phone is a simplified smartphone that only offers utilitarian tools.

What we're trying to do is strip away the business models of the attention economy and advertising, which, in my opinion, is the root cause of why we're so addicted to using our smartphones or social media.

We want to offer modern utility like podcasts, maps, obviously calling, texting and taking photos and calendar reminders – stuff like that. So, we call all the apps tools, because they were supposed to be designed as functional tools that empower human activities.

They were designed so that you could finish a task quickly and then move on and live your life, go do the things that actually make you happy or are important to you. If you use a tool like a hammer, you use it and then put it down – you don’t swipe a hammer for 5 hours.

What we’re really trying to do is offer people another option. It's not about going back in time, asking people to live in a cave, don't use technology. We love technology. Without technology, we wouldn't be here.

What is the status quo within the category that Light Phone is challenging?

When it comes to smartphones, we somehow forgot that it shouldn't be one thing for everyone and for everything and for every single human experience. It’s just because we are so used to smartphones that we can't get our head around it, but we're not asking everyone to give up their smartphone. We're trying to say, ‘Hey, maybe this weekend, maybe if you feel horrible after using your smartphone for two years, maybe you should change.’

When was the last time that after using Tiktok or Instagram for three hours, you were like, ‘Oh, I feel so proud. I feel good about myself. I'm going to do it again, because I feel so good.’? We never say that. We all hate it. We can't stop, but I would argue, it's not us anymore. It's because big tech has invested billions in the attention economy engine. They need engagement so they can collect more data. But the more data they have, the more precise their data is for advertisers to target you.

That's why we started this company. It's not anti-smartphone. It's not anti-technology. But the current business model is so successful, and we as humans are so vulnerable to this design that gives us dopamine hits. We can't stand being bored.

So, we as a company, want to change how we design technology and how we make money. We make utilitarian focused tools and users pay for it and nothing else. We’re trying to change how technology companies make money and eliminate the attention economy for users. Because at big technology companies, their focus is not about us. Their mission is not aligned with us as humans, our human experience. I'm not saying this to be on the high ground, we are a for profit company. We need to make money to survive, but we don't utilise the attention economy. We're hoping to build a useful tool that does all these things, and then you pay for the tool, and that's it. That's how we make money, nothing else.

Challengers have ambitions that outweigh their resources – what are Light Phone’s ambitions, and have they changed over the last decade?

One thing that we’re really proud of is that we have been really consistent with our message and what we're trying to do, and it hasn’t changed. At the beginning of creating the company in 2014 my co-founder and I both had this vision of designing technology tools that empower the human versus the company. This design principle led to Light Phone, but it could be applied to different categories.

Our principles could apply to all different categories with Light as the brand, phone as the category. Because who needs a smart toothbrush? Why do I need an app? The business model is not selling you that object, the business model is everything you say, everything you do, every data point. That's how they make money. I just don't think it's fair or healthy to keep going on in that direction. I think it is a crisis of humanity and needs to be changed.

I think that there's a huge market where every smartphone customer can also have a Light Phone. You can have options. I use another analogy about Light Phone being like healthy food. You can eat all your regular greasy burgers and steak all the time, but when you realise healthy food makes sense, makes you feel good, makes you healthier, you will set aside time to find ingredients and cook healthier. You can switch back and forth. So, what's the benefit to using a Light Phone? The benefit of using a Light Phone is that it's like the healthy ingredients – it may make you feel less stressed out, like you have more time back and are more a part of productive relationships or are sleeping better.

Imagine a life that's not smartphone-centric right now, without this distraction. What would that life be like? What would be the benefits?

How do you think about product development at Lightphone? Do you have principles that you follow to keep you true to your beliefs?

Our perspective here is really clear - we're not trying to offer you entertainment. We're not trying to offer you social media. I can summarise our principles in three points.

Number one, I'll never show you an advertisement. You will never find any advertisement on any of the tools. Number two, we will never show you infinite feeds – nothing to browse, nothing to discover. Everything is designed to be intentional. Number three, every action you as a user take, has a clear ending.

For example, if you want directions from A to B, the direction tool will always navigate you through step-by-step directions and when you get to the destination, this user interaction ends. There's no other underlying motivation to try to engage you or try to entice you to look at this business or this restaurant on the way. That's not what you originally wanted to do.

So, with those three principles, as long as a tool fits into this criteria, we're happy to create them. We're trying to create a tap and pay tool because that's another great tool. We're just limited by how fast we can move, how many engineers we have. We're not Apple; we're not Samsung; we're not Google. So, it's more about prioritising the tools that will bring the most benefit and are most commonly requested.

You must get lots of requests for new features and tools to be added – how do you decide what to add and what not to?

Your essential tools in your phone are not going to be the same as mine or anyone else's. Everyone has different priorities. So those conversations between us and our customers or communities or even us internally are important to figure out what are the essentials.

For example, Light Phone III has a new camera tool, but we argued back and forth because Light Phone I and II do not have a camera. We felt like cameras were a distraction with posting, lighting, etc. But we got so much feedback from customers saying that, ‘I need a camera for my daily routine.’ ‘With my kids, I want to be able to capture a moment.’ We took that feedback internally and debated over the last few years while we were shipping Light Phone II.

We decided that if you break down the camera tool in your smartphone, the utility purpose is to document a moment, or document a receipt or object, so that you have that information or the moment saved. The distraction part is the liking, the commenting, sharing, thinking about who is going to like this photo, about where you're going to post it, or about liking people's comments and that’s not right and it becomes a huge distraction. So, we preserve the utility purpose of the camera tool for documenting. There's no zoom in, zoom out. There's no filtering, editing or posting. You just take a photo and save. That's it. Move on.

And that's how we design every tool in Light Phone. Because if you really sit down and think about it, there’s always one more thing that's a convenient tool for you, and you wish you could have it. For example, email: we get a lot of people, saying that, ‘I need to have email. I can't live without email.’ And I understand, right? If email is so essential for your job, for your routine, then your laptop is a great tool for that with a big screen and keyboard. It’s a more enjoyable experience and it’s designed for that purpose.

So, ask yourself, do you really need email 24/7? Wake up with email. Go to sleep with email. Hang out with your friends and kids with email. Go to the toilet with your email. Eat with your email. Is that really necessary? There are the right tools for each job. You use a hammer to hammer a nail. You pick up your mug for coffee. But you could argue, I'll just use my shoe to drink coffee. I'll just put coffee in my shoe and drink it. It works, right? But it's not designed for that purpose. Use the right tool for the job.

How do you talk to people about Light Phone and how do they react?

So, we're selling Light Phones, but a larger portion of what we're selling is the experience of going light, which means: leaving your smartphone behind, going out with just tools, no distraction – that’s the experience of going light.

The benefit of going light could be that you get 3, 5, 6 hours back every day. You feel less stressed out, you feel less anxious. You read more books. You become more productive, more creative, have a better relationship with your family, sleep better. These are all benefits that our users told us, and we've been sharing these user stories, so people can see the tangible benefit of this abstract idea of breaking away from their smartphone.

But using Light Phone definitely, at times, will be inconvenient. This is not a smartphone. This will not fit into your smartphone-centric lifestyle.

And that’s a foreign idea, right? Because you don't break away from a smartphone. You always have them 24/7, which is why what we propose creates so much tension. People love or hate it. There is a group of people that feel like this is going to change their lives and then there is a group of people that feel like, ‘what's the point? I have a smartphone that does everything I need it to do. Why do I need another phone?’ We've been doing this for 10 years, and this polarised conversation, never stops. We're still getting press every other day about this conversation now.

One of the things we know about Challengers is that they are not only clear on who they are for but also very clear on who they are not for. Given the polarised conversation around Light Phone, how do you as a company react to the ‘haters’?

I'm not proud about people hating us, but I love the reaction, because the last thing you want is to create a brand and everyone is like meh – no one has any reaction. You want reactions. So, I love the fact that everyone has very strong opinions about Light Phone. We're making a statement. We're trying to say, ‘I'm this kind of person. I'm going light this weekend. Call me. Text me. I'm not going to be on social media.’

We embrace people hating it. But what I want to understand is why. What's so bad about not being distracted all the time? What I'm proposing is, that sometimes you might not need those tools that have all the advertisements or tracking your location 24/7.

I always believe that you can't design one tool for everyone, right? The first mobile phone creator, Martin Cooper at Motorola, famously said that we can't design one thing for everything, for everyone, otherwise, this object will do nothing.

This feels like a very different perspective than what guides so much of the tech world. How do you stick to your beliefs in the face of that?

We’re in an era where with your smartphone and AI you can do just about anything – as long as you have some money or investment, because technology is so great and vastly available. The value now, in my opinion, is not what you can do, because you could do anything. The value now is what you choose not to do.

What you choose not to do becomes your point of view, and the value of an object like Light Phone. What we choose not to do is why people trust us. It's why we got organic press without spending any marketing money or budget. I have zero marketing budget, but people resonate with what we're trying to do. I attribute that to the fact that we stick to our values.

I know why I started the company and that has become my North Star that guides everything we do. We could slap up some advertisements. We could open up app stores on Light Phone. But that's not why we started the company. All the decisions we make in the company, from small to big decisions on strategy, fundraising, marketing, who we collaborate with, it's all from this principle.

What’s next for Light Phone?

We're proud that we're running an extremely efficient machine. We spend money on the most critical components of our operations within our principles. But a lot of the time what drives companies like us and myself included, is knowing the impact that we’ve created with this object.

So, we've been partnering with schools in the US like one that banned smartphones on campus. We supplied Light Phones to the entire campus, faculty, teachers and students. And the head of the school told us that after they started using Light Phone, the kids are now running around, they're making friends. There's no drama on social media. No teacher needs to tell the kids to put their phones down, and the whole vibe of the campus changed.

Knowing that positive impact and that we played a small part of it, is such a huge motivation to our team, to everyone involved in Light Phone. It’s priceless. And that's what keeps us going.

“What you choose not to do becomes your POV”: Light Phone