À propos de nous

What were trying to build

We're a family with kiddos growing up quick. Our hope is that Wiley's phones are a tool designed to not addict, give safe freedom/autonomy, & help mitigate pressures of getting cell phones too early & keeps our kids outside, playing, & do what they do best.

Story of Wiley - The Problem We Experienced As Parents

About a year ago we were walking out the door for a date & realized the babysitter we hired didn’t have a cell phone. There was no way for her to reach us if anything happened or for us to let her know we were running a little behind.

We realized our kids didn’t have an easy way to call up grandparents to say hello or to call a neighborhood friend to play without us as the go-between. We looked at a way for our children to have a way to connect with family & community.

Traditional Landlines? They were super expensive (like $50/mo!) & our house was unserviceable.

I (Chris) built my first prototype by first purchasing an old vintage phone (from 1986) I liked off eBay & getting it to work over his home internet. This was to see if his kids would like using it. I set up speed dial with a little sticky note & my kids started calling me when I was working late at the office, calling grandparents, & their nanny...all on their own. I knew we were onto something special...

We ended up partnering up with an industrial designer to see if we could get a design that made sense while making a phone that didn't have so many wires and external stuff...I wanted everything to be via WiFi & housed internally to a phone housing.

We also found an IT expert that joined the team to help us understand the technical side of things-it's a whole other world out there in IT - we couldn't do this without him.