Tech founder built a landline-style phone to help reduce her screentime—she sold $120,000 of them in 3 days
Cat Goetze may be a tech founder, but she’s on a years’ long journey to reduce her reliance on devices.
Two years ago Goetze, who goes by CatGPT on social media, wanted to swap her smartphone for something more low-tech.
Indistinguishable from chatGPT.
“I was kind of just sitting around [thinking] it’d be so cute if we still had landline phones and you could twirl the cord and talk with your friends,” she tells CNBC Make It. “That just felt nostalgic and chic to me.”
YOU CAN STILL GET A FUCKING LANDLINE
Looking into it, she didn’t realize getting a landline for her apartment would require getting a new number and paying for a phone line. So, the 20-something zillennial built her own version from a phone she thrifted: “I literally just hijacked a landline phone and made it Bluetooth compatible.”
The pink clamshell handset quickly became the most talked-about feature in her apartment. Whenever someone buzzed into her building’s security system, Goetze would let them in from her landline. She could also place outgoing calls from the set. I After two years with it, Goetze unveiled the phone to her online audience in July 2025 to see if anyone else thought it was a good idea.
I’m gonna say it. Zoomers are fascist because they yearn for the mythical millennial or genXer youth they never got to experience
Within hours, hundreds of people commented on the video within hours saying they needed the device. She set up an online shop to collect pre-orders thinking 15 to 20 people would place actual orders and she could make the devices by herself in her apartment.
Goetze’s project, Physical Phones, passed $120,000 in sales in its first three days, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The business has sold over 3,000 units and made $280,000 in sales by the end of October.
I’m sorry that’s like around a hundred bucks per shitty knock-off landline, you’re killing me here
“It literally felt like we had captured lightning in a bottle,” Goetze says.
Okay, get your bag.
*Users are tapping into nostalgia to combat excessive screen time
Physical Phones currently has five styles of phones that range from $90 to $110. Goetze partnered with an electronics manufacturer to produce the phones, and the first batches are set to ship to customers starting in December.
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Physical Phones connect to both iPhone and Android devices via Bluetooth and will ring when the smartphone receives a phone call, or an audio or video call from platforms like WhatsApp, FaceTime, Instagram and Snapchat; the audio of the call then routes to the Physical Phone.
Users can place outbound calls by dialing a phone number or pressing the star sign (*) to activate their smartphone’s voice assistant and instructing it to call a contact’s name.
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Goetze says the success of her business aligns with a growing movement of people trying to reduce their screen times and reliance on smartphones.
touching grass
dropping 100 bucks for cheesy nostalgia bait
She points to the Covid-19 pandemic as having a major impact on how people use their phones today. People were stuck at home and away from people, so they turned to apps like TikTok to fill the time and feel connected.
Yeah she’s partially right. But go take a fucking hike fr
Now, as some consumers grow skeptical about tech companies’ hold on their attentions, and are getting tired of navigating AI and AI-generated content online, people are trying to course-correct, Goetze says.
Okay that’s kinda funny. AI slop is the final straw to being the luddite revolution would be a great bit
“Our attention spans are shorter. We feel more anxious. We’re less present and unable to enjoy our lives. We’re going through a total loneliness epidemic,” she says. People are now “starting to put their foot down and realize, ’You know what, I actually don’t want this, and I’m going to go ahead and choose a different future.”
By bringing back ye olde silly spinny number phones that cost an arm and a leg
Goetze stops short of “demonizing” technology, however, explaining that it’s “what brings us sustainable forms of energy and vaccines and a bunch of really good things for for the world, but it’s like, OK, how do we live in harmony with it?”
Too afraid of being called out as being the grifter she is.
Within hours, hundreds of people commented on the video within hours
I went to pride with a handbag that looks like an old school phone. It had a handset that plugged into my smart phone and worked as headphones/mic. Whenever I got a compliment I’d say “oh wait I think it’s ringing” pretend to answer it and then say “it’s for you” hand it to them playing Chapell Roan “Good luck Babe” from my media player
thats really cute
That’s cool as fuck
amazing
Bluetooth fake landlines aren’t even a new idea. Here’s one on hackaday from 2010. Here’s one from 2019 that opens with “You’ve seen a landline phone converted into a Bluetooth headset. There’s nothing new there. It’s great for confusing kids when asking them to dial a rotary phone, but that’s about it. It’s the same phone, built by Ma Bell for fifty years, converted with a little Bluetooth breakout board.”
That’s what I’m saying
The key difference being that those projects shared their process freely so others could easily replicate their work but this lady went straight for grifting
capitalist innovation is when you do the same thing as a bunch of other people, but with slightly different appearance, branding, and marketing. truly peak creativity.
I spent $10 at bestbuy for a corded landline phone since my internet came with mandatory phone service. I consider it my just chatting number. It’s fun getting unimportant calls from friends and family when they just want to chat and they know they aren’t interrupting me.
Cat Goetze
When you’re named after the two most popular things on the Internet
At least the kitties are cute!
I’m gonna say it. Zoomers are fascist because they yearn for the mythical millennial or genXer youth they never got to experience
[looks at my parodies of '80s Radio Luxembourg and '90s Svensk Filmindustri idents]
[looks at my typewriter and Palm Pilot]
:nyoron:
You get a
hallpass
I’m kind of like that for all sorts of Cold War crap from both sides, admittedly, but that’s less chasing an idealised version of my parents’ childhood and more just that I’m a filthy red who misses when that meant something and made people angry and scared.
I had a landline phone growing up and it was a pain in the ass when you stepped out of the magic cone of coverage when we had cordless. Corded was even worse because you were forced in front of the receiver and had no privacy. If I had my way we would retvrn to keitai phones.
The trick was to get one of those Radio Shack 900 MHz analog cordless units and NEVER UPGRADE. Resist the siren’s song of 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz digital sets: they are worse experiences. I swear, the NiMH batteries in those things lasted forever, too, and since it was Rad Shack, you could keep a few spare packs on hand for cheap.
reading manga on a big ass keitai sounds fun tbqh, been considering one for walking around
This shit has been around for fucking ever, I think it even predates Bluetooth. I swear I remember paying like $10 for a corded one as a gag gift in the late '90s.
The children yearn for the cords.
Comrades, travellers, liberals, you cannot break free of technology with more gadgets. An expensive bluetooth earpiece only couples you to your phone more.
It’s tiktok, if you can produce any sorting of pseudo-eclectic garbage the comments are full of sycophantic morons chanting “patent this NOWWWW!!” like it’s some kind of magic instant-money button. You can sell anything to the right schmuck, and boy does tiktok help you find a lot of schmucks.
Oh. That’s Lloyd Frontera. I still have to finish the manwha, I pseudo-dropped it when it got super serious all of a sudden in the last arc
My great aunt had a rotary phone, her number was 5 digits.
Cat Goetze may be a tech founder,
Cmon man
By bringing back ye olde silly spinny number phones that cost an arm and a leg
I had the spinny phone in 80’s and i must say they’re overrated.
