Reconnecting Through Voice: How Tin Can is Bringing Back the Landline for Today’s Kids
In an era dominated by screens and digital communication, Seattle startup Tin Can is taking a surprisingly analog approach to keeping families connected. Founded by CEO Chet Kittleson, the company has created Wi-Fi enabled landline phones that are flying off the shelves—a remarkable achievement in 2025. Recently recognized as one of GeekWire’s “Uncommon Thinkers” for the year, Kittleson is challenging our assumptions about how children should communicate in the digital age.
Tin Can isn’t about nostalgia, though that’s often the first assumption people make. “People always ask us about nostalgia and retro… I don’t think it’s about that. I think it’s about connection,” explains Kittleson. While the familiar form factor certainly helps with adoption, the company sees itself more as a “connection factory” than a throwback to bygone eras. The simple landline phone serves a purpose that smartphones and tablets often fail to fulfill: genuine human connection through voice alone. With no screens and no AI intermediaries, children using Tin Can phones experience communication in its most human form, building relationships through the nuance and warmth that only voice provides.
The inspiration for Tin Can came from a simple observation during school pickup, when Kittleson realized how fundamentally the landline had shaped his own childhood in La Conner, Washington. “As a social network, the landline had 100% penetration. Everybody had one,” he reflected. “I think we all forgot that we were major beneficiaries of that as kids.” The memory resonated with other parents too—nearly all could still recite their childhood best friends’ phone numbers decades later. This shared experience highlighted something important: today’s children were missing out on the formative communication experiences that previous generations took for granted. Organizing roller hockey games, arranging playdates, or just catching up with friends—all of these social interactions happened through voice conversations rather than text messages or social media.
The science backs up Kittleson’s intuition about the superiority of voice communication. He cites a revealing study where stressed children were divided into three groups: one texted their mothers, another called them, and the third saw them in person. Only the children who called or saw their mothers experienced a calming effect and released oxytocin—the bonding hormone. For the texting group, “There was no chemical effect. It was like nothing happened,” Kittleson explained. “It’s not connection. You are communicating, but that’s not the same thing as connecting.” This distinction between communication and connection forms the philosophical foundation of Tin Can. Kittleson practices what he preaches in his own family too, where his children don’t own personal devices. He describes how eliminating screens on family road trips transformed their experiences together, replacing digital distractions with conversations and shared moments.
The startup recently secured a significant $12 million seed round led by Greylock, with participation from David Shuman, chairman of the board at smart ring company Oura. The funding addresses a critical need for the growing company: hardware expertise. “We are a bunch of technologists with very little hardware experience,” Kittleson admitted. Shuman’s involvement brings valuable knowledge about supply chains, manufacturing processes, and cash flow management—essential ingredients for a hardware startup scaling to meet unexpected demand. The investment validates Tin Can’s unusual approach and suggests that the market for screen-free communication tools for children may be larger than many industry observers anticipated.
Behind Kittleson’s uncommon thinking is a personal story of encouragement and belief. He credits his mother with instilling in him the confidence to pursue unconventional ideas. When he wrote “terrible songs” as a child and his uncle gently suggested he wasn’t a great singer, his mother remained steadfastly supportive. She told him, “Whatever you want to do, if you work hard enough, if you believe, if you’ve got the guts, you can do it.” That unconditional support made Kittleson “more inclined to be open to the idea that I could be the reason something like the landline comes back.” In a tech landscape obsessed with the next digital innovation, Kittleson’s willingness to look backward for inspiration—finding value in what was discarded during the smartphone revolution—truly marks him as an uncommon thinker. As families increasingly seek healthier relationships with technology, Tin Can’s simple phones are connecting not just children to their friends and family, but also connecting us to an almost forgotten way of building genuine human relationships.
