PhoneTag press resources.

Most young children do not carry phones, and most parents do not want them to. The same is true at the other end of life: many elderly loved ones, especially those living with memory loss, do not use or keep track of a phone. Yet the moments a family most needs to be reachable happen exactly when their person is out in the world without one: a change of plans at practice, a wrong bus stop, a scraped knee on a field trip, a wandering moment in a crowded museum, a grandmother's walker found blocks from home, or a caregiver who needs a family's guidance right now. Today those gaps are filled by paper emergency cards, permanent marker on a backpack, engraved bracelets, or nothing at all.

PhoneTag is a small, weatherproof QR tag that attaches to what a loved one carries: a child's backpack or jacket, or an elderly parent's walker, wheelchair, or bag. Any adult helping that person can point their phone camera at the tag and be connected to the family in seconds, by live video, voice, or text, from their web browser. The helper needs no app and no account, the family's phone number is never shown, and each scan can share the tag's location. If no one can pick up, a built-in AI receptionist answers, takes a message, and knows what to say. It is the connection of a phone for the people we love who do not carry one, whether they are seven or ninety.

• Accounts are created and held by adults; children never sign up, log in, or share personal information
• The scanner sees only a first-name label the parent chooses, never a phone number, email, or address
• No ads, no third-party trackers, no data sold
• Live calls are encrypted in transit; the AI assistant always discloses that it is an AI
• Every scan is logged with time, location, and device, and visitors can be blocked with one tap
• Tags can be paused instantly from the parent's phone

PhoneTag is built by a founding team of four whose combined experience covers the entire journey of the product, from the first sketch to the tag clipped on a backpack. The team blends software engineering across mobile apps, real time video, and applied AI; commercial product design shaped by years of consumer goods work; manufacturing and supply chain experience that turns a design into a durable, weatherproof tag produced at scale; and the marketing and brand craft to introduce a new product category to families.

Around that core, the founders also bring e-commerce and retail operations, customer experience, and a privacy-first approach to product safety. It is a rare full-stack team for a company whose product spans a physical tag, a live video call, and an AI receptionist, and they are building PhoneTag as the product they wanted for their own families.