What’s getting built in October (call whispers, voice-changed greetings, maybe SMS)
A bug report button that hands every report to a coding agent
ChatGPT did almost all the work of submitting Phone.inc’s ChatGPT plugin
Why they’re making their videos in-house instead of hiring an agency
First episode recorded in person, in the Phone.inc office.
A lot of people just need a phone number for something (the App Store, Stripe, registering a company), and Phone.inc’s free plan gives them one. Peter thinks it’s a huge use case that’s still up for grabs. With freemium you own the lead, as Patrick Campbell used to say, and Phone.inc literally has their number. Niklas cares less about why they sign up. If Phone.inc is where someone got their first business number, it’s probably where they’ll go the next time they need one.
October is the first month that isn’t only foundational work. Call whispers give you a few words when you pick up (who’s calling, and probably why) based on caller context and previous calls. Welcome greetings get a voice changer, so you record the greeting yourself and it comes out in a different voice, with your pronunciation of the company name intact. The stretch goal is texting on business numbers, the most requested feature. It’s pretty easy in the US and UK, and a lot more work in Denmark.
Niklas vibe coded a bug report button. Customers click the part of the page that’s broken, Sentry captures the session, and an Amp thread starts on a fix right away, all the way to a PR that’s ready to merge.
In his first week as growth lead, Peter submitted the Phone.inc MCP server as a ChatGPT plugin. ChatGPT’s plugin creator did nearly all of it (test cases, checking his demo video, telling him to set up a test account with a call and a voicemail). He thinks that’s roughly how onboarding should feel.
Peter wants Phone.inc to eventually make the kind of launch videos later-stage startups put out. They could hire an agency for that, but they’d rather get good at it themselves, which means shipping something every week and improving as they go. Companies that buy one great video often struggle to make the next one. And with so much AI-generated video around now, they want theirs to clearly be made by people.
Still Early is sponsored by Phone.inc: a business phone number, welcome greeting, call routing, and opening hours, all from an app on your personal phone.
