The most interesting startups right now want to get you off your phone

This TechCrunch video article describes a startup trend that runs counter to the direction of the current AI boom, yet is equally worth noting: while the AI fundraising machine keeps breaking records and many companies are steering users toward more automation, more screen interaction, and more online workflows, other founders are thinking about how to pull people back from their phones into the real world. The article mentions that Mirror founder Brynn Putnam just raised funding for the startup Board, whose focus is not on making yet another app that draws users to swipe, linger, and interact, but on creating reasons for people to gather together through physical games and face-to-face social experiences. The article also mentions that Cyberdeck creators are becoming popular online—they build DIY computers with a toy-like, handmade, and imaginative feel, and even explicitly encourage users to leave their phones and reconnect with the outdoors and real life. Such products differ from so-called "AI-free browsers"; the latter may be more of an aversion to or resistance against the infiltration of AI features into browsers, but TechCrunch's description implies that cases like Board and Cyberdeck are not simply anti-technology or anti-AI, but rather a redesign of technology into a medium that demands less attention and serves physical life more. For Taiwanese readers, the point of this article is not the release of some model or tool, but a signal it provides in the market narrative: AI remains the focus of the capital markets, but "offline, physical, slow interaction, social repair" may also become a direction for product differentiation. For entrepreneurs and product designers, this means that users' feelings about digital fatigue, phone dependence, and over-automation may be forming a new space of demand.