Why we're called Hello Hello
In August 1877, the telephone was brand new, and nobody agreed on how to answer it. Alexander Graham Bell liked “Ahoy!”
Thomas Edison had another idea. He wrote to the man setting up Pittsburgh's first phone line:
“Friend David, I do not think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What you think? Edison.” Thomas Edison to T.B.A. David, August 15, 1877 (AT&T Archives)
Edison didn't invent the word “hello.” It was around before him. But he helped make it the way we answer the phone, and it stuck.
A hundred and fifty years later, it still works. The phone rings in the kitchen. A little one sprints across the house yelling “Hello? Hello!” And on the other end, Grandma laughs and says hello back.
Hello Hello is a home phone for that moment.
What we believe
Be here
A phone that lives at home, so the family can too.
Keep kids close to their people
Grandparents, cousins and best friends should be one ring away.
Filter for presence
Your people ring through. Spam doesn't. So every ring is worth answering.
Paid for by families
We're small and bootstrapped, built to be profitable and paid for by families, not investors.
Who we are
I'm Suraj. We have two little kids, and their grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa, are a long way away in New Jersey. I built a home phone for our kitchen so the kids could run to it. Now we'd like to build one for yours.
Fully refundable · counts toward your first month
Sources for the Edison letter: Wordorigins.org; New York Times, 1992.