About
My daughter wanted to play Minecraft with her friend from school.
What followed was a chain of messages. Her friend's father texted my wife, who was traveling. My wife texted me. I tried the other parent — too late, they'd already stopped waiting. On the next attempt, I was cooking and missed the reply. The two girls eventually got to play together, through their parents' phones, only because four adults had finally managed to align our schedules.
This was a playdate between two eight-year-olds who lived a few streets apart.
I grew up with a landline. My friends called me. I called them. The phone rang, and whoever was closest picked up. We didn't need our parents to plan anything.
Somewhere along the way, we threw the baby out with the bathwater.
Why we built this
The problem wasn't just playdates. Zoe's grandparents live in New Zealand — we're in Stockholm — so from the time she was very small, they met her through FaceTime on the family iPad. For a few years it worked. Then something shifted. The calls devolved into searching for emojis to send mid-conversation, applying puppy filters to faces, and spending more time buried in the device than actually talking. The grandparents were still there. The device had quietly taken the relationship's place.
I tried the obvious solution first — a real landline. They still exist, sort of, for around 400 kronor a month. But you have no control over who can call, and cold callers and scammers dial landlines more than anyone else now. The thing I remembered from growing up no longer existed.
So I built it. I was running an AI agent startup at the time; I paused it and gave myself three months to launch Barnluren. The irony isn't lost on me — it's technology that makes this possible. I don't think technology is the problem. The problem is when technology captures our attention instead of serving it.
A few weeks ago my wife Nat took Zoe to Croatia for Easter — I'd broken my leg and had to stay home. They packed the Barnluren, plugged it into the wall when they arrived, and within minutes Zoe was calling her friend in Stockholm. Later she called me. That's what's worth building for — not the device, not the network, but the fact that an eight-year-old can pick up her own phone and connect with the people she loves, on her own terms.
What Barnluren is
Barnluren is a private phone network for families. It lets your child call the people who matter — and only them — from a simple landline at home, while family anywhere in the world use a free app. No screen. No strangers. No scrolling.
Who built it
Greg Chrystall
Co-founder
I'm Greg. Father of a 9-year-old, twenty years as a software engineer. I paused my last startup to build Barnluren, and I've worked on every layer of it — the Linux firmware on the device, the apps on your phone, the network in between. It's the first thing I've built where the user is someone I tuck in at night, and that changes how you build. Outside work you'll find me snowboarding with my daughter or travelling with her and my wife when we can.
Ivan Soltic
Co-founder
I'm Ivan, based in Pula. Twenty years fixing business problems with software — across industries, most of them turning out to be the same problem in different clothes. My first child is due in September. I joined Greg on Barnluren because I want my child to grow up in a world that hasn't outsourced its attention to a screen, and that doesn't treat children as commercial beings to be exploited. Outside work I'm at the gym, playing sport, or trying to give back.
What we believe
Your family is not the product.
You pay a subscription for Barnluren. We never show advertising.
No stranger can ever call your child.
The network is closed. Only contacts you approve can reach your child's phone.
We never record your child's calls.
The conversation is between the people on it, and no one else.
Your family's data stays with you.
We never sell, share, or trade it. We collect only what the product needs to work.
We don't use third-party analytics.
No Google Analytics, no Meta pixels, no tracking. Nobody outside Barnluren sees how your family uses the product.
We will never compete for your child's attention.
A thirty-second call to plan a play in the park is a success.
Our mission
Improve childhood.
Made in Stockholm
Barnluren is a two-person company based in Stockholm. We design the hardware, write the firmware, build the apps, and operate the network ourselves.
The first devices we ship are off-the-shelf hardware that we modify here in Sweden — the fastest path to launch for a small team. In parallel we're designing our own device, stripped back to exactly what a family phone needs and nothing else. Our first production boards are being manufactured in Stockholm by Mitac AB. We'll keep as much of Barnluren Swedish-made as we reasonably can.
We're small, local, and personally accountable for the product that sits in your home.
Thanks for reading.
If you'd like to get in touch, we're at [email protected].