"I just rebuilt Skype"

When Microsoft shut down Skype in March 2025, Dennis saw an opportunity. He launched The Other Phone days later. Seven months in, it has 10,000 registered users and generates $14,000 per month. The product is not a reinvention — it is a faithful reconstruction of what Skype used to be, before bloat, ads, and corporate neglect made it unusable. "I basically just rebuilt Skype," Dennis says. The simplicity of the premise is the point.

The strategic window

Dennis did not build The Other Phone in a vacuum. He had been running a VoIP company for years before Microsoft's announcement. When the shutdown hit, millions of Skype users needed somewhere to go. The incumbents — Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams — all solve different problems. They are built for meetings, scheduling, and enterprise workflows. Skype was built for spontaneous, lightweight calls between friends and family. That use case had no obvious home after the shutdown.