ByFounders Invests $2.1M in Minute, the eSIM-First Carrier Built to Make Mobile Borderless

‍ByFounders today announced a $2.1 million investment in Minute, the mobile carrier building a single, flat-rate plan that works the same way everywhere. Minute pairs unlimited talk, text, and nationwide 5G with high-speed data abroad, all activated by eSIM in under a minute and priced at $50 a month with taxes and fees included. The company is now taking pre-orders ahead of a 2026 launch.

The wireless market has spent two decades teaching people to expect the opposite of simplicity: overage fees, roaming charges that turn a week abroad into a billing surprise, contracts that are easier to start than to leave, and activation that still, in 2026, can mean waiting on a SIM in the mail. Minute's thesis is that none of this is necessary. A traveler shouldn't have to think about which country they're in, swap SIMs, or buy a separate plan to keep their phone working the way it does at home.What drew us to Minute is that it isn't a reseller dressed up with a better app.

The company is building the network underneath, its own core and operating stack, rather than renting one and inheriting someone else's economics and constraints. That vertical integration is hard, and it is exactly what makes a flat global price defensible rather than a marketing promise. It is also a reflection of the founder: a builder who has gone deep into the parts of telecom most companies treat as a black box, and who is assembling the regulatory, spectrum, and infrastructure pieces with unusual rigor for a company at this stage. The wedge is a consumer product anyone can understand in one sentence, and the moat is the network beneath it. That combination, a simple front door and a hard-to-copy backend, is the kind of company we look for at ByFounders.

‍‍

About ByFounders.
‍ByFounders is a venture capital firm that backs mission-driven consumer and technology companies.

‍About Minute. Minute offers unlimited talk, text, and nationwide 5G with high-speed data abroad for $50/month, taxes and fees included, with eSIM activation in under a minute and no contracts to individuals in the USA. Minute is now taking pre-orders from individuals in the United States at buy.minute.com ahead of a 2026 launch.