Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage | Hacker News Reader

Launch HN: Chert (YC P26) – Twilio for iMessage

trychert.com

62 pointsgarygao200 comments

Hey HN! We’re Gary and Ian, and we’re building Chert (https://www.trychert.com/), an API for businesses to send, receive, and automate iMessage conversations at scale. Check out our demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRdwvVxMMoI.

We originally started by building products on top of iMessage because the blue bubble interface, typing indicators, and reactions made agentic conversations feel more human than ones on SMS/RCS. These included a one-shot iMessage agent builder that reached 2,000 users in one week and an automated iMessage outbound sequencer that sent thousands of outbound messages per day.

The hard part is that iMessage does not have a native API like SMS/RCS. Sending and receiving iMessages requires a separate infrastructure that is difficult to set up and maintain, especially at scale.

As we talked to more companies, we realized that the highest-volume use cases for iMessage were not B2C agents or even sales. They were things like customer service, missed-call text-back, cart abandonment, and inbound lead capture in verticals like home services, DTC brands, and property management that drive the highest volume.

Furthermore, these companies often need additional support, such as custom infrastructure setup (e.g. contact card, area code, or local worker sessions), integration support with their existing SMS/RCS or voice agent systems, and a reliable way to scale their volume over time.

We built Chert to be an infrastructure layer for businesses to handle iMessage conversations at scale. Businesses can use our API to send and receive iMessages programmatically, route replies to humans or agents, and integrate conversations into the systems they already use.

To maintain stability across both outbound and inbound use cases, we built phone line health checks and SMS/RCS fallback systems. We also integrate with existing SMS/RCS systems, voice agents, CRMs such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Attio, and tools like Slack. Finally, we let businesses reliably scale from a few test lines to hundreds of lines with automated line provisioning and a usage-based pricing structure.

We’re working with companies doing conversational messaging in DTC, sports programs, property management, and home services at the scale of hundreds of lines.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this and other similar verticals where iMessage could be useful. All comments welcome!

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> We rotate sending identities, warm them gradually, and cap volume per identity per day to stay well below the heuristics Apple uses to throttle abusive senders. Anyone promising \"unlimited blast\" volume is one ban away from disappearing.

If you are violating Apple's policies, even if they cannot identify each account you create, can they not simply ban you as a legal entity from using their service, and then sue you for damages if you do so anyway?

It's no different from getting a ban from Walmart for trying to sell stuff inside their store.

> iMessage is intended for communicating with family and friends, and is not for conducting commercial activities or disseminating unwanted messages. iMessage misuse may result in service limitations.

Regardless of the ToS violation... isn't this trivial to detect?

Even if they keep the message volume low, detecting a swarm of accounts that are sending duplicate/similar messages seems rather trivial? The entire business model depends on Apple turning a blind eye, i'm quite amazed they got any VC money at all.

Last time an iMessage-for-everyone startup (Beeper Mini) made the news, they had gotten funding from Samsung. Might be something similar here

> i'm quite amazed they got any VC money at all.

probably VC bit at the 'agentic' part. Using that word makes some folk lose their minds, and they may then find themselves investing in a whole range of things that they otherwise wouldn't.

Why would I use this instead of using iMessage for Business that is the official way and is more robust and doesn’t violate ToS. If you get shut down I have to redo this setup using Apple ?

iMessage for Business is very restrictive and has a really long approval process. On top of this, it also sends gray bubbles and doesn't allow any outbound, which prevents consented outbound use cases such as form fill text back.

> also sends gray bubbles

Incoming messages are _always_ gray on iOS, irrespective of the use of iMessage or SMS. Your solution is not any different in this regard.

I’ve never seen a gray bubble and have received incoming messages from all different types of accounts

Then there’s a misunderstanding here. I have an iPhone. When I open my Messages app and view a conversation with someone with an iPhone, my outbound messages are blue and their messages to me are gray. When I open a conversation with a non-iPhone user, my outbound messages are green and their messages to me are still gray. Are you sure you’ve never received a incoming gray message? Because that doesn’t seem possible, unless you’re talking about something other than what I and the person you responded to are talking about.

As far as I can tell, the OP’s insistence that their service won’t send gray messages seems entirely disconnected from reality.

yes, what I originally meant was that Apple iMessage for Business has gray bubbles for the messages that you're sending (or the ones that would normally be blue)

Incorrect.

It looks like in iMessage for business, the phone’s user’s outbound messages show as dark grey (as opposed to normal iMessage and SMS/RCS which show outbound messages as blue and green respectively). I assume this is supposed to communicate that you’re talking to a different sort of entity, not a normal person on a phone.

Personally I don’t see why you’d care. My business isn’t trying to pretend to be a normal person using a phone, so why would it matter?

https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/

> iMessage for Business is very restrictive and has a really long approval process

For good reason, so companies don't abuse it.

“Consented outbound use cases”

This is top-of-the-line corporate jargon.

I can’t recall the last time I received an automated SMS that I’d say was “consented.” Not that that’s an adjective I’d ever use.

"iMessage for Business" doesn't exist as an Apple product, since they don't support business messaging in iMessage. They have a service called "Apple Messages for Business." They didn't use the iMessage name, presumably because it's a totally different service.

https://register.apple.com/messages

Looking at their approval process, it is involved because Apple is focused on their customers, who are the end-users. They want it to be "great." Just letting any random company connect to their API and blast Apple users isn't going to fly. Users would hate it, and it would destroy their trust in the channel. Spammers and scammers ruined SMS. Nobody wants that to happen to the other channels too, especially not Apple.

How does this work? Do you have an agreement with Apple to connect to their iMessage service? If you do then kudos thats a real differentiator.

However if you're hosting your own mac mini farm and running bluebubbles or other such things that are not approved by Apple what is your plan to handle the case where you're sending enough traffic through Apple's services that they disable / ban / block you?

If its the former then awesome but if its the latter then Im not sure I'd want to depend on your service knowing that apple could ban you at any time.

Apple wouldn't ban us since we're not doing anything that would qualify as spam or abuse. Even if that hypothetical event does happen, we have SMS/RCS fallback systems in place so no conversations get stopped or lost

Much of what you mention in your post seemed spammy; messaging regarding cart abandonment, etc. I aggressively label messages like that as spam, and I suspect others do too. I also suspect after blasting out messages like that, your accounts will get burned.

We work with our customers to make those messages consent-based and feel non-spam.

Could you elaborate? What does that mean in practice?

So far what I’ve seen from your service seems to be yet another attempt at blurring the distinction between bots and human interactions, which is generally used for spammy content

We're working to bridge the interaction between humans and bots so that automated conversations feel more natural and comfortable for the end user. In circumstances where the user can't reach an actual human (e.g. off hours support), they're often faced with bots over SMS/RCS that feel non-conversational and therefore can't support them in the right way due to interface. We're working on building agents that can more comfortably interact with users during those situations.

What about RCS/SMS is the "wrong" way of helping the customer?

It's not the "wrong" way, it's just different. iMessage works well for businesses that want to create a conversational experience in their customer service that conveys care and attention

I am sorry. Can one not a conversational experience using RCS? What, in specific, does iMessage do that RCS does not which prevents RCS from having a conversational experience?

I suspect you are actually implying something different than conversational experience or using it as a substitute for a completely different concept.

This impersonates a person on a platform which has generally prevented that... so people will be more likely to have a conversation, as they don't expect it to be a bot. The fact that they'll have to rotate out iMessage accounts so the message history will kill any possible gain from the deception.

What I don't understand is why a business would want to bifurcate their messaging stack... this is a solution that only works for half of their customers... for a business that doesn't have an app.

So… You’re trying to hide spam by making it seem like human interaction.

That doesn’t address the actual issue with these messages… which is that they’re still spam, regardless how you try and dress them up.

To be clear, no matter how it is phrased I’m going to report any kind of “you left this message in your cart” message as spam.

As someone who has been in the messaging industry for more than a decade, it sounds naive to think that the litmus test for whether Apple will ban you is whether your traffic qualifies as spam. There is a long history of people trying to get around A2P spam filters / fees / traffic limits / onboarding / KYB requirements by running business messaging on P2P pipes, like you are doing. Some of it has been successful (see Twilio in the early days) but the industry has gotten a lot more sophisticated around this stuff and is not going to be receptive to your approach, which to me resembles the SIM farms that are a scourge when it comes to consumer fraud and abuse.

++ this is going to get banned the moment anyone from Apple sees it

Especially when Apple has provided an approved path with iMessage for Business. If this isn't trying to send spam/abuse, which alone wouldn't prevent Apple from shutting it down anyway, it is trying to avoid the registration/vetting process implemented by iMessage for Business.

At least with Beeper the pitch wasn't to enable A2P but to allow real people to use iMessage alongside other platforms.

> Apple wouldn't ban us...

To me this screams you haven't talked to Apple. Given how macabre they were towards Beeper Mini, I almost expect the same treatment for Chert.

Nonetheless, best of luck if you can pull it off.

I think what we're doing is fundamentally different from Beeper in terms of positioning. Beeper is trying to offer an additional interface to iMessage when it already exists for humans. What we're doing is giving agents the ability to interact with iMessage users, which is something that fundamentally can't be done on the current interface.

The fact that Apple hasn't banned agents like Poke is a good indicator that they're not necessarily against agents on iMessage.

> giving agents the ability to interact with iMessage users

As an iMessage user I want the opposite. I’m happy for agents to contact me through the cesspool of telegram or WhatsApp - on those apps I expect it and am suitably on guard. I highly value Apple’s policing of their ecosystem so I know that when someone iMessages me I can trust they are who they say you are.

I’m curious and fascinated in the pitch for this startup and how you convinced investors that you could overcome the obvious hurdles. You must have some Travis kalanick level of “we will break the rules and it will just work out”. Hoping you pivot your talents to something I can root for.

Poke looks like a startup with a 2 month head start that's also unvetted in the market, not a case study of permitted behavior and success at subverting iMessage with agents. Does anyone know if Apple even knows Poke exists yet?

Likewise, Poke also looks doomed. They're creating... OpenClaw but worse. OpenClaw hype and interest has recently fallen off a cliff, I don't think the angels will be getting their money back on that one.

> Apple wouldn't ban us since we're not doing anything that would qualify as spam or abuse

Hmm, I wouldn't be so certain about that. Apple can ban you for whatever they like.

Did the YC interviewers ask you about this risk?

Did they ask you about a bigger market you can move into?

There's no way this foothold will last. You're going to get massacred.

Apple WILL ban you. You're not in some capricious walled garden. You're breaking and entering, and they'll destroy you.

There is nothing of value to build here. You should take the rest of the day off, then tomorrow, pivot entirely.

The folks here are trying to save you n years of hard work and wasted effort. Please listen. You're lucky to have a YC check. Apply it somewhere else, to some other problem. Preferably not in someone else's garden, and especially not in one where they shoot to kill.

Why would yc fund them given how obvious the risk is ? Esp since a Mac mini farm is capital intense.

This is a "Launch HN" / "YC P26" thread, so YC funded them.

If YC didn't fund this particular idea, they funded the team to pursue some earlier idea that the team then pivoted from to try this one.

In any case, the team needs to pivot. This idea is lighting cash (and time) on fire.

YC is not some end all be all arbiter of what will succeed. Plenty of YC startups have failed.

https://ycgraveyard.iamwillwang.com/

https://startups.rip/

Seeing that YC will even fund something as risky as this, I'm going to go ahead and late apply. I have a feeling I shouldn't write that as the reason though ;)

Seriously though, this is wild. How is this different from those click farms with a wall of phones viewing livestreams or tapping on adds or whatever?

There might not be space left? I know of a few companies that have already been admitted, and they're filling slots fast.

I don't know how much they budget for overflow.

Don't let me discourage you. I'm just following my own suspicions. My company is at a $2M run rate and I'm thinking I shouldn't bother applying since I missed the window.

(Dang, care to comment?)

I still want OP to make the best of their time in YC and their runway. There are plenty of other great ideas out there rather than being a freight train hop-on.

I agree, even if they decide to persist with this, they need to grow into a more robust business (ex. focusing on the abandoned cart followup niche) than just being an API that can get shut down overnight.

And yeah it's definitely late, but I'll just take what you said as a push to actually bang it out today and try to fight my tendency to write and say way too much on those kind of things, haha. It's only half tech related anyway, similar problem space as Firstbase.

Little bit extreme

…so you have a Mac mini farm

Even if your core offering disappears you can do the same thing that every other SMS-sending thing can do?

I also notice you answered the question, but not in the way anyone who needs to depend on this service would want to hear. So yeah you're doing the Mac Mini thing.

I'm with landl0rd. This service should not exist, you should feel bad for creating it, and every time I get a spam iMessage I will think about you and curse your name. Hope the money's worth it.

> anyone who needs to depend on this service would want to hear

Are you implying you'd be cool with it if it was Apple sanctioned? That's pretty silly.

Not even the worst reading of their reply would lend to that implication.

It’s pretty obvious that they meant that anyone who depended on their service would/should probably run away kicking and screaming if they were looking for a dependable service that will do what they claim to in the long term.

If they were Apple sanctioned, then at least you’d have some reassurance that the service won’t die randomly one day when Apple has had enough, à la Beeper.

First, that's pretty obviously not what I said. Two things can be true. This is bad, and also if I were evaluating it for use in my business, it is obviously not something I can rely on.

But then just ...Um yes? I trust Apple to keep a handle on their iMessage network. Citation: having used iMessage for ~15 years. This would mean things like ensuring that I didn't get spam. Ensuring actual company identity (does anyone remember Messages for Business?) &c. This is pretty obvious and I am trying to understand your comment?

A few ideas for you guys: 1. Apple already supports iMessage for Business which is intended to cover the use cases you are targeting. But the set up process is ridiculous (for example: https://help.webexconnect.io/docs/wxcc-apple-messages-for-bu...). It would be amazing to have "Vercel/Resend for iMessage for Business" 2. If you go the send blue route, please support iMessage app payloads. Send blue doesn't support that

Thanks for the suggestion! Yes, the setup process is extremely long and requires a lot of documents from the side of the business haha. It's definitely one of our goals to create the Vercel for iMessage for Business. Also, for the iMessage app payloads, that's an awesome suggestion! We can work on building that.

The official api for iMessage is far richer than this and has things like forms, quick replies, various pickers, apps you can send in addition to text and images

Part of that is agreeing not to spam people and making it very clear you are legitimate business that is easy to contact.

Isn't this a direct violation of Apple's terms of service? You say you aren't spammy but at a certain point you will get banned. I'm not sure how YC funded this based on the platform risk alone but I guess these days they're throwing anything and everything at the wall.

We're helping to support conversational customer support agents that can help users better during off-hours and scheduling assistants that can interact with and understand user requests better than current models over SMS/RCS. This is definitely not just spam but instead the future of conversational 2-way messaging.

I don't think anyone would be expressing the same level of concern if the conversations were only started/triggered by an inbound [to you] message.

Commingling things like cart abandonment and (actual, user-initiated) conversational messaging dramatically increases the risk that Apple takes action, from my point of view.

Yes, I agree, which is why we try to make the opt-in clear. Use cases like form-fill text back or cart abandonment after the user has opted in and noted down their number are what we primarily focus on

No one ever “opts in” to nagging cart reminders just because they were forced to fill out a phone number to estimate shipping

I don't know why you're so insistent on trying to build a business on quicksand. Please just stop before you waste any more time or money on this.

They just got 500k from YC, I doubt they'd pivot until they get big enough for Apple to notice, by which point they might cash out.

YC will throw money at anyone I guess

YC also funded Sendblue which does something similar: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/sendblue

It looks like a straightforward ToS violation to me as well. I guess it's another "ask forgiveness, not permission" move.

This doesn’t feel like something Apple would approve of. Are you concerned about them shutting this down?

This is definitely going to get banned, and as a customer of Apple’s, I will be glad for it.

I don’t need more iMessage spam.

We're not encouraging spam with this. We're mainly focused on existing conversational use cases that's currently done over SMS/RCS. They can be more human and expressive when done over iMessage.

For iPhone only users, so right off the bat your product is targeting 50% ish of a companies customer base. And the non iMessage people get a worse experience?

We have SMS/RCS fallback for non-iMessage devices. Also, in the verticals that we're targeting, the iMessage usage rate is a lot higher than 50%

In North America iPhone/android split is far from 50/50. I have 4 different apps running and the split is about 80/20 and has been for a decade. Internationally android is used at a higher rate - but that is decreasing as lesser economies play catch up.

Not sure what bubble you live in, but that is incorrect. Maybe in California it's 80/20. Every single statistic globally is nearly 80/20% for android. There is a few rich markets and they may be 80/20 for Apple, but realistically Android wins every single time, no matter what market you look at.

China/India are like 30-40% of the world, and they are both under 20% usage.

Europe - 60/40% split for android

US/Canada - 40/60% split for iPhone

Even some of the higher countries are only 70/30% for iPhone.

Ignoring that is fine if your target is rich North Americans.

But you are still chopping off X% of customers.

Wins for "devices owned", but not necessarily for customers, which depends on the product/service.

The OP has said they have fallback to SMS/RCS.

>We're not encouraging spam with this.

what you encourage and what actually happens are two different things, though. gmail does not actively encourage spam, yet most spam emails i receive are from gmail addresses.

you have to actively fight against malicious uses, like spam. "not encouraging" is nowhere near enough.

what systems/processes/safeguards do you have in place to prevent abuse?

I agree. We're not completely self-serve right now, so we get to talk with each potential customer and learn about their use case before onboarding them onto the platform. This way, we can prevent use cases that involve spam or abuse.

>We're not completely self-serve right now,

"right now", which implies that you plan to move to self-serve. and obviously manually checking in on each and every customer is not sustainable if you scale.

do you do periodic checkups now? hoping nobody lies during onboarding is risky, in an already-risky endeavor. have you thought about anti-abuse systems for when you go self-serve?

We do run checkups and keep very closely in touch with our customers. We don't plan to go self serve in the near future and will most likely still have a very personalized onboarding process.

The last thing I want is an AI “thumbs up” or reaction over iMessage

That is the platform risk. Apple blocked Beeper.com for the same reason.

Apple doesn't inherently prohibit programmatic messaging. In fact, they actually developed Applescript for people to do that. What they are against is spam and abuse. Therefore, as long as we stay compliant and prevent spam, Apple is not necessarily against this.

They developed AppleScript for people to do this individually, at limited scale.

Push notifications, attached to an application or website, and controllable by a user on that basis, are the solution for corporate messaging at scale.

This will get you banned. It’s not a question of if, but when. Users will hit the report spam button. Apple will shut you down.

People don't report our phone lines to be spam because the use cases that we focus on are either mostly inbound (e.g. customer service, the user is the one who texts first) or warm opt-in outbound (e.g. form-fill text back or follow ups). Businesses want a better medium to communicate with their users and users want something more conversational and native to their messaging behaviors.

I genuinely can’t tell if this is naivety or willful ignorance, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.

This is in direct violation of the terms of service, and Apple invests a lot of money in keeping iMessage clean of this kind of misuse.

They control the servers, the client, certificate provisioning, hardware identification, and user identification. They can trivially trace a registered account to the point of sale and the card and PII used to buy the hardware on which the account was registered.

You will fly under the radar for just as long as it takes to annoy enough of their customers that Apple brings down a massive ban hammer.

I also can’t tell why these use cases can’t just use RCS.

SMS/RCS is better for some use cases (e.g. transactional messaging, promotions, or order updates) while iMessage is better for others (e.g. customer service). iMessage is better for these use cases because it feels more natural to the users texting the number

The only reason it feels more “natural” is because Apple prevents non-humans from being blue.

iMessage fully supports RCS.

Elsewhere in the great they said they can't support the customer in the right way on RCS. I can't think of any technical reason for right vs wrong support, but I can think of deception as a reason (gaining trust through using a closed platform).

That "opt-in" is going to be a vaguely-worded auto-filled checkbox and the "consent" will be stretched far beyond what any user thinks they're agreeing to.

Are you telling me that the “report spam” button actually does something??!?!?!!!

Your messages on iMessage are private by default, so "Report Spam" is the only way for Apple to receive the message for spam review.

How are your financial incentives aligned against sending spam? From this side, your words seem hollow and the typical viability of these businesses relies on sending spam.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/

Apparently, they are against ANY commercial messages. Even if I personally sent marketing messages and typed them myself. So of course they are not going to like you making it easier for people to do that at scale.e

Technically, you are right that being programmatic is not the issue (so presumably those openclaw adapters are okay).

But let's not mislead investors or customers -- Apple has clearly stated your use case is not welcome (except through the iMessage Business Program they control).

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/

Seems pretty damn clear.

We are not "disseminating unwanted messages". A lot of what we're doing (e.g. customer support or missed call text back) would be things that users would already be doing conversationally over iMessage.

Are you "conducting commercial activities"?

Getting a spam message about an abandoned shopping cart item is clearly "commercial activities" to me.

You can't guarantee one of your customers isn't going to do that dissemination though, right? No spammer is going to sign up saying "I'm a spammer that just got banned from <other service>! Can you guys help?"

> the blue bubble interface, typing indicators, and reactions made agentic conversations feel more human than ones on SMS/RCS

Would you mind detailing your reasoning why agents should feel humans, when they very obviously aren’t? Why should we want AI to impersonate humans?

we don't think AI should by any means to pretend to be human, and we are not trying to hide that an agent is involved.

What we mean is that conversation should feel natural and low-friction for the person receiving it. These interactions: blue bubble interface, typing indicators, and reactions will make it less like an automated SMS message and more like a normal messaging flow.

We are trying to make agentic communication clear, useful, and native to channels people already use!

How is blue more human than green?

For me personally, if I saw an Agent sending me iMessages I would feel it's for the sole reason of deception. Every other company uses SMS and they feels right to me.

Tap and hold -> Delete -> Delete and Report Spam.

The ideas like this one are the rarest of the startup ideas you wish they don't become too successful as they are the target for exploitation by bad actors with ad dollars quickly.

They won't be able to say no to the money.

We're clear on what we want to do and the future we are building towards, which is an agentic future where agents can better assist and interact with humans on a more emotional and personal level.

Agents interacting with humans on an emotional level is manipulative.

You've repeatedly stated that your goal is to make agentic conversations seem more human. This is deception that most people neither want nor need.

We're not trying to be deceptive. In fact, whenever we deploy agents over iMessage, we make it very clear that they're speaking with an AI agent and that they can request human handoff if they want. The goal is to make conversations with AI agents feel more conversational and less automated.

If this were legit then twilio would offer it already. People in messaging/b2c apps have been asking for it for a decade and the best weve managed is whatsapp. Kind of weirded out that this made it into YC.

I think this is bad and antisocial and you should shut it down. I like imessage because businesses cannot easily use it. The people who are most willing to pay for what you provide will do so because they can thereby annoy me in interfaces where other spammers cannot.

More practically beeper got blocked for this reason despite not even targeting commercial messaging.

I think they should probably ignore you and continue working on it seeing as they got accepted into YC.

Treme, on externalities:

> I think they should probably ignore you and continue working on it seeing as they got accepted into YC.

Being accepted into YC is not something that makes you or your idea invulnerable.

https://ycgraveyard.iamwillwang.com/

https://startups.rip/

This is true but the point of YC is when that they will fund things that can fail it’s why VC exists .

YC seems a bit different from I remember it back in 2007 when I first joined. They're pushing things like "GStack" now.

https://youtu.be/wkv2ifxPpF8?si=OHXgW92T_aZUbwpA

iMessage has official business accounts. Although I’m not clear if that’s what this company is using.

Can’t be because business chat both sucks ass and uses grey bubbles.

I agree this no bueno and anyone not in my contacts gets filtered out.

Why build a startup outside of making money from spamming community (mobsters) when its only annoys almost every human who receives spam calls, voicemails and texts? I mean even the founders and or those closest to them.. Im sure they love all the spam calls, voicemails (most recently being the annoying personal loan b.s.) and texts... right?

Im sure there's money to be made with spam outfits (mobsters) and more shaddy folks but again this isn't helping the issue that bugs almost every cellphone user out there. The government now is working on trying to fix this issue further, I bet there's more money there to be made in help fixing the issue then exborate it!

> I like imessage because businesses cannot easily use it. The people who are most willing to pay for what you provide will do so because they can thereby annoy me in interfaces where other spammers cannot.

I strongly disagree. If I need to chat with a business, an airline for example, why would I want to use SMS instead of iMessage? It’s the same app, but being able to easily send screenshots or photos and know they were received would be a huge improvement.

Yes, this is what we believe! We just want to make existing conversations over SMS/RCS feel more natural and conversational!

As someone who has never owned a iPhone... what is the appeal of using iMessage? What can iMessage do that SMS/RCS can not do? Apart from the fancy iPhone-to-Mac handoff features i've seen folks use ;)

> If I need to chat with a business, an airline for example, why would I want to use SMS instead of iMessage?

Why does it matter?

> but being able to easily send screenshots or photos and know they were received would be a huge improvement.

Have you heard of RCS?

There is already an Apple business api that allows validated businesses to talk to you over iMessage. It does require you to agree not to spam though (try Home Depot on iMessage to see)

Our goal behind this is to make it easier for people to conversationally interact with agents when they want to. Use cases like customer service or form-fill text backs would fit this. People are already getting SMS/RCS conversations in their iMessage inbox. We're simply making those conversations feel more human, conversational, and natural.

> We're simply making those conversations feel more human, conversational, and natural.

Explain what iMessage does to accomplish this goal that RCS can't.

If this project causes people to stop trusting Apple platforms so much, that seems like a win/win?

How is this any different then

https://blooio.com/ https://www.sendblue.com/ https://www.lindy.ai/ etc?

I will say I am the exact opposite of your market, I want absolutely nothing like this. In fact I'd prefer iMessage to allow ZERO programmatic interfacing.

While Blooio and Sendblue are more focused on B2C agents and sales, we're more focused on 2-way conversational business use cases such as customer service that require scale and stability.

Lol not true. Blooio also starts at $39 for shared and $98 for dedicated. Source: I'm the co-founder of blooio. https://blooio.com/

The $98 dedicated line is inbound only. A lot of our application comes in the form of warm, consented outbound.

We have that too for $195/line for 6+ lines. We also have a full API you can find it here :) https://docs.blooio.com

RCS fallbacks, Emoji reactions, typing indicators, even changing chat background

do you support iMessage app payloads?

Depends on the app payload. Reach out to our team and we will work w/ you! enterprise@blooio.com

Someone tag Apple in this thread and shut them down please

What is your plan to prevent spam from bad actors?

How do you ban bad actors so they can't spam again?

Does a user have to initiate contact in order to have messages sent to them?

1. Since we're not fully self-serve right now, we can choose to only partner with businesses with use cases that are opt-in and non-spam. 2. If we find that one of our customers is using this for spam, we'll reach out to them asap and determine next steps 3. Not necessarily. We support both inbound (user texts the phone line first) and opt-in outbound (we text the user first) use cases

And what would be the next steps? Would you block them from using your services, even if they are paying customers? Do you have agreements in place with your users to cover those situations? Is there a way for end users to report to you what they see as spam or unsolicited content? How do you monitor customers activity to determine if they are bad actors?

You should have answers for those points if you want to build trust with end users

For prospective customers, we would most likely try to work with them to brainstorm use cases that are consent-based and non-spam. For current customers, if we do see that they're using our services for spam, we'll reach out to them asap.

Also, while we can't see the exact messages that our customers are sending due to encryption on our servers, we do know when a phone line is close to being banned from our health checks. When that happens, we'll reach out to our customers asap and learn more about what is going on.

How do I as an iOS user permanently opt-out of your services before I get spammed to death with them?

As much as I want to applaud your progress here, as a user I want transactional stuff to stay in my email inbox. My iMessage is already starting to become overwhelming from spam and apps — I want fewer messages not more.

Yeah I agree. Our goal behind this is not to clutter up people's iMessage inbox with more transactional messages. It's to replace the SMS/RCS conversations that people are already having with customer service and scheduling agents with something more conversational and human.

My existence couldn’t possibly be any more digital, and I can’t remember a single time I’ve had a SMS/RCS conversation with customer service or a scheduling agent. I don’t want to have one either. My message inbox is already full enough.

My iMessages are for conversations with people that I actually want to talk to. The notifications are high priority because it’s with people that I want to talk to.

I can’t imagine my annoyance if I were to receive an iMessage notification while I’m expecting an important message, only to find that it’s more spam.

My email inbox is already a wasteland because of this. The absolute last thing I need or want is for the same thing to happen to iMessage.

That's why we're making sure that all of the use cases are non-spam and also of high importance to the user. As we've seen through our customers, an after-hour customer support agent for their apartment, as an example, could be a contact of high importance for the user and definitely not spam in their iMessage

Why is iMessage "more conversational" than RCS? and "more human"??

I don't get the distinction you're making. I'm not an expert in mobile messaging so maybe I am missing something obvious.

And what about WhatsApp?

iMessage is more conversational because it's what most people are used to using and seeing. People generally associate green bubble messages with spam/transactional messaging and blue bubble with trust. Additionally, iMessage also has additional features such as typing indicators and reactions (likes and loves) that makes the interface feel more conversational. WhatsApp could also be very conversational, but most people in the US use iMessage.

Reading your responses it seems like your angle is to fake looking like a human by using the blue bubble. Are you worried your users will ruin the trust of the blue bubble thus killing your product with your product?

As someone who has no legal duty to advocate in your best interest, I think you should keep posting about your intent to damage the platform-holder whose terms of service you are contravening.

RCS has most of the features of iMessage, including tapbacks and large attachments. It's even cross platform. iMessage is the channel where Apple users communicate with their friends and family. Exploiting the trust users have in iMessage by injecting unsupported business messages into it degrades the value of the channel by destroying the very trust you are relying on. This model is about as sustainable as burning coal to generate electricity.

Same. I hope Apple continues to come down on these companies -- and their customers -- that abuse the trust that Apple has built up with iMessage.

Sorry OP. Not all products need to succeed.

This is a very simple integration and the fallback is also pretty straightforward to implement technically. What’s the differentiator? Why would companies use your product?

I'd say mainly scale and stability. While people can definitely do this on their own through Bluebubbles or custom Applescript, stability is difficult to maintain, especially at scale. For most businesses, iMessage is not the core product they want to think about and maintain. They just want a reliable API and support/team to talk to so that they can reliably integrate it as a part of their existing business structure.

This is a foothold business living entirely at Apple's discretion.

edit: more research

> Chert is in the Sendblue/Blooio lineage, which runs genuine Apple software on real Macs logged into real Apple IDs. They're almost certainly not doing "Beeper Plus again."

They are a photon + linq wrapper. Very surprised YC backed this actually

So the business is to trick people into thinking they’re speaking with a real person and therefore save money on real support

Why shouldn't Apple shut this down to prevent spam in order to defend the Apple customer experience.

We are solving a real user pain point and not promoting spam. Users want a more conversational interface when they're reaching out for customer support during off hours and businesses want a better medium to talk to their customers. There is value created on both sides. There is no reason for Apple to ban us.

I believe enough people have made it clear in this thread that Apple does already have reason to ban you. Whether or not you promote spam is not the issue, the issue is that Apple already has a feature built for this exact purpose; you can disagree with their approach—and maybe you’re right, I don’t know. But the idea that you won’t blocked by Apple for this is naïve.

> real user pain point

That is obvious from all the upvotes your comments get on here.

While I do actually believe you’re trying to solve a genuine frustration people have. I disagree with your opinion that Apple has no reason to ban you.

Apple have always had a negative view on 3rd party APIs replicating their core OS functionality. And that’s exactly what you’re building here. You’re bypassing Apples approved process and selling those services. Even if you guarantee your customers wouldn’t abuse your service, it still defies Apples walled garden.

So Apple will find an excuse to shut you down. It might be a “security” update that changes their API and thus breaks your compatibility. It might be the ToS point others have raised regarding commercial use. It might even just be something as vague as “we detected unusual activity from your account” bullshit. But Apple will close you down just like they did with every other service that bypassed their walled gardens.

The only way you’d survive this is through lobbying. Like what Epic and others had to do. But there’s no way your startup would have the runway for an extended legal battle with Apple.

I feel bad that this launch post is being put down so hard but I unfortunately agree. I get enough text and call spam I can’t prevent even with reporting every single one of them.

Your business model is similar to setting up a lemonade stand on the railroad tracks. Nothing wrong with a lemonade stand, but putting it right in the path of oncoming trains seems unwise.

All kidding aside, your business model relies on continuously violating Apple's terms of use with impunity. Your technical foundation is built on a service that was designed to prevent what you are doing, and you will be locked into a never ending cat and mouse game with them as they try to block you, and you create new IDs to recover. Even if your use cases aren't scams, you are using the same methods as scammers. Operators of messaging channels are under pressure from EU and other government regulators to stop unsolicited messages. The path you are relying on is only going to get more difficult.

Maybe reconsider your path? If you want to be a provider of communication channel access to businesses, consider becoming a legitimate WhatsApp BSP, Apple Messages for Business MSP, etc. Work with the channel operators, not against them. That would be a much more stable foundation for your business.

how is it possible to build this whole thing and not know there is a very rich first party api that does the same thing and more in iMessage https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/

iMessage for business has a very long and restrictive registration process, gray bubbles instead of blue bubbles, and is inbound only. We're democratizing iMessage for businesses that have good intentions on helping their customers more but can't afford to go through the long approval process.

Right gray bubbles and validated businesses for commercial and blue for people. Apple business chat is not inbound only. 100% of your features including the ability to redirect voice calls to iMessage are already offered by Apple via an api and its integrated into every major crm

Apple Messages for Business does have requirements for their partner program, and they strictly enforce it, but would you really expect otherwise? I've talked to a few of their "MSP" partners, and it is true the process isn't as simple as integrating with an API. They do want you to fully support the entire feature set, and you have to prove it. How long it takes depends on your resources and commitment. It also isn't "inbound only," and does have a lot of features that iMessage doesn't. It's branded, without users having to download a contact card. No rate limits. Lots of advantages it seems.

Saying you are "democratizing" iMessage is like saying you are "democratizing" bike lanes by selling car owners access to drive the bike lanes. That's not what it's for, you don't have the authority to do that, and it's going to get someone in trouble at some point.

How are y'all building differently than Linq or SendBlue(also YC company)?

I tried SendBlue but latency was too much (regularly 20+ seconds). Seems like they target Sales use cases.

Ended up going w/ Linq, for the virtual boy/girl friend I'm building. Originally chose because the scaled players(Poke, Tomo, ditto) all use Linq, but pricing is for sure enterprise level haha.

Would be open to trying y'all if your doing something different/better.

Is it common in these Launch HNs to have a "Live on Hacker News" on the website banner. What does that mean? The link doesn't even point to this thread, but only the main page. Perhaps this is common, but I just don't get it

This finally put a nail in the coffin for my hope we'll ever get a Twilio for iMessage

For me, Twilio for iMessage would mean a DX-first product, highly prototyping friendly, etc... When I was exploring options for a B2C app a while back SendBlue made me sit in a call with a sales person then wanted some 5 figure outlay to start stated...

I'm finally accepting that because of the bootleg nature of programmatic iMessage, any company in the space has to be really aggressive with vetting, which in turn means replacing the "Get Your API Key" button with a "Call Us" button: which is the opposite of what Twillo was great at.

Well, there is this now from Twilio. They announced it at SIGNAL this month.

https://www.twilio.com/en-us/messaging/channels/apple-messag...

Apple Messages for Business has been around for a while, but it's mostly for communicating with a corporation vs consumer products. And iOS presents it like a support chat instead of a normal conversation.

They position it as "Apple user to business communication." They don't limit it to customer service/tech support. Bllie Eillish and the Haas F1 team just launched a fan experiences on it. Saw The Nudge is on it as well, which was a big upgrade from their old SMS experience.

You're trying to figure out what it is incrementally, and I'm telling you Apple Messages for Business is ancient news and isn't fit for the purpose described: https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/

The "experiences" are not normal 1:1 iMessage conversations. You're joining an outreach channel, and only large corporations (that includes whoever does distribution for Billie Eilish) qualify.

Proper consumer apps like:

- tomo.ai - poke.com - fractal.space

Are all building on services that give you an actual iMessage phone number, and those are what I'd like to see actually offer self-serve one day, just like SMS.

You don't need "SMS For Business" to send an SMS.

Hope this gets killed quickly with prejudice.

I'm surprised YC funded this — not because it's a bad idea, because it isn't. But because surely one of the first questions was: what happens when Apple decides to shut it down?

It's good YC is funding you because it acts as a later of protection from legal threats by apple. Hopefully if/when Apple litigate this I hope you will fight and set precedent for commercialisation of adversarial interoperability (A digital human right).

I suggest you implement Baileys also to your service so it can also be done with WhatsApp so we can accelerate the inevitable litigation.

We are def thinking a lot about interoperability and what it should look like in practice... >:)

You’re about to tie your names and reputations to this.

I would strongly reconsider pivoting unless you actually want to work for no-name companies and on the shady side of technology for at least the next decade.

Is this allowed under Apple's ToS?

I recall the Beeper Mini debacle not so long ago, and fear that this may be a house built on sand.

Apple is not necessarily against programmatic messaging. In fact, they actually developed Applescript for people to do so. Beeper was using it to replace the iMessage interface when it already exists, which is why I think Apple was against it. We're doing something fundamentally different - allowing agents to interact with humans on iMessage, which is something that the current iMessage interface cannot do.

Apple were against Beeper because it opened their platform to people who weren’t Apple-sanctioned users.

Apple might have cited a different technical reason but that would only have been to avoid antitrust regulations.

Unfortunately for you, this startup idea also allows non-sanctioned entities access to iMessage. So Apple will ban your access to.

Cart abandonment. Good grief, any company that reaches out on that premise immediately loses my business on general principle. I may indeed have forgotten, changed my mind or found it cheaper elsewhere.

Get over it. I walked out, chasing me into the parking lot is no way to get me to come back.

Why use this over Twilio which works pretty hard to make sure you’re compliant (and supports iMessage for business)?

Spam is an evergreen vertical

Does the name come from the farsi word "chert"?

I didn’t realize there was a farsi word chert. I was thinking it was named after my favorite cryptocrystalline silicate mineral.

Indeed it is.

The name come from a material name when we were doing archaeology research!

Assuming we have more customers using WhatsApp over iMessage, How did you decide to use iMessage over WhatsApp messaging?

we started with iMessage because it is still the most dominant, trusted channel in the US.

"Cold outbound"? So, spam?

ты черт

How does this differ from LoopMessage?

What is the cost?

Please don't.

Pricing anywhere?

if I can make a guess:

these guys are running a massive e-sim farm that sits on top of a rest api.

good luck - but for some of us we would rather stick to apple business

"Chert" is a poor branding for all Russian [and Ukrainian customers - it means "crap" or "damn".

We named it Chert because we were doing archaeology research.

That's fine, but never forget why Mitsubishi had to rebrand its famous Pajero SUV as the Montero in America and in Spanish-speaking countries [0]!

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero

better than "shart"... i guess

Sony had a NAS device for video storage called the “Petafile”.

Oh, wow! Not that "PDF file" sounds any better, though.

AI slop

Love chatting with an agent via iMessage for the right use case - it feels very natural and human. I hacked my own together with an old laptop and BlueBubbles.

How would you compare your offering with Spectrum (https://photon.codes/)?

I like the idea of explaining things like "<brand name> for <brand name>"

Thanks, it felt like the clearest way to describe it haha

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