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!
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.
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.
For good reason, so companies don't abuse it.
This is top-of-the-line corporate jargon.
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.
Incoming messages are _always_ gray on iOS, irrespective of the use of iMessage or SMS. Your solution is not any different in this regard.
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?
As far as I can tell, the OP’s insistence that their service won’t send gray messages seems entirely disconnected from reality.
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.
At least with Beeper the pitch wasn't to enable A2P but to allow real people to use iMessage alongside other platforms.
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
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.
I suspect you are actually implying something different than conversational experience or using it as a substitute for a completely different concept.
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.
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.
Are you implying you'd be cool with it if it was Apple sanctioned? That's pretty silly.
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.
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?
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.
The fact that Apple hasn't banned agents like Poke is a good indicator that they're not necessarily against agents on iMessage.
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.
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.
Hmm, I wouldn't be so certain about that. Apple can ban you for whatever they like.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
It looks like a straightforward ToS violation to me as well. I guess it's another "ask forgiveness, not permission" move.
Commingling things like cart abandonment and (actual, user-initiated) conversational messaging dramatically increases the risk that Apple takes action, from my point of view.
I don’t need more iMessage spam.
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?
"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?
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.
The OP has said they have fallback to SMS/RCS.
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).
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.
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.
iMessage fully supports 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?
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!
They won't be able to say no to the money.
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.
More practically beeper got blocked for this reason despite not even targeting commercial messaging.
Explain what iMessage does to accomplish this goal that RCS can't.
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.
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?
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 think they should probably ignore you and continue working on it seeing as they got accepted into YC.
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.
RCS fallbacks, Emoji reactions, typing indicators, even changing chat background
Sorry OP. Not all products need to succeed.
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?
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.
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?
You should have answers for those points if you want to build trust with end users
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.
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.
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.
I recall the Beeper Mini debacle not so long ago, and fear that this may be a house built on sand.
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.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/messages/
Seems pretty damn clear.
How would you compare your offering with Spectrum (https://photon.codes/)?
That is obvious from all the upvotes your comments get on here.
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.
Get over it. I walked out, chasing me into the parking lot is no way to get me to come back.
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."
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
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.
https://www.twilio.com/en-us/messaging/channels/apple-messag...
What is the cost?
I suggest you implement Baileys also to your service so it can also be done with WhatsApp so we can accelerate the inevitable litigation.
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.
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.