March 2025 Summaries

Tomo is a personalized AI companion built entirely within iMessage for users primarily aged 15 to 24, helping them discuss goals, personal challenges, and practical next steps in a conversational, Gen Z-oriented format. Founded by former Retool colleagues Justin and Raymond after exploring separate startup ideas, the company chose iMessage for its strong relevance and distribution among its target audience, while recognizing that message reliability was essential to maintaining user trust. After initially attempting to build its own messaging infrastructure, Tomo selected Linq based on reliability, security, latency, and cost, allowing it to grow from one phone line and hundreds of daily messages to hundreds of thousands of messages within five months, aided by promotion on TikTok and Instagram Reels. As users increasingly share sensitive information and ask about privacy, the company emphasizes data security and compliance, while pursuing new features such as group chats and hiring to expand its reach.

Poke, built by The Interaction Company of California, uses iMessage and SMS as its primary interface, allowing users to interact with a conversational AI without downloading a dedicated app. Initially designed to summarize and manage email notifications through messaging, the product expanded as users adopted it for school, planning, connected services, and personal support. Facing high inference costs at launch, the team created an interactive iMessage-based waitlist that previewed the product experience while managing access and pricing. After a prior provider blocked all of its messages as spam, Poke selected Linq for its functionality, SOC 2 compliance, zero data retention, competitive pricing, and capacity to scale. Linq reportedly enabled rapid implementation, developed requested features such as zero-retention support, and accommodated growth from a single test line to hundreds of phone numbers and tens of thousands of daily messages, allowing the team to focus on product development and organic, word-of-mouth expansion.