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

34 points - today at 3:12 PM

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!

Source

Comments

morpheuskafka today at 6:02 PM

> 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.

zitterbewegung today at 6:04 PM

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 ?

arrsingh today at 3:51 PM

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.

liamcardenas today at 4:26 PM

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

landl0rd today at 5:28 PM

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.

Calvin02 today at 3:37 PM

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

chopete3 today at 5:09 PM

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.

kneel25 today at 5:55 PM

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

crsv today at 6:30 PM

Hope this gets killed quickly with prejudice.

satvikpendem today at 4:36 PM

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.

dubcanada today at 3:54 PM

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.

hotstickyballs today at 5:35 PM

Someone tag Apple in this thread and shut them down please

dgellow today at 4:26 PM

> 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?

xena today at 3:43 PM

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?

tequila_shot today at 3:21 PM

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?

zerozerotwo today at 4:56 PM

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/

littke today at 3:39 PM

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.

the_arun today at 4:39 PM

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

qwertyuiop_ today at 5:55 PM

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

frumplestlatz today at 4:12 PM

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

Seems pretty damn clear.

MuffinFlavored today at 5:41 PM

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."

huhrymuhry20000 today at 3:21 PM

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

smashah today at 4:01 PM

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.

plombe today at 6:12 PM

AI slop

kakuremi today at 4:54 PM

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npilk today at 4:01 PM

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