NOX's Molly Cantillon is bridging iMessage and WhatsApp — without App Store distribution

Yes. Thank you for your service. Uh, we'll talk to you soon. Have a good day. All right. We'll see you again. Our next guest, Molly from Knox, is already in the reream waiting room. We're going to bring her in and ask her how she's going to let you interface with both iMessage and WhatsApp at the same time.

Do I have that correct? Yes, you do. So, this is like a total moonshot company. This is harder than colonizing Mars. This is trying to get Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg to play nice. I I How are you possibly going to pull this off?

Yeah, message interoperability has been one of the problems that just people have talked about for a while. I think um the way that we do it is we have this insight where if you layer onto people's computers and you don't distribute within the app store, we have more interesting things that you could do.

And so it's actually possible to do um exactly what we want to do here, which is connect iMessage and WhatsApp together. Yeah.

So, I imagine that like if I was super super hardcore, I could have like a Mac Mini that's running with literally iMessage and WhatsApp open and an agent that's clicking and screen scraping and uploading to a database and then surfacing that in an app.

And it's going to be very hard for WhatsApp and and iMessage to like shut me down if I'm doing that. But that's a very proumer uh you need your own computer. Um, how far are you from there to Yeah. the actual product?

What's interesting is the first version of the product was effectively a cloud server that we would ask people to log in. So, give us their iCloud details. Sure. Um, to log into, which you know, Trey has a funny story about this.

Um, but at a certain point, I think you realize that it's it's just not the most effective and the right way to do it. It's not the the perfect answer. And so because it feels inelegant, um there's a better way, which is what you described.

Um essentially, if you can insert mouse clicks and be indistinguishable from a human from the OS level, so Apple can't tell that you're a human versus you're automating your computer, it's over. It's like, okay, great. That's where you want to be.

So, uh we've thought a lot about that question and yeah, certainly some of the features um sort of play with that aspect. Uh I mean do you have to like message the proumer nature?

Do you think that there's a world where you can get big enough that then you exert enough leverage over the platforms that they have to play nice with you?

Like is that the long-term goal to be able to walk into Certino and Menllo Park and say like look like there are going to be millions of people that are upset if you shut off my API access so let's make this easier for everyone. Yeah. I think we already see it moving in one direction with RCS.

Um it's probably going to continue moving that way. Yeah. So that would be amazing. Um on the proumer thing, I think it just comes down to regulation and rights and what you can lobby for.

So yeah, and there's how solid how important do you think iMessage is to Apple's like position because recently we've just come to this like weird realization that it's like my my it's my number one social network. It's like how I plan my social life, my family life, my friends. I'm sure you're the same way.

I have group chats with business friends. Uh, and all the social platforms are like where I consume news and content and like people that are like friendly acquaintances, but mostly like my social network is iMessage.

And that feels like they're going to be able to charge whatever they want for me to keep that every year when they release a new iPhone. So, do you do you buy that thesis as well that it's very important to Apple's position in the market?

I think it's hands down the most important factor as to why people are buying iPhones because no one wants to be the icky green bubble in the group chat where all of a sudden nothing works in the group chat and things are delayed and just disgustingly, you know, designed.

So, at a certain point, you don't want to be that guy. So, you just herd mentality and sheep into buying an iPhone.

But I think a larger point here is I think a larger point here is it's it's just like when you receive a blue bubble from someone there's already this preemptive okay another is wait so we're trying to build out the ultimate analogy for tech because you have you have the trough the slop trough you have people who are goated uh but then you have people who are sheep and so like you you you just helped us create a new link in the chain and the the diagram.

But anyway, sorry. Goats need sheep, you know. Yes. What is a goat without a sheep to contrast with? Sorry. Um, how's the actual product launch going? The rollout, are you in beta? Is it handholding customers on or general availability? It's really good. Yeah. So, it's general availability.

Anyone can download it right now. Um, at least on Mac and then if they want iOS, they can request access through me. So um we have been getting a lot of people today just going on the onboarding experience is mind-blowing.

It just tells you your life uh recounted through you through you know all the conversations and and top people that you've met.

Um, and what's funny is I was texting Ben before this, um, trying to coordinate like logistics and I found out that my messages suddenly turned green and it was because I hit a quota limit because this morning I sent out I think 3,000 messages to people all in my one-on-one group chats like, "Hey guys, can you help me, you know, post about this and and help me support here?

" And yeah, so I guess I re realized what the ceiling is on on um on the rate limit. Oh, that's always a good sign. I'm wondering if I'm going to get limited on my my inbox. I have 5,04 unread texts right now.

One of our friends uh one of our friends will manifest for uh Bloomberg for private markets and he kind of outlined it as uh iMessage plus signal and axe and Twitter as the main ones.

So, uh, have you thought about that and what what what are the, uh, what are the nuances of like how hostile each API is, basically is what I'm looking for, like a state of the state of affairs. Yeah, I saw I think it was Will's tweet. I saw it and I thought it was interesting on our road map.

We have Slack and Discord, uh, maybe email or a few other uh, messaging platforms. But I think the the big thing is actually 80% of your messages come through. It's not an equivalence, right?

like 2020 2020 it's like mostly people are on one thing and then they'll text this secondary platform for a specific group of people in a niche and then another maybe 5% of the time and so um I get the sense that it's it's mostly okay to just focus on iMessage and WhatsApp right now and then you can add integrations later or even have the community help you build these integrations.

Um but there are private APIs and I mean Telegram API it's easy and some other ways that you can Yeah. Yeah. I I I I really do wonder about that because it feels like Yeah.

to me to me to me it feels like the more platforms you add obviously the more valuable it is because at two like I I probably get 80% of my texts on iMessage 10% or maybe 5% on WhatsApp 5% signal. No, it's definitely a power law. Like iMessage is the most important.

What I wouldn't even put WhatsApp I would put WhatsApp like fourth or fifth for me personally. It would go iMessage, then probably XDMs, then maybe Instagram DMs, then WhatsApp, then I would even put Signal above WhatsApp.

But the point is is that like uh like a one app to rule them all, like if it's going to be a standard in my life, that's like the one unifying interface. Like I want it to be across everything. I think the the control plane, but I don't know, there's a lot of w with all these like unified personal assistance stuff.

There's a lot of uh you know, expressed preferences versus revealed preferences, like people might actually use it a different way than they say they want to use it. Um, but I don't know, it's going to be a fun fun building process for you. So, I'm very excited.

Yeah, it's it'll be cool to see the longitudinal access come in too, right? Because like our thread on X will be different from our thread on email will be different from our thread on iMessage.

If you can just solve that problem of context coming in from all these different places, um that would be huge for both people and companies. So, it's going to be really exciting. Have you learned anything from the previous attempts at this like the beepers of the world?

Um yeah, you definitely don't want to poke the bear and do the thing that feels not right and inelegant for too long.

Uh I think the first launch we had which was sort of a semi-private beta launch in February um we had a lot of people come on and uh tell us hey Apple's watching and you know maybe would have issues with iMessage.

Um, I think the main thing is just be nimble and agile and when APIs change that we know that have changed, we just automatically update right day of four hours later a new build is out. And so nothing really breaks as long as you uh are on the system all the time. Keep shipping.

I mean, 4 hours in text message land is a long time for some people if they're like, I didn't get the message from my wife that I need to pick up the kids or something like that.

does seem like a tall order, but uh that's why they invented 996 or 002 as the Wall Street Journal put it more recently, which is basically I I think uh everyone everyone everyone has this problem. It's very hard to create an elegant solution, but if you do it, it will be incredibly valuable. Yeah.

Well, uh good luck to you. I don't know if we lost the video, but thank you so much for stopping by. Uh we will talk to you soon and have a great rest of your day. Congratulations. Sorry, that that was kind of a crazy ending, but we have Johnny Dwire from uh Muan Space, his