Daze’s most popular video on TikTok has been viewed 8 million times. TikTok and Instagram, a startup developing a new messaging app targeting Gen Z, had a total of about 48 million views. Before launch, the app’s waiting list is already full, with about 156,000 sign-ups.
What’s driving demand for the next-generation alternatives to iMessage and WhatsApp isn’t glib influencers or paid ads, but simply impressing young audiences with product demo videos of the apps in action.
Founded by New York-based serial entrepreneur Willem Simons, Daze offers a freestyle messaging app that takes its cue from social media. Just like you can use different fonts, styles, graphics, and more to create your Instagram Stories, your chats are no longer limited to blue and green bubbles. Instead, you’ll see colorful messages floating across your screen, complemented by photos, graphics, stickers, GIFs, drawings, decorated backgrounds, and more.
The app is also now leveraging AI to power some of its creative tools. We plan to deeply integrate more AI-based technologies in the future.
“Our goal with Daze is to create a full-featured messenger that can compete with iMessage, WhatsApp, etc., while also offering some really fun and creative features,” Simons told TechCrunch. “You can quickly type your message and hit send, or drag the message anywhere within the chat. “It’s easy to use and practical, yet very free and unrestricted.”
This isn’t the first time Simons has experimented with this idea. For several years until 2022, he developed an app with a similar vibe called Muze. Like Daze, Muze has redesigned mobile messaging into a free-form canvas for creativity using a similar toolset. However, although Muze was co-founded by Simons with Fenner Stevens as CEO along with Douglas Witte and Grant Davis, Daze is entirely Simons’ project.
Centered around Daze’s beginnings as a social calendar, the new app is built entirely in React Native to run simultaneously on iOS and Android. Daze’s release is currently scheduled for November 4th. Ahead of this, the app is undergoing initial testing with approximately 1,400 invite-only beta users.
Beta metrics still need to be proven in the real world, but one promising figure shared by a source familiar with the company’s testing suggests that Daze’s 60-day retention rate for people who messaged it on the app is more than 50%.
Not surprisingly, this free-form messenger is getting younger and younger, with most testers falling into the 13-22 demographic, Simons says.
The startup’s team of seven full-time and one part-time is primarily based in New York, with only a few working remotely.
Prior to launch, Daze raised $5.7 million in funding from a16z, Kindred Ventures, Alpaca Ventures, Uncommon Projects, Betaworks, Maveron, 35 Ventures, New Wave, Antoine Martin, and others.
