I’ve known Danny Mizrahi, Founder & CEO at Sunbird Messaging, for many years, and wanted to have a conversation with him concerning the imminent launch of his company’s new unified messaging app: Sunbird.
I’m a fan of this app (and also an investor) because, as Danny notes, it does something extraordinarily useful: giving Android users full messaging functionality when communicating with iPhone users. As Danny notes, “there’s this massive pent-up demand for Androids and iPhones speak to each other better: encryption, reactions, high-res videos, pictures, etc. And so we solved that by creating an app that puts any messaging app inside of Sunbird.”
That massive pent-up demand on the part of Android users to get full iMessage functionality — augmented by some favorable tech press — is driving the rapid expansion of Sunbird’s wait list, which as Danny notes, went from zero to 50K in one day after a November 2022 press event (Sunbird’s wait list is currently north of 120K).
Also expanding is the list of apps to be included within Sunbird. “The first app we put inside of Sunbird was iMessage,” said Danny. “And we also have WhatsApp and Facebook in there today, but after that, it will be Telegram, Signal, Discord, Instagram DMs, LinkedIn, Teams, Spaces, Slack channels.”
Danny and I discuss how Sunbird solves the problem of “green bubble/blue bubble bullying,” a term describing the shaming of Android users in group chats due to current messaging incompatibilities. I asked my 17 year old daughter, an avid Android enthusiast about the shaming and bullying issue and she confirmed it. Just what we need, more tribalism… Sunbird solves for that.
Then we chat about Sunbird’s patented technology, the company’s successful (and largely viral) marketing strategy, possible pricing plans for the service, how Sunbird treats user data, the degree to which a unified messaging app lends itself to advertising potential, and what’s immediately ahead for the company in onboarding users in the next few months.
“Right now, we’re doing two thousand people at a time. We’re learning about the back end. We’re learning about the scalability. The goal is in late Summer, we’re going to launch and we’re pretty confident that we’re going to have a million downloads a day.”
You can join the Sunbird waitlist here: https://www.sunbirdapp.com.
