Trends Podcast

A text comes in at seven in the morning: "Run's at six tonight. Shoes by the door?" It arrives before you've given the run a thought.

That's the job an accountability partner does: a friend who checks in before you skip.

Tens of thousands of people now pay an AI about twenty dollars a month to send them texts like that. The company is called Tomo and it signed them up in a little over three months.

Tomo works inside iMessage, where you text it the way you'd text a friend and it texts you first.

First, who pays Tomo and why two products that sent people updates died. Then how I'd build a coach like Tomo for one goal, with parts anyone can buy or download today.

Tomo is built around goals and accountability. You photograph your lunch and it logs the calories.

It keeps track of a budget and sends reminders and nudges.

Bain Capital Ventures led Tomo's five million dollar seed round in June. Bain says Tomo signed tens of thousands of paying subscribers in a little over three months.

Plans start at nineteen dollars and ninety-nine cents a month. And those subscribers text Tomo on twenty days of an average month.

Bain titled its post about the company "Tomo believes in you."

Compare that with the best-funded assistant you can text. Instinct raised a billion dollars at a ten billion dollar valuation in September. Instinct is free and reports purchase volume in place of revenue.

Tomo charges and tens of thousands pay.

When I mapped these agents for the Trends dot V C report, Tomo stood out because it texts first.

People pay for a coach that reaches them before they remember to open anything.

Texting agents work inside the messaging apps people already use and spread by word of mouth.

Texting first has failed before, though.

OpenAI tried a morning brief called Pulse. It launched in September twenty twenty-five and OpenAI retired it this June. Its lesson was that proactive help has to be "action-oriented" and steerable.

A startup called Poppy pitched that "your phone should notice what matters and stay quiet the rest of the time." Poppy closed about three months after launch.

Pulse and Poppy both sent people summaries. A morning digest is one more thing to read.

The seven A M text asks you to put your shoes by the door.

Picture a woman training for her first marathon. Her plan sits in a spreadsheet that says six miles on Tuesday.

At six that evening she's on the couch. The spreadsheet sits in a folder she hasn't opened since Sunday.

A friend who runs would text her at noon. A texting coach could send that message each day she has a run.

I see a business in that text.

The buyers are people chasing one goal: marathon training, sobriety, a language or a savings target. They'd pay for a texting coach that checks in before they skip.

The opening came when Tomo signed tens of thousands of paying subscribers in a little over three months. Two products also made the build cheap.

The first is Photon.

Photon sells software that puts an agent inside iMessage, RCS and WhatsApp. It has five hundred paying customers and more than forty thousand developers signed up. Its revenue grew ten times in four months.

The second is Hermes, an open-source agent, so its code is free to download and run. TechCrunch reports that a texting assistant called Iris runs on Hermes. Iris watches what matters to you, runs work on a schedule and texts you when something needs your attention.

Iris is free.

So I'd build one in five steps.

Step one, I'd pick one goal. Tomo covers eating and budgeting. I'd pick marathon training and build for runners alone.

Step two, I'd rent the texting from Photon, so the coach shows up in a runner's messages next to her friends.

Step three, I'd run the coach on Hermes, the open-source agent behind Iris. It keeps her plan, works on a schedule and texts her first.

Step four, I'd write each text to ask for one action, because OpenAI's lesson from Pulse was "action-oriented." The morning text says, "Run's at six tonight. Shoes by the door?" If she skips Tuesday, Wednesday's text says, "Ten minutes tonight counts."

Step five, I'd sell where runners gather: a running club newsletter, a subreddit, a coach's audience.

From the first day I'd also collect each runner's email address, so I can reach her outside the chat.

The channel belongs to someone else. Apple decides who gets on Messages for Business. Meta put its agent, Muse, inside WhatsApp.

I'd count the coach's texts from day one too, because each one it starts costs computing power.

A texting assistant called Martin charges by how many proactive actions you get. On a yearly plan, twenty-one dollars a month buys limited proactive actions and thirty buys unlimited.

An accountability partner was a friend willing to text you before you skipped. Tomo showed people will pay for that text when an AI sends it.

Tens of thousands of people pay Tomo nineteen ninety-nine a month for a coach that texts them first. Visit trends dot V C and join more than fifty thousand founders to get the next opportunity.