On TikTok, Daze's most popular video has been viewed 8 million times. Across TikTok and Instagram, the startup, which has developed a new messaging app aimed at Gen Z, has amassed around 48 million views combined. Before its release, the app's waiting list was already filled with around 156,000 subscribers.
Demand for this next-generation alternative to iMessage and WhatsApp isn't driven by glib influencers or paid ads, but product demo videos of the app in action that are impressing young viewers. It's just that.
Founded by New York-based serial entrepreneur Willem Simons, Daze offers a freestyle messaging app inspired by social media. Similar to creating Instagram Stories using different fonts, styles, graphics, and more, users' chats are no longer limited to blue and green bubbles. Instead, a multi-colored message appears on the screen, complemented by photos, graphics, stickers, GIFs, drawings, decorated backgrounds, and more.
Additionally, the app is now leveraging AI to power some of its creative tools. In the future, we plan to integrate deeper AI-based technologies.
“Our goal with Daze is to create a fully featured messenger that can compete with the likes of iMessage and WhatsApp, while also having really fun and creative features,” Simons told TechCrunch told. “You can quickly type your message and press send, or you can drag the message anywhere in the chat. It's easy to use and practical, but it's also very freeing and unrestricted.”
This isn't the first time Simmons has experimented with this idea. For several years leading up to 2022, he was working on a similar-feeling app called Muze. Like Daze, Muze uses a similar set of tools to redesign mobile messaging as a free-form canvas for creativity. But while Muze was co-founded by Simons with Douglas Witte and Grant Davis, and Fenner Stevens is CEO, Daze is exclusively Simons' project.
This new app is a cornerstone of Daze's origins as a social calendar, and is built entirely in React Native to launch on iOS and Android simultaneously. Daze is currently scheduled for release on November 4th. Prior to this, the app was undergoing initial testing with approximately 1,400 invite-only beta users.
While the beta metrics still need to be proven in the real world, one encouraging number shared by a person familiar with the company's testing is that Daze's 60-day retention rate for users who send messages on its app is 50%. It shows that it exceeds %.
Unsurprisingly, Simons notes that the freeform messenger skews toward a younger demographic, with most of its testers falling into the 13-22 age bracket.
The startup's team consists of seven full-time and one part-time people, mostly 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.