Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is Linq and how is it integrating AI into messaging?
Welcome to the podcast. Today we're talking about a really interesting company called Link, L-I-N-Q. They've just raised $20 million, and essentially what they're doing is they're putting AI assistants and they're getting them to live inside of messaging apps. Now, I think this is something that we've seen a lot in, you know, like this is something that's kind of common.
We see like Meta AI, I think, is the one that's the most famous for this because they've been able to put Meta AI into applications.
Instagram and WhatsApp and of course Facebook Messenger and what's interesting to me is that there's been a bunch of lawsuits like basically Meta didn't want to allow any other AI chatbots to be inside of their platforms and services because they're like you know this is ours there's been a bunch of lawsuits from different countries I believe India in particular and maybe some others that have forced Meta to allow other AI assistants inside of their chatbots
So this is something that I think we're going to start seeing more of in the future and is kind of like meta's moat. Maybe that's slipping. Link, I think, wants to be one of these players. We're going to get into what Link is doing, why they raised $20 million, what they're doing. Before we get into all of that, though, Jamie, would you want to tell everyone about the AI Hustle school community?
Absolutely, yeah. If you've ever wanted to learn how to grow your business with AI or even make money on the side, you want to check out our school community called AI Hustle. We'll link it below, but it's really a great place to be. Each week we release bonus content specifically geared towards how you can actually make money with AI.
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Chapter 2: How has Linq evolved its business model over time?
So this week we recorded a really interesting episode. Jaden did a complete web redesign of his app, AI Box, he's been working on for over a year now. um, and how lovable was able to, uh, you know, help him redesign it. So we go through things like that. You know, we're, we're talking about, we're doing actually a really big vibe coding course right now, uh, releasing a lot of content over there.
So if that's interesting to you, uh, you should definitely check it out. Uh, each week we, uh, so it's right now it's $19 a month and you can lock that price in if you join today. So, uh, we have over 300 members and we'd love to have you be a part of it. Um, but let's talk about link here. Uh, they raised $20 million.
Uh,
which is a significant amount of money. And I always like talking about kind of the history of some of these companies. They started as launching a digital business card business. That was their original business model.
Chapter 3: What impact does AI have on service-based businesses?
But they last year kind of helped businesses in a new way, which is upgrading their text messaging, like, you know, text marketing services to instead of just be an SMS text to iMessage. So it showed up. in blue as an iMessage instead of the green, which for some reason matters a lot.
But I mean, it really does when you're talking about follow-up and marketing and authenticity, like a feeling of an authentic person you're chatting with. I find that because I have an iPhone, if it's blue, it seems like more real or something and less spammy. But Jane, what do you think about it?
Okay. I think this is... This is a cool company. By the way, it's out of Birmingham, Alabama, which is awesome to hear any company not out of just Silicon Valley, right? Or San Francisco. So that's cool. Okay, what I like about what this company is doing is I do think that there is a ton of untapped potential for so many different industries and markets with messaging.
Specifically, what they're doing is helping you inside of iMessage, like text. You're basically having a text message chat with an AI model.
Chapter 4: What challenges does Linq face after raising $20 million?
They're helping companies to do that so you can text the company. texting back and forth with an AI model. It's a lot like what we're seeing with customer service, right? There's these customer service bubbles that when you go to a website, you can talk with them. And like I use a lot of I used to kind of hate it. And I actually have had some pretty funny experiences with some.
But I do have like a lot of AI ones where I will ask it like if If I go to your website and ask your AI model for a refund and the AI agent gives me a refund, I don't care what you do. Fantastic. That's the greatest use case of all time. Or, you know, fixing a bug on a website I think is less likely because they're going to send it over to the development team.
But, like, sometimes it can genuinely help you with things if there's a double charge or a refund or whatever or an issue. If it can solve it, great. Now, I think the next level on this is you have a lot of service-based businesses. They're not software companies.
Chapter 5: How does messaging through AI enhance customer interactions?
And people aren't, you know, if like your plumber, if you need a plumber to help you with something, you're not going to be on his website all, you know, always being able to chat with it. Sometimes you're like in the thick of, you know, you're under your sink and there's a burst pipe and you need to text someone. Um, Sometimes you just want to text a person.
You might be away from the internet and maybe the internet's down, right? And so I think there's a lot of use cases where just being able to text someone and it's an SMS is really useful. And it's funny the way that they came up with their company. It was like, I mean, basically they were just trying to help you send blue bubble texts on iMessenger. And there's a whole bunch of stuff you could do.
There's a bunch of companies that have sneaky ways to do this, right? Where it's like automated systems, but they can send blue bubble texts. Um, and then they realized, well, this is actually a great thing for AI assistance for businesses. So I think this is really cool.
You could just text the business directly, text the business line, um, and have an AI assistant, which feels very much like a person. Like if you can make it feel like a person to answer all the questions.
Chapter 6: What unique features does Linq offer compared to traditional messaging?
answer and everything. It saves the business owner a ton of time. I know for my own local business, like I have a brick and mortar local business. It's a podcast studio in Arizona. I don't live there in Arizona. I have a studio manager that runs it.
We get texts all the time from people trying to do scheduling or change scheduling and being able to plug something like an AI model in that's actually able to do something and give people information. I mean, a lot of the times you're getting the exact same questions about pricing and about schedule over and over again. If you can automate that
So whoever's in charge of it just has to kind of monitor and look over and it runs it all. I think that's an incredible use case, very useful for a business. And so I'm not surprised they're able to raise $20 million for this idea.
Absolutely. I mean, yeah, especially when it comes to service-based businesses, you know, usually people are calling about availability and price. And if you can automate a lot of that, you're going to save yourself a lot of time and money, you know, paying somebody to basically be a secretary for you.
Chapter 7: How does Linq address app fatigue among users?
So That's one side of it. And then there's the marketing side as well, messaging discounts and things like that. So really, companies like this, I feel like, honestly, $20 million, I mean, it is a lot of money, but I think there's a lot of potential in this industry, specifically with marketing moving forward, that there's just a lot of opportunity.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think this is kind of cool. So they're plugging into a lot of different systems. They are working with a company called Poke. And now they're going to kind of stick with some of their original revenue thing, which is basically B2B clients. They've done a lot of pivots, which I think a lot of startups can relate to. But they had a quote where they said, we still love our sales.
And we love that use case, but our choices were, do we stay a spoke of this wheel or do we build the hub? Do we focus on being the infrastructure layer or on these different applications of programmatic messaging? So basically, they think that customers are suffering from app fatigue.
And so with their technology, you don't need to use another app to interact with like you don't need to download like, you know, some sort of AI assistant to chat with something or be on a specific website.
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Chapter 8: What are the potential future implications for Linq in the AI messaging space?
It's just all through text messaging. They said, quote, poke.com along with others have provided or have proved that AI has gotten good enough. You don't need a traditional app anymore to do things. Really, you just need an interface that will let you talk to an intelligent enough AI that maybe connect to some of your systems and just tell them what to do and give it feedback.
So I think at the end of the day, this is really cool what they're doing and what the kind of the target audience that they're they're targeting. It feels kind of like what Apple intelligence should be or Siri should be like Siri and Apple intelligence should just be like on iMessenger. There should just be like a Siri that I can text and it will tell me everything I don't want like a custom.
probably like specific another app on my phone. And so it's just, I don't know. It's always funny to me that these startups are like plugging into systems and able to get this pulled off sooner than Apple could have. And they're literally using all of Apple's technology to do it.
Right. I know. Yeah. So it says it's customers, Lynx customers, AI agents now reach 134,000 monthly active users via the platform. And the company also facilitates more than 30 million messages per month. So to me, that tells me that these people are actually chatting back and forth with the agents several times each, not just asking one question.
So it appears that these agents are actually doing a lot of work for the companies. And this results in zero churn for the company. That means they have not lost any customers, or at least they don't on average from a month-to-month basis. So that's pretty huge for financial implications as well.
Yeah, and I will say, so this is their Series A that they raised, this $20 million. It was led by TQ Ventures. Mucker Capital was also in on this. Big VC and then a bunch of different angel investors all got in on this. One thing that I guess is the concern here is that Apple's going to do kind of what Meta does.
Meta went and banned any other kind of third-party messaging, AI systems from integrating with their tools. But then I think right now in India, there's a law that just...
um made that illegal so i think in india and i think we might see this other places so it'll be interesting to see if they're if they're ever banned by apple who seems very close system or if that happens though it also seems like some countries are going to force apple to let them in anyways because that's kind of the precedent that's getting set for meta so it's an interesting space right they're building on top of apple but they don't know if that's going to be a competitor or if they're going to get shut down it seems like everything's good right now so really interesting company uh interesting concept
You don't need any more apps. You can just talk with iMessenger. and talk directly for, for businesses plug into their systems. I love it guys. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. If this was interesting, if you learned anything new, make sure to leave us a rating review on the show. It really helps Jamie and I out a ton to, um, get this show shown to more people.
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