WordPress.com and Tumblr owner Automattic are adding another company to their portfolio, acquiring the all-in-one messaging app Texts.com for $50 million. The app brings all your messaging apps together in a single dashboard, including iMessage, Slack, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Messenger, LinkedIn, Signal, Discord and X, with plans for more in the future.
Texts.com founder Kishan Bagaria will join the company as the new head of messaging, along with the rest of the distributed Texts.com team.
The deal took three months to finalise, and in that time, I went through excitement, stress, numbness, indifference, gratitude and everything in between. I’m going to continue to work on Texts.com. There’s a lot we can build and the, and the vision hasn’t been fully executed.
Kishan Bagaria for TimesofIndia
The Texts journey started in 2020 when a young tech prodigy, Kishan (now 26), began developing the app as a side project. An exciting aspect of Kishan’s story is that he never went to college; in his own words, he acquired all his skills online and started developing small Windows apps at 12 years old.
The company’s brand name says it all: it’s short, easy to remember, and perfectly aligns with its mission and vision. What could be more fitting than “Texts”? It’s as clear as day – bringing all your text apps together in one place.
Texts initially launched on Textshq.com, with Kishan choosing to add “HQ” to the domain name instead of compromising on the .com extension. This approach is quite common among startups when securing an exact brand match (EBM) domain name is challenging due to availability or cost constraints. In 2021, the company secured an undisclosed amount in pre-seed funding. Around that time, Texts.com changed ownership, with Texts gaining control of this valuable digital asset.
In a Reddit post dating back to 2015, the original owner of Texts.com, both a developer and a domain investor, revealed that he had acquired the Texts.com domain during high school. He intended to use it for a free student textbook exchange and price-comparison platform. It appears that the project never gained traction. Fortunately, Texts stepped in to make the most of the opportunity and transitioned to Texts.com.
The story of Texts is an inspiring journey marked by unwavering dedication, hard work, and a commitment to continuous improvement in every aspect of branding and naming, culminating in the creation of the exceptional product Texts.com.
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