Sometimes, you might be sitting on a hot product and not know it until the market demands it.
After launching as a digital business card that doubled as a lead capture tool for sales teams, Birmingham, Alabama-based Linq pivoted a few times before landing on an idea last year: helping businesses better communicate with their customers by upgrading from SMS (text) to iMessage and RCS.
Now, Apple already lets businesses do this via its Messages for Business service, and Twilio has built a $18.26 billion business by helping companies text their customers. But users can always tell when they’re talking to a business — the texts are displayed in gray, and the branding is often obvious.
Linq’s customers, though, wanted to be able to send blue-bubble messages to their customers, not green or gray, to lend an air of authenticity to their communications.
The startup, founded by former Shipt executives Elliott Potter (CEO), Patrick Sullivan (CTO), and Jared Mattsson (President), heard that feedback and launched an API in February 2025 that lets companies message their customers natively within iMessage, leveraging all the capabilities Apple’s platform offers to iPhone users, like group chats, emojis, threaded replies, images and voice notes. Within eight months, Linq had doubled its annual recurring revenue it had built over four years, co-founder and CEO Elliott Potter told TechCrunch.
Linq was not content with its newfound product-market-fit, however, as the advent of AI agents gave the company an even larger market to sell its tech to. That idea was sparked by an AI assistant called Poke that can handle tasks, answer questions, and schedule your calendar from inside iMessage was a key catalyst in the company’s refocusing on the agentic market.
“In spring of last year, this company came to us, called the Interaction Company of California, and they were building this AI assistant called poke.com and they were like, ‘Hey, we we don’t have a CRM, but we really want to use your API’,” Potter told TechCrunch.
Techcrunch event TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026: Tickets Live On June 23 in Boston, more than 1,100 founders come together at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 for a full day focused on growth, execution, and real-world scaling. Learn from founders and investors who have shaped the industry. Connect with peers navigating similar growth stages. Walk away with tactics you can apply immediately
Save up to $300 on your pass or save up to 30% with group tickets for teams of four or more. TechCrunch Founder Summit: Tickets Live On June 23 in Boston, more than 1,100 founders come together at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 for a full day focused on growth, execution, and real-world scaling. Learn from founders and investors who have shaped the industry. Connect with peers navigating similar growth stages. Walk away with tactics you can apply immediately
... continue reading