I’m building a new messenger, even though nobody seems to need another one

I’m building a new messenger, even though nobody seems to need another one

I’m building a messenger called Look, and the longer I work on it, the more I wonder whether I picked one of the worst possible markets for a new product.

Everyone already has WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage, Discord, Signal, or some combination of them. Nobody wakes up thinking, “I really need another messaging app.”

Even if a new messenger is faster, cleaner, and more private, it has one brutal problem: it’s useless if your friends aren’t there.

And yet, I’m still building Look.

Why another messenger?

I’ve always found it strange how casually we treat private conversations.

Years of messages, photos, documents, voice notes, contacts, and personal details live inside apps we open every day. Most people have no idea what metadata is stored, what actually happens after deleting something, or how much can be learned about them without reading a single message.

I’m not claiming there is some grand conspiracy behind messaging apps. The reason I started Look is much simpler: I think privacy is still treated like a special feature for paranoid or highly technical users.

It shouldn’t be.

A normal person shouldn’t need to understand cryptography just to have a private conversation.

he hardest problem isn’t code

It’s trust.

Imagine a completely new messenger launches tomorrow. It looks good, runs fast, has no ads, and says it takes privacy seriously.

Why should you believe it?

“We don’t read your messages” proves nothing. A privacy policy proves very little. A beautiful website proves absolutely nothing.

Open source helps. End-to-end encryption helps. Reproducible builds, independent audits, transparent architecture, and minimal metadata collection can help.

But none of them automatically create trust.

That’s the part of Look I keep thinking about most. I can build interfaces, chats, profiles, usernames, settings, and infrastructure. Those are difficult engineering problems, but at least they have concrete solutions.

Trust doesn’t.

Maybe nobody needs Look

That’s a real possibility.

Maybe people care about privacy in theory, but in practice they will always use whatever app already has their friends, family, and coworkers.

Maybe the messaging market is effectively closed.

Maybe I’ll spend a huge amount of time building something people open once and delete five minutes later.

But I still want to test one idea:

Can a new messenger exist in 2026 without trying to become everything at once?

No endless content feed. No ads. No attempt to turn private communication into another attention economy product. Just messaging, a clean interface, and privacy as the default rather than a hidden mode somewhere in settings.

So I’m curious:

What would a completely new messenger have to prove before you would actually trust it with a private conversation?

Would open source be enough? Independent security audits? Reproducible builds? No phone number requirement? Minimal metadata? A transparent business model?

Or is the real answer much simpler: a messenger without your friends is useless, no matter how good it is?

I genuinely want criticism here. If you think building another messenger in 2026 is pointless, say so.

Following the development

I also have a Discord server where I’m currently sharing the development of Look: new screens, interface changes, ideas, and decisions that are still being worked out.

I want some parts of the product to be discussed before they become permanent, especially around privacy, security, and what people actually expect from a new messenger.

Discord: https://discord.gg/BxKKfxb3J4

If Look fails, that will probably become visible there too. And if it turns into something real, the first people there will have seen the whole process from the beginning.