Messaging is hard, speaking from experience having been part of an attempt that failed.<p>IMO it seems like Peach did everything they possibly could and the execution was in broad strokes excellent, but a messaging app in 2016 is the Hail Mary of Hail Maries.<p>Firstly, there are no &quot;new users&quot; to messaging. Literally everyone is already using something for messaging - Hangouts, Messenger, Line, WhatsApp, etc etc. Unlike other areas of tech, <i>social messaging is a zero-sum game</i> where every user you gain means someone else loses a user. This is hard environment for any new product with no existing traction.<p>Messaging is also one of those things that is used so much that it&#x27;s driven heavily by habitual behavior. Which also means you have to break a user&#x27;s muscle memory&#x2F;habits before you can have a shot at keeping them in the long term. The default for a competent messaging app is that people try your app out, think you&#x27;re cool, and then promptly go back to whatever they were using before, because you haven&#x27;t broken their old habit and&#x2F;or haven&#x27;t formed a new one. 14-day cohort retention is going to be nearly zero in the default case.<p>Habit-formation within users is really, really, <i>really</i> f&#x27;ing hard.