Trib augments video chat

Tribe’s voice recognition video chat technology could make Snapchat and Facebook Messenger look outdated. That tech also attracted a $3 million seed round led by prestigious VC Sequoia, its first seed investment of the year.1

Cyril Paglino, CEO and founder of Tribe, calls this “augmented messaging.” He built the features because, he says, “I want Tribe to be the most convenient app for me and my friends.”

Now the question is whether these features are enough to pull people away from the standard messaging apps they use, like iMessage, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat. Those all do video, but Tribe wants to make the format the default way people communicate, with text just for when you have to be quiet or share details people need to copy.

Tribe already has 500,000 downloads since its founding in August 2015, and now has 40,000 daily users. It built that community on a meager $500,000 seed round from Ludlow Ventures raised last November. But with the new cash secured in May from Sequoia, plus Ludlow, Partech Ventures and Kima Ventures, Tribe is ready to challenge the world’s most powerful chat apps. And if it doesn’t work out, I’m sure one of the tech giants would be happy to scoop up this product team.