AI Is Making The App Optional

Haz Hubble is the Co-Founder and CEO at Pally (YC S25).

When I started building Pally, an AI assistant that keeps people on top of their messages, I assumed it needed its own app. We built one, with onboarding, settings and a home feed. Fewer than 20% of new users were still active in their second month.

We removed the app and moved the product into iMessage. Users now sign up by texting a number. With the same AI underneath, month-two retention rose to over 70%. That result made me question how much of consumer software exists only to support the app around it.

The Cost Of A New App

Every app asks people to do work before they get anything back. They have to find it, install it, create an account, learn where things are and remember that it exists. Some share of users gives up at each step.

The phone they’re installing it on is already crowded. The average user has more than 80 apps, and about 62% of them go unused in a given month. In the U.S., people spend around 80% of their app time in their three most-used apps. A new app is asking for a place that most people have stopped giving out.

Three Ways Past The Screen

There are three broad approaches.

The first is new hardware. OpenAI has said it will show its first consumer device, a screenless product designed with Jony Ive, in the second half of 2026. The last well-funded attempt, Humane’s AI Pin, failed. A common explanation is that it asked people to change their habits without giving them enough reason to.

The second is the super-app. WeChat hosts more than 4.3 million mini-programs, and roughly 764 million people used them each day in 2025. People in China order food and pay bills through services they never downloaded, because those services sit inside an app they already open all day. The model depends on one company controlling the platform, which is part of why nothing comparable exists in the U.S.