Less than a year after the launch of iOS, the French ten-tenth startup has gone viral with a walkie-talkie app that allows teenagers to send voice messages to close friends – even when the phone is locked.
Whether you think it’s a recipe for disaster or something cool you’ve heard can depend on the age group, and teenagers clearly hear that one long before we do; although the walkie talkie is clearly not a new concept, even in the form of an app. Ten ten did the same, but in 2024.
“We are ephemeral by design,” ten ten co-founder and CEO, Jule Comar said in a written interview with TechCrunch. He added that In the CB code, 1010 means “Transmission complete, stand.” According to Comar, this is just one of the “multiple meanings that align with our values and concepts.” It seems resonating; The app is free and fast climbing ranks.
Ten ten sudden rise especially seen in France, where it has been downloaded 1 million times. Including on Android, which became available a few weeks ago, the app has seen 6 million downloads since launch, according to data shared by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower with TechCrunch on Friday.
The concept could also receive tweaks down the road. UX now suggests a 9-friend cap, but that’s not the case. “Ten ten for close friends but no friend limit, we see people sharing their PIN on social media so we can work on a better friend management system,” said Comar.
The PIN that Comar refers to is an ID that users can use to find each other. The app also asks for access to the user’s contacts (but nothing is added without user action.) There’s inherent virality in this model, but it’s not the only driver of growth; TikTok “plays an important role,” Comar said.
Ten ten’s download numbers have certainly continued to rise over the weekend: ten ten has been in the French media lately. Not always with a positive spin; The French newspaper Le Figaro, for example, expressed “concern”. “I was shocked,” Comar said. “There is nothing “dangerous” about ten ten!”
It’s not the only article looking at the app in a negative light; there is also fake news spreading, Comar said. “There are some rumors that we are a Chinese application because of the name “ten ten” and we are falsely accused of “spying” and “data theft…”
Ten ten is not Chinese. The company has been registered in France, since 2021, which means it is also GDPR compliant. The current terms and conditions are formulaic, but mention that the team is writing something better. More importantly, the initial privacy policy remains on two points:
- All your conversations are trivial, we can’t listen to your conversations because they are not saved!
- We will never sell your data!!
Besides the decision not to sell data, it is not clear how ten ten will make money. “We have a lot of great ideas about how we can monetize later,” Comar said. There’s no doubt that their current success will take time — and help them secure the venture capital to get to that point.
Asked if his startup has or is in the process of raising funds, Comar answered confidently. However, he added with a smile, “we cannot yet announce how many and (from) whom.”
In response to TechCrunch, French VC Hugo Amsellem pointed out that although the company Intuition is not one of these supporters, he sees ten ten as part of a larger trend among French startups.
For Amsellem, the common thread is “France is king of the status game.” Individuals seek to increase their social status, and French entrepreneurs are happy to help, whether on the software side of BeReal, Yubo or Zenly, or on the hardware side with luxury devices.
It remains to be seen how long ten ten can retain its cool factor, but its CEO sees that the current position is both privileged and fragmented. Comar said:
It’s an amazing feeling, it’s a feeling that’s hard to describe but some lucky people have felt it, it feels like everything is going fast and slow at the same time, adrenaline mixed with pride, gratitude and responsibility, feeling big and small. at the same time – You can only feel this in social consumers, because it can hit you when you least expect it and there is no ceiling. But we have to keep our heads on our shoulders, it’s just the beginning, the hardest is yet to come.
Comar and ten co-founder and CTO Antoine Baché have been sleeping a lot lately. A smiley-faced email auto-reply warned that they were “having problems with their servers due to too many users at the same time,” and were “working day and night to fix it once and for all.”
Sick servers aside, the generation gap is one obstacle that ten of ten must navigate smartly. More than privacy, often the fact that ten ten is used by teenagers and in classrooms is being discussed. “When I read these articles, it seems like they are talking about new drugs that are in school!” said Comar.
It’s easy to see why teachers are the first adults to notice the app. Since ten ten can go through the lock screen to play the message out loud, it can be used for pranks and make a small noise in the classroom. But the need to teach about phone hygiene is not new, and children are quite aware of it.
In the French subreddit for teachers, there is a discussion about whether members have problems with tens of ten in the classroom. One participant noted that “nothing big has happened so far” even though the app has “attracted attention” in his school. However, the person added, “I asked the students to put their phones on airplane mode.” (We haven’t gotten around to verifying that this person is a teacher, but his profile seems to confirm that he is.)
Instead of starting a new moral panic, perhaps ten ten can be an opportunity for parents to Marvel in the fact that some of our favorite cultural artifacts make a comeback; whether it’s tapes, Dungeons & Dragons, or now, walkie talkies.
There’s only one small step from worn out to vintage, and the success of ‘Stranger Things’ probably helps. But app-based walkie talkies won’t gain real traction if there aren’t real use cases around them. Comar thinks there is, and that’s what inspires him.
“I’ve always had a close group of friends, we talk every day in different mediums, but I think we all have friction,” he said. “I want us to be able to communicate as if we were always under the same roof, like roommates: you just pop in the room when you want to say something, if the door is closed, you knock, if it’s open you just talk!”
I hope for ten out of ten, parents will see the value as well. Who knows, maybe it can be used to say that dinner is ready. That is, if the teenager accepts him as a contact.
