Two of the earliest workers behind WhatsApp have emerged with a brand new non-public social community known as HalloApp.

Starting Monday, anybody can obtain and join HalloApp in Apple’s App Store and Google Play on Android units. There are many parallels between HalloApp and WhatsApp: the app is designed for group or particular person chats with shut family and friends, the one method you’ll find individuals is by figuring out their telephone quantity, the messages are encrypted, and there aren’t any adverts.

While different startups have through the years tried and did not construct profitable social networks for shut pals (RIP Path), the pedigree of HalloApp’s two cofounders, Neeraj Arora and Michael Donohue, makes this specific effort notable. They each labored at WhatsApp earlier than and after Facebook purchased it for $22 billion. Arora was WhatsApp’s chief enterprise officer till 2018 and a key determine in negotiating the Facebook deal. And Donohue was WhatsApp’s engineering director for almost 9 years earlier than he left Facebook in 2019.

Both Arora and Donohue declined to be interviewed for this story, citing a need to keep away from press consideration so early within the app’s lifespan. But they did just lately sit down for an interview on Christopher Lochhead’s “Follow Your Different” podcast, wherein Arora stated, “I think the best way to grow is to create an amazing product that people love to tell their friends and family about.”

HalloApp is damaged up into 4 essential tabs—a house feed of posts from your pals, group chats, particular person chats, and settings—and its total aesthetic could be very minimal. There aren’t any algorithms sorting posts or group chats.

Arora laid out the philosophy behind HalloApp in a company blog post on Monday, wherein positions it because the antidote to conventional, engagement-driven social media, or “the 21st century cigarette.”

“Imagine your friends online were your real friends,” he wrote. “Imagine your feed wasn’t filled with people and posts you didn’t care about. Imagine scrolling through meaningful moments and seeing what you wanted you to see—not what the algorithm wanted you to see. Imagine not being treated like a product.”

While the weblog publish doesn’t title Facebook particularly, it’s no secret that WhatsApp’s two cofounders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, left Facebook over disagreements about plans to monetize WhatsApp with adverts. Acton, who now funds the encrypted messaging app Signal, famously tweeted “#deletefacebook” in the course of the peak of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. WhatsApp nonetheless doesn’t have adverts, however Facebook has just lately made a push to get companies promoting items and interacting with prospects on the app.

Eventually, HalloApp plans to cost customers for options with a subscription, mimicking how WhatsApp initially monetized earlier than Facebook purchased it. For now, the 12-person firm is operating off an undisclosed sum of money the cofounders raised from traders.