BirdyChat raises €1.7 million to keep work chats off personal phones

Team S · 2026-05-07T14:29:54.000Z

BirdyChat, a Riga-based messaging startup founded in 2025, has raised €1.7 million to build a professional chat app that separates work conversations from personal messaging apps. The round was led by DIG Ventures, with participation from Change Ventures, Tiny VC, FIRSTPICK, Lumo Capital, Tesonet, Bolt co-founder Markus Villig, and Charlie Songhurst. The company is founded by Rolands Mesters and Martins Spilners. Mesters previously built Nordigen, an open banking API that connected to more than 2,000 European banks before being acquired by GoCardless in 2022. He spotted the problem behind BirdyChat while at Nordigen, watching his personal phone fill up with work messages from investors and partners. A poll he ran on LinkedIn in 2025 found that 72% of respondents feel uncomfortable using personal apps for work — yet most do it anyway. BirdyChat uses professional email addresses as usernames rather than phone numbers, so users never have to share personal contact details with clients. The app includes threaded replies and conversation lists organised by project or client. A key technical advantage comes from the EU's Digital Markets Act, which since 2024 has required major platforms including WhatsApp to allow third-party apps to connect to their networks — BirdyChat was among the first to use this, letting users message WhatsApp contacts directly from a work identity rather than a personal number. The company positions itself against Slack Connect and other tools it argues were built for a different era, before AI became a genuine platform layer. BirdyChat is being built from scratch with AI productivity features central to its roadmap. The new capital will be used to build a web app, add AI features, and open the platform to a 50,000-person European waitlist.

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BirdyChat raises €1.7 million to keep work chats off personal phones | Newnex