Why text2tv exists

I'm Shane, and for years I've been trying to get photos and messages onto our TV during parties and family gatherings. Google Photos live albums. A Slack channel piped to the screen. A custom app I cobbled together myself. None of it stuck — every attempt got a polite shrug from our guests.

About six months ago, my three teenage boys joined my quest because they are interested in software. And then it finally clicked. We put a simple message on our TV: "Take control of this TV. Text photos to 855-123-4567." That night, my oldest had a dozen friends over, and they got it instantly. No instructions needed. They laughed and sent more than 50 photos to our TV before the night was over. text2tv was born.

It's gone through countless iterations since, most of them driven by the boys. Early on, if you texted a photo with a caption, the system would try to turn it into a meme — but we noticed nobody really used it. So the boys came up with AI personalities that can optionally write captions for you instead: "Blackbyte the Pirate," "Roast," and "Wine Mom" (possibly inspired by their actual mom). The results are equal parts brilliant and completely missing the mark, which is exactly why everyone loves them.

And they still won't stop using it. Christmas dinner turned into a roast session of caption ideas. One of my friends spent an entire evening trying to climb the leaderboard. My brother texts a funny photo from Philly every once in a while, just because. The TV has gone from a black square on the wall to something that actually brings us together.

Lately we've been turning text2tv into something anyone can use for a single event. The whole point is that there's nothing to figure out — no app, no accounts for guests, no QR code, no setup. If you have a smart TV and your guests can text, it works. Each host gets a dedicated phone number for their event, and guests spend the night texting photos and messages to the screen.

We put it to the test at my 50th birthday party, with family flying in from around the world — and the captions did not disappoint. This is a family passion project, not a VC-backed startup — phone numbers are a finite resource, so we're growing carefully and keeping things small while we learn.

If you'd like to host an event of your own, use FOUNDER for 50% off while we're still early.