{"id":21,"date":"2019-04-18T07:27:44","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T07:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/2019\/04\/18\/co-star-raises-5-million-to-bring-its-astrology-app-to-android\/"},"modified":"2019-04-18T07:27:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T07:27:44","slug":"co-star-raises-5-million-to-bring-its-astrology-app-to-android","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/2019\/04\/18\/co-star-raises-5-million-to-bring-its-astrology-app-to-android\/","title":{"rendered":"Co-Star raises $5 million to bring its astrology app to Android"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nothing scales like a horoscope.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t heard of Co-Star<\/a>, you might just be in the wrong circles. In some social scenes it\u2019s pretty much ubiquitous. Wherever conversations regularly kick off by comparing astrological charts, it\u2019s useful to have that info at hand. The trend is so notable that the app even got a shout out in a New York Times<\/a> piece on VCs flocking to astrology startups.<\/p>\n

This week, the company behind probably the hottest iOS astrology app announced that it has raised a $5.2 million seed round. Maveron, Aspect, 14w and Female Founder Fund all participated in the round, which follows $750,000 in prior pre-seed funding. The company plans to use the funding to craft an Android companion to its iOS-only app, grow its team and \u201cbuild features that encourage new ways get closer, new ways to take care of ourselves, and new ways to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

TechCrunch spoke with Banu Guler, the CEO and co-founder of Co-Star<\/a> about what it was like talking to potential investors to drum up money for an idea that Silicon Valley\u2019s elite echo chambers might find unconventional.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe certainly talked to some who were dismissive,\u201d Guler told TechCrunch in an email. \u201cBut the reality is that interest in astrology is skyrocketing\u2026 It was all about finding the right investors who see the value in astrology and the potential for growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are people out there who think astrology is silly or unserious. But in our experience, the number of people who find value and meaning in astrology is far greater than the number of people who are turned off by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever used a traditional astrology app or website to look up your birth chart \u2014 that is, to determine the positions of the planets on the day and time you were born \u2014 then you\u2019ve probably noticed how most of those services share more in common with ancient Geocities sites than they do with bright, modern apps. In contrast, Co-Star\u2019s app is clean and artful, with encyclopedia-like illustrations and a simple layout. It\u2019s not something with an infinite scroll you\u2019ll get lost in, but it\u2019s pleasant to dip into Co-Star, check your algorithmically-generated horoscope and see what your passive aggressive ex\u2019s rising sign is.<\/p>\n

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In a world still obsessed with the long-debunked Meyers-Briggs test<\/a>, you can think of astrology as a kind of cosmic organizational psychology, but one more interested in peoples\u2019 emotional realities than their modus operandi in the workplace. For many young people \u2014 and queer people, from personal experience \u2014 astrology is a thoroughly playful way to take stock of life. Instead of directly predicting future events (good luck with that), it\u2019s is more commonly used as a way to evaluate relationships, events and anything else. If astrology memes on Instagram are any indication, there\u2019s a whole cohort of people using astrology as a framework for talking about their emotional lives. That search for authenticity \u2014 and no doubt the proliferation of truly inspired viral content<\/a> \u2014 is likely fueling the astrology boom.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBy positioning human experience against a backdrop of a vast universe, Co\u2013Star creates a shortcut to real talk in a sea of small talk: a way to talk about who we are and how we relate to each other,\u201d the company wrote in its funding announcement. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t reduce complexity. It doesn\u2019t judge. It understands.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nothing scales like a horoscope. If you haven\u2019t heard of Co-Star, you might just be in the wrong circles. In some social scenes it\u2019s pretty much ubiquitous. Wherever conversations regularly kick off by comparing astrological charts, it\u2019s useful to have that info at hand. The trend is so notable that the app even got a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Co-Star raises $5 million to bring its astrology app to Android”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[90,9,91,92,4],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech","tag-astrology","tag-funding","tag-ios-apps","tag-seed-funding","tag-tc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-demo\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}