We're merging the 4,000 year old tradition of astrology with machine learning and natural language processing to enable meaningful reflection & collectivity. With no paid marketing, we're getting a new download every 3-4 seconds; 25% of young women in the US have downloaded the app; nearly 20m registered accounts to date.
If you want to be at a funded startup, try to backchannel rather than finding a public posting. Find a larger company you think is interesting, then figure out who invested in them in the early days. Find early founders/employees who've since moved on. Find out what those people are investing in or working on now.
Astrology has stuck around for 2,500 years is because it is a robust language developed over millennia to capture the complexity of being human. Your ego, your communication style, your love language, your instinct for action – each have their own, often contradictory, flavor.
You can use this language to walk into a room and say, ’I’m going through my Saturn return. I’m reckoning with restrictions and limits and boundaries right now.” It’s humanizing, and tender. You can start a conversation, “Why did we get into that insane fight and why did you shut down? Is it because you’re a Capricorn Mars?”
People don’t use astrology to predict the future. People use it to explain and create the present.
> You can use this language to walk into a room and say, ’I’m going through my Saturn return. I’m reckoning with restrictions and limits and boundaries right now.”
I wouldn't recommend doing that as anyone who is logic and science based will immediately cease to take you seriously. We have so much more information on how the universe works now than we did 2,500 years ago and there's nothing to suggest that astrology is anything other completely false.
People used to believe that leeches could bleed out toxins, thankfully we've evolved our knowledge models since then. Let's not go back.
> anyone who is logic and science based will immediately cease ...
Why be so rigid ? I am a scientist. I would be happy to listen to someone talk about their "saturn return", etc. etc. if that helps them convey meaning.
True, but this is more of a socializing thing, isn't it? If someone I care at least a bit about says something dumb, I listen to them to figure out if they have a real concern they're not expressing correctly.
"Saturn return" is the technical term for when Saturn returns to the same place in the sky that it was when you were born. Very curiously, this happens on a regular basis – just about every 30 years.
Arguably it does - if someone tells me they are going through their Saturn return, I know two things about them (going off banuguler's information):
- they are around 30 years old
- they feel like they are dealing with restrictions and limits in their life
Together I can make an informed guess that they're more likely to be worried about, say, starting a family, or their career options narrowing, than a randomly selected member of the population would be.
Similarly, if someone tells me that shark attacks are up lately, I will predict that ice cream sales are also up (via the proxy of beach attendance). You may find tricks like this unimpressive, but it's a step above "nothing to do with".
I grew up with a whole bunch of books on astrology (among other nuage
subjects) that belonged to my mother and I used to be quite fluent in this
"language" you talk about, as a kid.
My impression, already since grade school, was that astrology did its level
best to flatter you and stroke your ego, even when it supposedly discussed
your "negative" traits which were always presented as if they were actually
positive. For instance, I remember Scorpio's vicious vindictiveness (my mother
is a Scorpio) and bloody-mindedness first noted as being the Scorpio's
downfall (from a soaring eagle to a crawling lizard) but then discussed as a
strength, a powerful weapon at the Scorpio's disposal that everyone should
take care not to provoke. Far from making it sound like vindictiveness is a
bad thing, it made Scorpio sound like a total badass (well, my mother is
badass so I was kind of convinced).
The other thing I noticed was that it didn't matter if you were a Scorpio, or
a Leo, or a Virgo, or a Libra. I could open any random page on one of my
mother's astrology books, discussing any one of the 12 signs and find a
passage that I felt described me absolutely. That is, I noticed that the
descriptions of the signs' personalities had absolutely no predictive value
whatsoever. Anyone could have any of the traits that were described as being
characteristic of their sign, or their ascendant, but also any of the traits
ascribed to every other sign.
So at least in the books that I've read (and I apologise that I don't remember
their titles but that was a while ago) astrology was basically a well-thought
out system for flattering people and filling them with empty platitudes.
Astrology is one of the three Hermetic sciences. Hermeticism won - today, we live in the Hermetic world of Newton where natural laws hold universally, certum et verissimum. In winning, it shed its skin and rebranded, leaving its earlier trappings behind to be worn by ideological losers.
If your astrology company isn't hiring Hermetic sorcerers, but rather new-age writers and "engineers", it's more or less SEO blog spam.
In general, we think the point of tech is to get off tech and be together IRL. Same thing when we're thinking about features to build. Want to walk the walk, etc.
How is "I'm going through my Saturn return. I’m reckoning with restrictions and limits and boundaries right now." humanizing and tender? It doesn't read that way to me. It's off-putting and impersonal to start talking about random unrelated planets instead of the actual human issues that someone is dealing with.
Co-Star is bringing astrology into the 21st century with a social, personalized experience that helps people reflect and connect in real, meaningful ways. We just raised $5m from the people behind companies like Glossier, Rent the Runway, eBay, Periscope, and Everlane.
We’re looking for iOS, Android, and full-stack software developers to join our 8-person team in Chinatown, NYC.
We want your help:
• Transforming NASA data into astrological patterns that astrologers can write and map copy to
• Using TB of data to define and create personalized, emotionally resonant content
• Developing internal tools to give our writers superpowers
• Shipping new features & A/B tests in our Apple-lauded iOS app
• Scaling our backend infrastructure to >1M daily users
Our stack includes
• Haskell for our backend
• Swift and Android Native (kotlin) for our mobile apps
• React and TypeScript on the web (costarastrology.com + internal tools)
• AWS to host our infrastructure
• PostgreSQL
Competitive comp, $0 deductible fully-covered health care, unlimited vacation (min 4 weeks), conference/book/whatever budget
I love how this pairs the rigorousness of Haskell with the pseudoscience of astrology. Y'all are probably much better programmers than me. I wonder - do you believe in astrology? This is super interesting!
i wonder if itll be like that flat earther group that accidentally proved the earth was not indeed flat, maybe theyll actually find out that it really is all nonsense
Co-Star is bringing astrology into the 21st century with a social, personalized experience that helps people reflect and connect in real, meaningful ways. We just raised $5m from the people behind companies like Glossier, Rent the Runway, eBay, Periscope, and Everlane.
We’re looking for iOS, Android, and full-stack software developers to join our 8-person team in Chinatown, NYC.
We want your help:
• Transforming NASA data into astrological patterns that astrologers can write and map copy to
• Using TB of data to define and create personalized, emotionally resonant content
• Developing internal tools to give our writers superpowers
• Shipping new features & A/B tests in our Apple-lauded iOS app
• Scaling our backend infrastructure to >1M daily users
Our stack includes
• Haskell for our backend
• Swift and Android Native (kotlin) for our mobile apps
• React and TypeScript on the web (costarastrology.com + internal tools)
• AWS to host our infrastructure
• PostgreSQL
Competitive comp, $0 deductible fully-covered health care, unlimited vacation (min 4 weeks), conference/book/whatever budget
Read more details here -> https://www.costarastrology.com/jobs + feel free to email with questions -> jobs at costarastrology.com
Co-Star is bringing astrology into the 21st century with a social, personalized experience that helps people reflect and connect in real, meaningful ways. We just raised $5m from the people behind companies like Glossier, Rent the Runway, eBay, Periscope, and Everlane.
We’re looking for iOS, Android, and full-stack software developers to join our 8-person team in Chinatown, NYC.
We want your help:
• Transforming NASA data into astrological patterns that astrologers can write and map copy to
• Using TB of data to define and create personalized, emotionally resonant content
• Developing internal tools to give our writers superpowers
• Shipping new features & A/B tests in our Apple-lauded iOS app
• Scaling our backend infrastructure to >1M daily users
Our stack includes
• Haskell for our backend
• Swift and Android Native (kotlin) for our mobile apps
• React and TypeScript on the web (costarastrology.com + internal tools)
• AWS to host our infrastructure
• PostgreSQL
Competitive comp, $0 deductible fully-covered health care, unlimited vacation (min 4 weeks), conference/book/whatever budget
Co-Star is bringing astrology into the 21st century with a social, personalized experience that helps people reflect and connect in real, meaningful ways. Over half of millennials and nearly a third of American adults are into astrology. We just raised $5m from the people behind companies like Glossier, Rent the Runway, eBay, Periscope, and Everlane.
We’re looking to bring talented software developers to join our 8-person team in Chinatown, NYC. We’ve been taking a full-stack approach to the way we work but are open to having you dive deep into areas you’re especially passionate about.
Our stack includes
• Haskell for our backend API
• Swift and Android Native for our mobile apps
• React and TypeScript on the web (costarastrology.com + internal tools)
• AWS to host our infrastructure
• PostgreSQL
We want your help
• Shipping new features in our iOS app
• Scaling our backend infrastructure to >1M daily users
• Developing internal tools to give our content editors super powers
• Using TB of analytics data to help the product team develop insights
• Making this the best place to work
$0 deductible fully-covered health care, unlimited vacation (min 4 weeks), conference/book/whatever budget
We're hiring → http://costarastrology.com/jobs