![]() In 2018, the “mystical-services market” comprised a $2.2 billion industry, according to market research firm IBISWorld’s estimate. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 felt-for them, and so many others-like a personal turning point they began working on the Co–Star app in 2017, and launched by the end of that year. ![]() They brought Weitzman into the astrological fold, and he eventually acclimated to these frequent detours into the heavens. In Guler and Kopp’s world, it was normal to ask strangers their birth time and location, and, if the strangers were a particular kind of ignorant, encourage them to call their parents or the hospital in which they were born to verify. She filed away the thought, and in the meantime took a job in product and design at VFiles, a social-media network for the streetwear set, where she met her future co-founders, Kopp and Weitzman. Instead of feeling put off, the guests cooed over Guler’s work. The book was “dark” and “goth,” and Guler remembers thinking, “‘Yes, alienate everybody at this party, and just be like the weird, witchy friend from New York.’ You know? Like play to your strengths.” While Guler was still at Michael Kors, a friend invited her to a baby shower, and she arrived bearing the gift of astrology: a book-length interpretation of the baby’s natal chart that she made by hand. The idea for Co–Star came from a place of gentle antagonism in 2015. Wow, less than a month into this experiment, and I’m already using it to justify my worst impulses. What’s more luxurious than having delicate eyelashes placed on my own while I nap, so I wake up looking like a freak doll? This is my idea of a great date. But, as you know, Co–Star, I’m a Taurus sun and moon, and I love luxury. I had made the appointment months ago in anticipation of my birthday, which I’m aware makes me sound like a certain type of person. I already have an appointment to get fake eyelashes today, a treat that I had sworn off as a costly and vain expense during lean times. Monday, April 29: “Take yourself out on a date” We both ordered the Sunset Grains (her recommendation), and she told me that everyone on the team referred to the dish as “vegan mush.” It was delicious. The food, the chaotic energy, and the left-of-center punctuation choices fit well alongside the person I had read about, a former punk who turned to tech. Guler admitted that the restaurant is where she brings everyone-friends, investors, everyone. (The others are Anna Kopp and Ben Weitzman, chief product officer and chief technology officer, respectively.) She appeared at the counter in head-to-toe black, including her close-cropped hair, like something out of a Rick Owens dreamscape. and the most public facing of Co–Star’s three co-founders, at west~bourne, a slim vegetarian café on Sullivan Street. Mid-afternoon on a Friday in May, I met Banu Guler, C.E.O. Co–Star and its push notifications cut through the noise, promising that every day was a new opportunity to become my better self-or at least better aligned with my rightful place in the cosmos. Tech made it easy to distribute, and millennial dissatisfaction with more trenchant forms of spirituality made for many willing consumers (especially within queer communities). No clue what this has to do with my sun or what house my Mars is in, but right now? Angela and I are the boss.įor the last half-decade or so, astrology has seemed inescapable in certain circles of New York, even more so, I imagine, to the skeptics who couldn’t avoid it.
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