Co–Star is an American
astrological social networking service founded in 2017, and headquartered in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
. Users enter the date, time and place they were born to receive an astrological chart and daily
horoscope
A horoscope (or other commonly used names for the horoscope in English include natal chart, astrological chart, astro-chart, celestial map, sky-map, star-chart, cosmogram, vitasphere, radical chart, radix, chart wheel or simply chart) is an ast ...
s that they can compare to those of their friends.
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History
Founder and CEO Banu Guler came up with the idea for the app after she gifted a friend's child an astrological chart that became a surprise hit at the baby shower. In 2019, Co–Star raised a $5.2 million
seed round
Seed money, also known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor puts capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' suggest ...
from
Maveron,
Aspect, and 14W, following a $750,000 pre-seed from Female Founders Fund in early 2018.
In January 2020, Co–Star for
Android was launched to a 120,000-person waitlist—two years after their
iOS
Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...
app was launched.
In April 2021, Co–Star announced their $15 million
Series A
A series A is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. It can be followed by the word round, investment or financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...
, led by
Spark Capital. As of that date, Co–Star has more than 20 million downloads, and has been downloaded by a quarter of all young women ages 18–25 in the U.S.
Features
Co–Star employs
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
to analyze publicly accessible
NASA JPL data and find patterns in a user's
transits.
Co–Star's algorithm maps human-written snippets of text to planetary movements to display personalized content for each user.
That content has been called “slightly robotic,” “wildly beautiful,”
“truly insane," “brutally honest,”
and compared to “a free therapy session.”
In July 2023, Co–Star released an in-app service called The Void that allows users to ask open-ended questions and receive answers informed by Co–Star's astrological database.
See also
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Astrology
Astrology is a range of Divination, divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that propose that information about human affairs and terrestrial events may be discerned by studying the apparent positions ...
*
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...
*
Timeline of social media
References
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Co-Star
2017 software
Internet properties established in 2017
Android (operating system) software
IOS software
Freeware
Mobile applications
Social networking services
Youth culture