Culture

Zodiac Ascending: Astrology Startups Reach for the Stars

Startups like Sanctuary aim to do for astrology what Headspace did for meditation: reinvent it for an anxious, wide-eyed, phone-clutching generation.
Alyssa Foote; Getty Images

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The day was young and full of promise, electrified by the moon in Sagittarius. An astrologer named Aliza texted me that I was on the cusp of a new cycle. It was time to tantalize my “Venusian sensibilities.” Power emoji: 💆

I had found Aliza while beta testing a new app called Sanctuary. The app, designed to be the “Talkspace for astrology,” offers free daily horoscopes and, with a $20 monthly subscription, astrological readings on demand. It also includes little cosmic snacks, like the horoscope-inspired “power emoji” and interpretations of the news circumscribed by the stars.

Astrology, once the domain of woo-woos, has found a grounding force in technology. It is a meme machine, colonizing Instagram with accounts like @jakesastrology and @trashbag_astrology (160k and 252k followers, respectively). A Twitter account called @poetastrologers, purveyor of esoteric weekly horoscopes, has over 445k followers. The social web is teeming with astrologers, professional and amateur, making sense of stars for the modern world. Some, like internet-famous astrologer Chani Nicholas, use astrology to galvanize social justice causes; Nicholas recently partnered with Spotify to curate a rotating set of cosmic playlists. Other brands have woken up to astrology’s power to court potential customers. Is Mercury in retrograde? Have we got the product for you!

Astrology’s reach is well established, with a constellation of thinkpieces to prove it. But its venture potential has, until recently, remained largely untapped. Now, startups like Sanctuary aim to do for astrology what companies like Talkspace did for therapy and what Headspace did for meditation: reinvent it for an anxious, wide-eyed, phone-clutching generation.

Ross Clark, the CEO of Sanctuary, felt astrology creep into his daily life long before he began work on the app. A series of colleagues had introduced him to the wonders of his full natal chart, and as he learned more about his placements (he’s a Leo sun, Capricorn moon, Scorpio rising), he became convinced that the system could offer meaning in times of turbulence. “Also,” he says, “tapping into my Capricorn moon—the business person in me—the market opportunity was much bigger than people realized.”

Astrology, which has existed for millennia, reached a mainstream audience for the first time in the 1930s when R. H. Naylor, a British astrologer, offered a horoscope for newly born Princess Margaret in the Sunday Express. The forecast predicted an “eventful life” for the royal baby and included other general horoscopes for readers by birthdate. A reader could find their “sign,” ordered chronologically, and have their own professional reading.

This shorthand, later called the “sun-sign horoscope,” brought astrology to the masses. Traditional readings are expensive, labor-intensive affairs that involve creating a custom natal chart—a mapping of each of the planets during an individual’s exact time and location of birth—in order to assess a person’s situation. Naylor’s model, which reduced predictions to 12 basic archetypes, did away with all that. All you needed was your birthday and you had a glimpse into the future.

Sun-sign horoscopes quickly became a staple of print media, a fun party trick even for skeptics. Within 15 years, two-thirds of British adults were reading their horoscopes. Today, the influence of astrology is almost unquantifiable. Just try to add up all of the people following astrological accounts, ironically or otherwise, on Instagram or Twitter.

While sun-sign horoscopes broadened access to astrology, they also reduced its complexity. “I don’t think there are 12 types of humans on the planet,” says Banu Guler, the cofounder and CEO of Co-Star, an app that takes users’ birth day, time, and city to generate a full natal chart, then creates individualized horoscopes with machine learning. “Every human is full of contradictions, and when you look at a full natal chart, it articulates the fact that humans are intensely contradictory, unstable, evolving creatures.”

Co-Star launched last year and has become the most popular astrology app in the iOS app store. (It is not available on Android.) To date, it has been downloaded 2 million times. That’s because, Guler believes, a generation of people crave the complexity and connection restored to this arcane system.

Co-Star functions like a social network, encouraging users to connect with fellow stargazers, follow their friends’ astrological ebbs and flows, and study their social compatibility based on various aspects of their charts. Using a proprietary algorithm, Co-Star weaves together the information about each person’s placements and spits out a personalized reading each day. It might take into account trouble in one area of the chart while acknowledging power in another. The app also delivers now-iconic and extremely sharable push notifications, which packages a person’s unique daily horoscope into a platitude for the digital age. Recently, I received a Co-Star notification that read: “Your day at a glance: We're all gonna die someday.”

Guler, who worked in the fashion industry before creating Co-Star, says her invention is bringing astrology to a mobile-first world and encouraging a more social, sharable astrological practice. “Over half of American millennials, and a third of American adults, read their horoscope. These numbers are rising now, but they’ve mostly been consistent since the ’70s,” she says. “So this is a huge, durable market that nobody seems to be taking seriously.”

Sanctuary also provides full natal charts, which its astrologers-on-demand use to give readings via chat. In designing the experience, Ross was inspired by the rise of meditation apps like Headspace and Calm, which “have been able to translate what was a very esoteric Eastern practice into something that’s a really compelling digital experience.” Calm, a “meditation unicorn,” has raised $88 million at $1 billion valuation. “The venture world has definitely been paying attention to everything that’s happening in meditation and wellness and self-care more broadly,” he says, and yet “no one has translated or reimagined the astrological reading for a mobile format.” With Sanctuary, he aims to fill the gap. The startup raised $1.5 million in its seed round.

If astrology is to become the next great—final?—startup frontier, it will have to convince investors, some of whom have shied away from putting money into apps that are, at best, pseudoscientific. “I don’t doubt that there is demand from people wanting this type of information, but I wonder if it’s really beneficial for us to consume that information, and if so, is there any way we can back that up scientifically?” says Nicolas Wittenborn, a principal at Insight Venture Partners, which has invested in wellness apps like Calm. Wittenborn, who is an Aries, says investors will also want to know that there is staying power in these apps. They want assurance that astrology is not simply a millennial fad.

Astrologers, too, want assurance that tech platforms aren’t simply out to capitalize on astrology as a “trend.” Nicholas, the Insta-famous astrologer, says technology—and social media in particular—has given astrologers a broader platform to teach people about the practice. “Where it gets shady and problematic is if you’re in astrology for the money,” Nicholas says. “Just because someone has an astrology app or loves a Twitter [astrology meme] account, it doesn’t mean that they’re receiving quality or in-depth astrology.”

After 45 minutes of chatting with Aliza, the astrologer inside the Sanctuary app, I felt I had only grazed the surface of my astrological potential. My entire chart was sprawled before her—what more did she know? Alas, our time had run out. I closed the app and got back to work, channeling Venus all the way.

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