QUINN, CAROLINE SPIEGEL: Audible Porn for Women

There are currently 2 billion women in the world who masturbate,  but many may feel limited in their options of getting turned on in a clean, safe way. Founder Caroline Spiegel launched Quinn, an audible porn platform that is changing the way we listen to porn, stay turned on, and get off. Quinn is on a mission to help women expand their sexual imaginations with a new modality.

We talked to Quinn founder, Caroline Spiegel, about her journey of self-expression, creating content, and finding her passion for embracing one’s sexual expressions.

The Childhood

 Born in Santa Monica, California, Caroline grew up with parents who were lawyers and a brother, Evan Spiegel, who ended up founding and becoming the CEO of a very successful tech company, Snapchat. As a creative child, Caroline loved planning parties, designing invitations, and setting the theme. She doesn’t describe herself as a very extroverted person and tends to swing on a pendulum from wanting to either be completely alone or hosting an event. Her latest obsession? Her Australian Bernedoodle, Charles. 

In high school, Caroline worked in a robotics lab and was really interested in studying computer science, which became her major in college. The summer before her senior year, she worked for Protocol Labs which was a startup that was trying to decentralize the internet with huge cloud service facilities. As a programmer, she got the full experience to learn how startup operations looked and also was close to the founder to learn how he ran the startup that was non-stereotypical to the standard Silicon Valley startup. However, her path completely shifted when she entered her senior year at Stanford, and dropped out to become a full-time entrepreneur, as the founder of Quinn. 

 “We are changing the narrative about sex and making it more about the energy and vibe that you have with the person. It is more important to have that than all the other mechanical parts of sex. ” -Caroline Spiegel

Quinn was founded because life is not always picture-perfect, and creativity and freedom of expression have healing powers. During Caroline’s junior year of college, she struggled with an eating disorder, and this contributed to her dropping out the following year. “I took time off in my junior year due to this eating disorder – and ultimately, this was a wake-up call to my body and my sexuality,” Caroline shared. When she was recovering from the eating disorder, she had low libido and couldn’t sexually perform the way she wanted to, or felt like she was supposed to, and so she turned to porn to get turned on. Unfortunately, she found it very dissatisfying. “I started to feel like I wanted something that speaks to my actual desires and what speaks to me in terms of good sex. Late at night in my studio apartment, I stumbled upon audio porn, and I found tons of communities on Reddit, Tumblr, etc., where other audio porn users share and create content,” Caroline said. Most women tend to use their imagination or something from a TV show or movie to masturbate, however, it may be difficult for them to keep those images in their mind to continue the pleasure. This is what Quinn is set out to help solve, or at least facilitate – the imagination. Quinn sets the stage for your next moment of pleasure, for all women who want a new experience, and who are 18 years of age and older. 

Why The Name?

Founded in 2019, Quinn started out as a blog with multiple iterations of the site. The name originated from Caroline’s friend who had a crush on a girl named Quinn and it stuck with her because it represented the sexy, clean, and unique vibe of the brand and the content of the business. In the very early days of the business, Caroline started out by putting all her favorite audios from the internet on a basic website and shared it with her friends and sorority, which helped it quickly go mini-viral. Since this was so popular during the beta test, Caroline decided to pull the trigger, drop out of college and pursue building Quinn full time since it was already taking up a lot of her time. 

Founder, Caroline Spiegel.

After developing the product into an MVP, Caroline was ready for funding and successfully raised $1 million in her pre-seed round in two tranches. The first round was due to investors being excited about the opportunity and the second round was due to the growth of Quinn users. Today, Quinn has expanded into a mobile app from a desktop experience. As a subscription-based company like Spotify, and Headspace, Quinn offers unlimited audio content for $5 a month from content creators who are vetted. You really feel like you are in the bedroom with these creators with content categories ranging from teacher-student, strong language, spanking, butt stuff, romance, encouragement, and more.

What’s Wrong With The Industry?

“Sex is very taboo and conceptualized in boxes. For example, sex on the beach is hot, but sex in the bedroom isn’t. Also, our biggest competitor, Pornhub, creates a lot of erotic content that is free, but isn’t very clean or makes the user feel safe. The way we think about porn right now as a society is not aligned with how our users conceptualize it.  Our users want to be connected to their sexual experience in a greater way and we provide them with an outlet to embrace their sexual desires in a clean, comfortable, and safe space. All of our content is super authentic to make it feel like you’re in bed with that person. There is a lot that goes into dirty hot moaning audio.”

The Advice

What does it take to start something on your own? Caroline shares some advice from her entrepreneurial journey: 

• Word of mouth marketing wins every time, but never underestimate the value of good press. Listicle articles featured on Bumble, Cosmo, etc., have really helped us grow.
  

• Do out-of-the-box ideas to grow your brand organically. Quinn hosts special nights at Soho House for blind speed dating events and also likes to host creative salon-type events to promote creative content and creators.
  

• Theodore Roosevelt once said something about “being the man in the arena.” I personally think you won if you are doing something at all. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Just keep going -- as long as you are being and trying!
  

• When there is so much advice out there, it is hard to figure things out. I think every piece of advice is worth a listen, but it is not worth an internalization of what that person said.
  

• Try to collect as much data as possible on particular issues, ask a bazillion people questions, read everything on it, and also factor in your gut feeling. It is wrong to do everything your gut says but it is also wrong to just listen to Jay on Twitter. It is about finding the right medium for what is right for the business.
  

Interested in getting it on through audio? Check out Quinn and start listening and getting turned on at the same time. 

Photo courtesy of Quinn.

Written by Christina Chao.

DIEM, EMMA BATES: Social Universe for Women & Non-Binary Folks

When it comes to women’s health, careers and networks, there wasn’t an online space that encompassed everything. Passionate about helping women navigate their health and other life events, Emma Bates launched Diem, a social app and online community. With Diem, Emma hopes to improve the lives of women and add more to their shared experiences -- all around the world. 

We had the chance to interview Emma Bates, the CEO of Diem to discuss her childhood and journey leading up to founding the community platform. 

The Childhood 

Emma came into this world in Singapore, where her parents lived for three years. After year two, she and her family moved to the UK and she stayed there up until university.  With a mother who runs her own interior design company and a father who is a CFO with an accounting background, Emma was always exposed to a dual way of thinking, preparing her to be an entrepreneur in the future. When asked to speak about her young entrepreneurial background, Emma says, “I was always inquisitive and always wanted to understand the root cause of what anyone said.” 

While attending King’s College in London, she studied war studies, a combination of history, politics, psychology, and more. Although it was very academic, Emma explored her creative side by starting a blog and doing creative writing (before Instagram) and after graduation, she worked for a tech company that matched creatives with brands and provided opportunities for influencers. Emma really enjoyed working in content production and other manager roles that handled blogs, and social media. 

Like any ambitious individual, Emma decided to move to New York (without a visa) and landed a  job at Away, being one of the eight employees at the time. As the Head of Global Marketing, Emma said, “I started by doing their UK international marketing. I opened up their popup store in the UK and helped with local partnerships, marketing, and building brand awareness.” After a few years at Away, Emma left to pursue other opportunities and founded Diem with a former colleague from Away. 

“I have always been passionate about having a positive social impact on the lives of women.” 

Co-founders of Diem, Emma Bates (right) and Divia Singh (left).

The Aha Moment 

“Starting from when I was in university, I did my thesis in gender and sexual-based violence, looking at areas of conflict and post-conflict and understanding the impact on women and girls, and so this was the genesis of the passion to help women. It is a collection of personal experiences. I didn’t want to look in a forum, and I found myself interviewing everyone in the Away office for answers to some questions like whether or not they take Plan B. I thought there should be a more efficient way to help women find answers to their questions, and so when I met my co-founder at Away, everything started to come together”, says Emma.  

“Diem is a network of social spaces for communities and live conversations, built for women and non-binary people first. An environment designed for us, every feature is considered, every topic or any person that you might want to interact with or find is considered in that, and we are really taking a new approach to how social media can exist as a positive force in people’s lives, especially as a positive environment for helping women to own their potential through these networks, support and information” says Emma. 

What are the content pillars? 

“We started with health and wellness. Now all of the communities that exist are physical, financial, and mental well-being. Anything from career to finance tips, to physical health and wellness, skincare, even pop culture. Basically, anything that you want to talk about as a woman, there is a community space for you, and they are hosted by experts and subject matter experts, or people who are passionate about that topic” says Emma. 

When did Diem formally launch and how did you test the market?

“We never had a launch date, but we had our public-ready product that launched earlier this year, and we are continually iterating on that beta product. Last year, we had two other beta products with which we tested the market to understand the topics that are popular, types of hosts that people might be looking for, but also how they wanted to interact. We use that to inform what our roadmap and the final product will look like. We currently have 3,000 users to date with a waitlist of over 20,000” says Emma. 

What was your biggest obstacle in building this? 

“My cofounder Divia Singh has a background in building digital products. She did digital products for ZocDoc and Away so she has extensive experience in building technology and the process to do so and all of the stuff that comes along with it. We didn’t have too many difficulties on that front, just finding your feet and the right process is a struggle in itself. The main annoyance is people underestimating the opportunity at hand, and so when I talk to investors they think it is a niche opportunity.

When pitching to investors, they say it is a niche opportunity, but it really isn’t, because women are not only the largest influencers and consumers within social networks right now, but they are actively looking for somewhere built for them and that sort of harnesses their lived experiences to create a better digital society and a better digital ecosystem for them to live in. As a CEO that is my biggest irritation, when people think this is a small opportunity” says Emma. 

What is the business model? 

“B2B2C. We’re building an in-app economy — everything you transact on in Diem will ultimately be able to be monetized via in-app currency. We’ve got some very cool plans in the works for brand integrations down the line too! says Emma.   

When it comes to technological capabilities on the platform, what is different for Diem compared to other software tools that are available? 

“We have messaging, audio, and video functionalities within the community spaces. Community spaces can be public or private depending on what the host is looking for. Our biggest differentiators are that you can be discoverable within the platform, it is a social network, people can find your community and they can search by interests or hashtags. You can also be discovered by hosting live events. Depending on how popular your events are, you can be pushed up in the feed for people to discover. Also, we are building out a post perspective, metrics on how engaged the community is, what people are looking for, and what topics they’re interested in. This is only mobile for now.” 

What are some marketing highlights or partnerships executed to get people to sign up?

“This is a platform for hosts, but built with members in mind. Partnerships are more for host acquisition -- it is mostly talking to them and understanding their needs, talking to them about what frustrates them. 80% of our users right now have been driven by community hosts that live within the platform already. Given our approach is B2B2C, we are seeing our users come in in a similar way. We got some really cool celebrity figures that will be coming into the platform later this year or over the summer which I am very excited about. We have an epic expert suite of doctors, nurses, and others with special qualifications in different areas focused on women’s health. Our approach is very host-centric and they can do whatever they want with it.”

THE ADVICE

Emma shared with us some advice and lessons learned from her experience as an entrepreneur, specifically on her journey of creating Diem. 

• Don’t compare yourself to others. It does wonders for your personal and professional life.
  

• Don’t spend energy focusing on inadequacy marketing because you are taking time away from building your natural skillsets and abilities.
  

• No one else is ever going to build a company how you build it. You bring a very unique perspective to the table. Maybe the product category is the same, but you will execute it differently. It is worth knowing what is out there, but it is not worth comparing yourself.
  

• Just keep going! It is about resilience and not as much talked about as a skill set that you need to develop as a founder.
  

• You’re going to get so many no’s, I get nos 80% of my week and you just have to be like I know I’m doing something… and it helps to have a mission. Every time you get that no, you should be like it’s fine, and then use your mission to inspire you.
  
  

Interested in learning more about Diem? Join the waitlist, and get inspired by other women in your community.

Photo courtesy of Diem.

Written by Christina Chao.

ALULA, LIYA SHUSTER-BIER: The Platform for Cancer Patients

Approximately 1 in 4 Americans will be afflicted with cancer in their lifetime. Cancer is an overwhelming disease with many logistics and unknowns, all of which can be pretty daunting. While working through her mother’s cancer diagnosis and treatment as well as her own, Liya Shuster-Bier is now helping others care for cancer patients with a solution to help aggregate all of a cancer patient’s needs in one place. Alula, which launched in January 2021, is a radically honest resource that supports people, families, and friends through the entire lifecycle of cancer.

We interviewed CEO and Founder Liya Shuster-Bier about her journey with cancer, closing her fundraising round, and creating a new product in a niche category. 

“We are really colliding consumer health with traditional consumer DTC to build a modern anti-cancer lifestyle brand.” -Liya Shuster-Bier 

It is fairly easy to shop for your friend’s wedding or baby shower since you can access a registry, but what if your friend receives a cancer diagnosis? Cancer is also unfortunately a life moment that many may encounter in their lifetime, and one that many loved ones struggle to shop for. As a cancer survivor herself, Liya Shuster-Bier was determined to solve this problem of shopping for a cancer patient and thus, Alula was born. 

Alula features a marketplace of products guided by medical experts and curated by cancer patients who have been there. It serves as a place where a cancer patient can have all their shopping needs met without the hassle -- a place where loved ones can help purchase new favorite items for their cancer patient to help them throughout their cancer journey. 

“A discovery platform for patients and caregivers.” 

“Alula is organizing your support system outside the hospital room. We like to say that doctors treat cancer and Alula treats living with it,” said Liya. Alula is truly the one stop shop for everything a cancer patient needs; where you can register for products/services you need, organize logistical care across your support network, read about cancer and lifestyle content, and connect with others in the community. 

The Aha Moment  

Imagine hearing that your mother got diagnosed with cancer, and then a few months later, you also received a cancer diagnosis. Liya Shuster-Bier knows this firsthand, and wanted to help make it easier for cancer patients to shop for their new lifestyle.

After her mother’s diagnosis, Liya would shop a lot with her mother to help her purchase new products, and what was most surprising was the amount of time spent shopping for a variety of OTC products/services that were never utilized before. She found herself shopping for all types of products in different aisles like the baby and geriatric aisles, and realized this burdensome experience could be made much easier. Liya’s mother also kept asking why there was not a one stop shop for everything related to cancer patients, and this began to spark Liya’s curiosity of this untapped consumer segment of the cancer patient. When Liya herself got diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma while her mother was rendered in remission, she felt this pain point on a grander scale – not just for herself personally shopping for things she needed, but also for her support system that wanted to show love to her on her journey battling cancer. It was then that Alula was born. 

“Alula is reframing and curating different types of products for the cancer patient and is the first brand that is organizing the cancer patient as a consumer segment,” said Liya.

Alula currently operates through an affiliate program with the brands selling through its marketplace. The platform aims to help brands discover a new consumer segment in cancer patients and acts as a discovery platform for patients and caregivers. Alula also adopted a medical advisory board that is blessing everything from an oncologist's perspective, in addition to frequently collecting data on patients and caregivers through interviews on what they are using to get through treatment and recovery. “Our patients needed these products yesterday and we want to focus on optimizing for speedy fulfillment and educating them on what they need,” said Liya. 

The Childhood

Liya, the oldest of three, was born in Baku, Azerbaijan in a Jewish enclave, and left as a political refugee at just 18 months old. After moving around the world, Liya and her family were granted political asylum and found themselves settling in Forest Hills, Queens in New York. Attending public school in the city her whole life, Liya decided to make the switch to a more rural location, moving to Hanover, New Hampshire to enroll at Dartmouth College. 

Both parents had civil engineering degrees, but Liya wanted something different. At Dartmouth, Liya majored in Geography and Government because she “was really obsessed with how capital shifts across place and creates inequity in various forms,” ultimately dreaming of a job at the World Bank. Her first job out of college was a coveted spot on the corporate derivatives team at Goldman Sachs, where she worked on major companies like Walmart, Apple, Google, analyzing currency fluctuations on their balance sheets and income statements. 

“I loved the pulse of the trading floor and the analytics that helped these companies protect their earnings. I loved translating what was happening politically in a certain country to what that meant economically,” Liya said. After a few years in the corporate world, Liya fed her social impact appetite leaving Goldman in 2013 to join a startup in Boston where she designed social impact bonds with governments across the country. After a couple of years, she then decided to pursue her MBA for more managerial experience and got accepted into Wharton. 

Six months into Liya’s MBA, her world was forever changed. Liya’s mother got diagnosed with breast cancer, and a few months later, Liya got her rare cancer diagnosis. It was this time, and everything leading up to this moment that she knew she had to do something to help other cancer patients adapt to their new normal. Liya started Alula during her cancer treatments, and was inspired by her community and loved ones to keep following her dreams of creating the business, while also fighting cancer. 

As a cancer patient and founder, Liya found it difficult to decipher between what was bringing her down -- was it the cancer or the grind? However, she found that she needed to prioritize her health, as well as ensured that her team also prioritized their health for the business to run smoothly. It was a challenge to balance the overall business needs during treatments, but even in difficult times, Liya’s strong conviction to getting things done and helping people proved successful. Her inspirational story, life experience, and strong appetite for helping others paid off. In 2020, Liya had spoken to 95 investors and closed $2.2 million in her pre-seed round.

The Advice

Liya’s advice for launching a startup: 

• Your deck has to give your elevator pitch for you. Put your personality into your deck because investors will invest in the founder as much as the idea.
  

• Invest in the technology for investor pitches. Do the $15/month Zoom subscription because it's more important to have a seamless meeting experience. Make sure you are also investing in a Wifi booster so you can present your pitch seamlessly.
  

• Build a fast-growing startup, while taking care of yourself and your team. Have specific work systems and architecture in place to keep you and your team healthy.

What’s Next for Alula

“We are really de-stigmatizing and democratizing everything a cancer patient needs to heal and to recover. There is a lot of focus on the medical bill component, but what I was stunned by in my own treatment was how medical bills were a singular part of my many, many expenditures. It took me getting cancer twice and also living it with my mom to understand the universe of things you need and what you need to pay for. Alula is organizing this all into a singular place,” Liya said. 

In the future, the team is also planning to build registries for users to raise money for specific care. Alula is also aiming to make the overall transaction and registry process easier, like automating patient thank you notes and other small features to help facilitate transactions within the platform.

Lastly, Alula will be a space for the community, where patients get a shareable profile as part of a dashboard of their cancer treatment. The patient will have the ability to customize knowledge, products, their registry, and more, to different parts of their community. “We are building the foundation for patients to share each other’s profiles through the Alula platform because we believe the community of content-led and commerce strategy is what will keep the patient and their loved ones buying through Alula,” said Liya. 

Do you know someone diagnosed and suffering from cancer? Show your support and care by sharing Alula with them.  

Photo courtesy of Alula. 

Written by Christina Chao.