Bay Area artist Daniel Baskin isn't a first-time founder, but this is the first time he's launched a technology company that isn't a performance art piece or an elaborate joke. Still, she has a tongue-in-cheek tagline to market her latest venture: “It's her SaaS for witches.”
She's not kidding. Moonlight is a free online tarot platform where you can draw your own tarot cards, have multiplayer readings in his rooms, and even book sessions with hand-picked tarot experts. (This is where the SaaS part comes in handy).
Some founders die for just one good idea. Baskin has so many great ideas that some of her performances, her art, and her projects have accidentally been incorporated into legitimate companies. What if, instead of getting more corporate swag, she went to a conference and got a Salesforce-branded avocado? (“It was actually solid business,” she told TechCrunch.) , which was shattered by the pandemic).
She also ran Dialup, an app for making one-on-one calls between strangers, for four years. Then, in case your company gets acquired and you don't need a whole new hoodie, there are also no-time joke products like the OneHoodie, a hoodie with interchangeable Velcro logos. Drone sweater, keep your drone warm. Or Warby Parkour, a photo in glasses doing parkour. Part of Moonlight's funding came from the sale of her own business, Maskalike, which creates photorealistic face masks depicting real people's faces.
“After I sold my mask company, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was able to just think about what I wanted to do next and not rush into anything,” she said. Then came Moonlight.
Image credit: Moonlight
Moonlight has a suitably mystical connection to one of Baskin's first companies. About 15 years ago, Baskin was running a business painting custom motorcycle helmets, and at the same time she was just beginning to learn about tarot.
Tarot is not fortune-telling or psychic reading. Dating back to the 1400s, each of his 78 cards in his tarot deck tells a story. Tarot readers interpret the cards people draw and draw from the cards' stories to help clients think about life events from a different perspective.
“I came up with the idea of painting each tarot card on 78 unique helmets and selling them all in New York so everyone could shuffle around and tell bikes as they passed them. ” she said. “If you're riding your bike and you pass the Three of Swords, you think, 'Oh, I'm about to think about heartbreak,' and you pass a magician and you think, 'Oh, I should do that. Let's do more spectacle today. ”
Sometimes she traded her helmet for a few tarot lessons with a witch (some tarot practitioners describe themselves that way). It was during one of these lessons that Baskin first imagined what her online tarot platform would be like.
Image credit: Danielle Baskin/Inkwell Helmets
“One of my teachers, I went to her house and she had a desktop computer in the corner and I could hear the sounds of the beach coming from it,” she said. She said: “She asked her what was on her computer and it was explained to her that she was doing tarot readings in Second Life. [at a beachside tarot shop]. There she would meet clients and people from all over the world would be able to voice chat with her…that was always in the back of my mind. Even as I was making this, I was like, “Oh, maybe I should call her again.'' “I think. ”
Baskin has been studying tarot for 15 years, giving readings (sometimes at corporate parties) and getting to know other witches. Now, the road to Moonlight has come full circle.
Moonlight's interface is beautiful and intuitive. When you enter the room, start by shuffling the tarot deck. The default is the iconic Rider-Waite-Smith deck, but decks from other artists are also available. He can draw cards in 4 different spreads preset, but he can also simply draw cards on a blank canvas. This is useful for those learning how to read cards. If you're not a tarot expert, there's a handbook built into the app, but the explanations are very open-ended. “I put in a minimal number of keywords, so I can project my own meaning onto it,” Baskin said.
When building the idea for Moonlight, Baskin teamed up with game designer and former Google UX engineer Caroline Hermans.
“It took us a full two years to actually make it, because we also wondered who we could collaborate with. Is there a tarot engineer?” Baskin said. “Herman's fits the bill perfectly.
Image credit: Moonlight
Moonlight was originally launched by Baskin with money she earned from selling Mascarique, but she also managed to find angel investors to get involved (she declined to say how much she raised). Given her history of making fun of Silicon Valley, she sold blonde wigs and “blood energy drinks” outside the courtroom at the Elizabeth Holmes trial and treated venture capitalists like baseball players. Although she's behind the TouchBase trading cards, she has no doubt that investors will take her seriously.
“I was worried that investors would think I was a prankster. Could that actually hurt me in doing business?” Anyone who knows me knows that I am multifaceted,” she said. “A lot of the investors I met were very familiar with my artwork. They're like, 'Oh, you did BART Basel, the BART art show.'”
It's important to Baskin that Moonlight has a real business plan from the beginning. She learned that lesson while running her now-defunct Dialup.
“I probably had a similar mindset to Clubhouse: 'Let's continue to grow the app, keep it free, and plan to monetize it as it becomes more popular.'” That,” she said. Neither Clubhouse nor her Dialup were successful with that model. Most companies were not successful. But Moonlight already makes some money by taking a 15% platform fee from tarot reader bookings and digital deck sales. The platform launched with little fanfare about a year ago, but now that the booking flow is in place, Moonlight is looking to get noticed.
“I was worried that witches wouldn't like technology. They'd say, 'My physical deck has windowsill crystals in it, so that's the only thing I'll use.' Everyone is connected to the internet,” Baskin said. “Witches have Instagram. We all use technology, and I think they're excited that someone who knows tarot is creating a platform.”