The author's oldest daughter is an introvert, while the youngest is an extrovert.
Courtesy of the author
I'm a mom of two girls ages 4 and 1.
My oldest is an introvert, while my youngest is an extrovert.
I can related to both and give them space to be who they are.
"I want to go home!" my 4-year-old screamed as I held her in my lap.
We were at a birthday party for her best friend. To be more specific, this little girl is also our next-door neighbor, and we were in their backyard — the one she plays in almost every day. In contrast, my 1-year-old laughed and clapped as she sat with a group of kids playing with bubbles.
This isn't a new situation for me — my older daughter wilts around big groups of people while my younger daughter lights up in the presence of others. I'm sure I'm not the only parent with one introverted child and another extroverted one, but in those panicky moments where I have to cater to both of their social needs, it feels like taking one wrong step will end in disaster — also known as an epic tantrum.
Fortunately, I relate to my daughters. I'm what they call an extroverted introvert — someone who enjoys socializing but still needs time to recharge afterward. And because I understand both sides of the extrovert/introvert personality, I've developed ways to embrace their specific needs.
We build in introvert and extrovert time during the week
Weekdays are easier for us to schedule activities catered to each of our kids. While my introvert is at preschool, my extrovert is signed up for a gym and music class. If we have a day without a class, I take her to the playground or another busy spot to fuel her up.
For my introvert, after her day at school, I know she has to reset. So we opt for 1:1 playdates, art projects at home, or activities that don't have too much stimulation, like going for a bike ride or gardening.
Weekends are family time
On the weekends, we make an effort to spend time together as a family. Instead of running them to extracurriculars or playdates, we try to prioritize the importance of our family unit.
This can definitely include parts of the day spent with their friends or ours, but ultimately, we all recharge on the weekend. Part of this is so that we instill in them that time with us is important, and another is so that my husband (total introvert) and I (extroverted introvert) don't get burned out either.
When we're going to be somewhere new, we have options
Of course I'd love to be able to control every situation so my kids feel nothing but bliss but, well, that's not realistic.
There are weekends where we all have to go to a big event — like the neighbor's birthday party — or where it's pouring rain (the LA equivalent of the end of days) and we're stuck indoors. We've learned that when possible, having options for each kid makes a huge difference.
So when my introvert needed to leave the birthday party, I took her back to the house while my husband stayed at the party with my extrovert. When my extrovert needs some stimulation, I'll take her out for an adventure at the zoo while my husband has a 1:1 movie date with our introvert.
My hope is that my daughters know they are loved and respected for their personalities and don't feel forced to try to be something they aren't. And sometimes the girls surprise us — my introvert will rally and want to do a big activity, or my extrovert will hang back and just want to cuddle up close with us. But knowing we can pull them out of a situation that doesn't serve them well eases the pressure on us as their parents.
Sam Dogen retired at 34 in San Francisco with over $3 million after 13 years of saving and investing.
His wife retired at 35, and both haven't held a 9-to-5 job since the mid-2010s.
He and his wife followed the FIRE movement, focusing on passive income and minimal expenses.
Sam Dogen went from starting his career 25 years ago making $40,000 a year in New York City to retiring in San Francisco 13 years later with a net worth of over $3 million. His wife retired three years after him at age 35.
For years, the two saved most of their income, poured money into passive investments, and worked long hours to achieve financial independence — the point at which they wouldn't need to work to cover their long-term expenses.
"It's really a journey of balancing your finances, figuring out passive incomes, covering your expenses, buying the things that you want that'll improve quality life like a house, and then also being willing to go back to work in either part-time or full-time capacity once you have that void to fill," Dogen said.
Dogen and his wife are FIREs — financial independence, retire early — who make it work with two kids in one of the US's most expensive cities. He said it's uncommon for both people in a couple to reach FIRE at around the same time. Raising their kids has been a full-time job for both of them, but both have found peace in pursuing — and monetizing — their passions while relying on passive income to fund their vacations and entertainment.
In a way, both have rejected the "RE" in the FIRE acronym, though neither plans to return to an office job.
Discovering FIRE
In 1999, Dogen got his first job in investment banking in New York City, making $40,000 and splitting a studio apartment with a roommate to save money. He said he would work late to get free cafeteria food, which he saved for the next day, meaning he rarely spent on groceries.
"I figured if I could save 100% of every other paycheck, that would be saving 50% of my salary, and every year I saved 50% of my salary was one year of living," Dogen said. "I took it a step further: I saved every other paycheck, and I saved and invested 90% of any discretionary year-end bonus. I did that essentially for 13 years in a row."
He moved to San Francisco for another position and rose through the ranks throughout the 2000s. In 2003, he bought a two-bedroom condominium, which allowed him to fix his living expenses for the next few years. He said this was one of the keys to achieving financial independence.
However, in 2009, he estimates he lost 35% to 40% of his net worth in six months. That year, he started his blog, Financial Samurai, chronicling his journey to financial independence while continuing at his company and rebuilding some of his net worth. But, after surviving seven rounds of layoffs, he realized he had enough in the bank to quit his $250,000-a-year job without rushing to another job.
"I realized that after 10 years, I wasn't having any fun anymore," Dogen said. "It's very stressful, and I wanted out, but I didn't know how to get out because I just didn't plan that far."
He negotiated a severance package in 2012, which allowed him to keep his deferred stock and cash compensation. At the time, his net worth was $3 million, and he had saved between 75% and 80% of his income over the previous few years.
"I never let lifestyle inflation get to me, and I was driving old cars, living in very humble homes," he said.
Transitioning into early retirement
Though he had a large nest egg and passive investments, he wondered for a few years if he had made the right choice. His wife made $120,000 a year, but he was unsure if his retirement would only be temporary. Still, his health improved shortly after quitting, and he realized how much pressure he had been under that was lifted off his shoulders.
"I was like, what am I doing? I'm only 35 years old, leaving a well-paid job behind, losing so much money," Dogen said. "But as the months went by, I felt more calm because I had way more freedom, and I was happier. The chronic back pain and sciatica and teeth grinding went away within six months."
Early in his career, he knew he wanted to achieve financial independence and retire early, but he didn't want to leave the city. He said it's rare for people who reach FIRE to live in expensive coastal cities, noting many move to suburbs or more rural areas where the cost of living is lower. He knows couples making well into the six figures who struggle to save between housing and raising children.
"If you plan to stay in a high-cost-of-living area and you want to FIRE, you have to focus on ways to build wealth that outstrip the cost of living," Dogen said.
In addition to the income he earned from his blog, he poured money into stocks and real estate. He also followed various budgeting guidelines like spending no more than 10% of gross income on cars. He follows a 30% rule for homebuying as well.
"I feel like there's this whole world out there who just kind of wing it when it comes to their personal finances, and then they wake up 10 years later and wonder where all their money went because there aren't disciplines or ratios or guidelines that they follow," Dogen said.
When he retired, he told his wife that if she could stay in her job for three more years until she turned 35, both could retire early and still make enough in passive income to live comfortably. They upped their savings rate and tried to maximize passive income during those years.
"One of the interesting phenomena you'll see in the FIRE space is how a man will proclaim he's retired early, but he'll have a working wife," Dogen said. "It's a head-scratcher because I don't know a single stay-at-home mom who says she's retired early. She just says she's a stay-at-home mom because it's a full-time job. It's crazy how much work it is."
In 2015, his wife also negotiated a generous severance package after her company tried to keep her working part-time. She returned to the company after a few months, making more in a part-time position than she did working full-time. She stopped in 2016, shortly before having their first child.
"It's really methodically saving and investing as much as possible for as long as possible," Dogen said. "Too many people get in credit card debt, buying things they don't need, expensive vacations."
Are you part of the FIRE movement or living by some of its principles? Reach out to this reporter at nsheidlower@businessinsider.com.
A Las Vegas homeowner accused of running an unauthorized Airbnb for years says that his renter is to blame.
James Marshall/Getty Images
A real-estate investor was fined $180,000 by the city of Las Vegas for running an illegal Airbnb.
Oregon engineer Xin Tao said he bought the house as an investment property to rent out longer term.
Tao said his tenant rented it out on Airbnb and the city didn't say daily fines were adding up.
In November,the city of Las Vegas issued a $180,000 fine against a homeowner who officials say ran an unauthorized Airbnb near the Las Vegas strip.
The homeowner, however, told Business Insider he believes he is the victim of a scamrun by the tenant renting his house at the time.
In June 2021, Xin Tao purchased a five-bedroom, two-bathroom property in Las Vegas for $378,000.
Tao, an engineer who lives in Oregon full-time, told BI he bought the house as an investment property. While he did initially consider listing it on Airbnb, he added, he abandoned that plan when he signed a lease with a long-term tenant in September 2021. (Business Insider viewed a copy of the lease.)
Shortly after, multiple neighbors called the city with complaints about the property, complaining about an overflow of cars parked in the driveway and that activity at the house "regularly disturbs" neighbors, according to enforcement logs from the city of Las Vegas.
On two separate occasions in October 2021 and February 2022, Las Vegas city officials knocked on the door, according to government logs. The people who answered said they were renting the property through Airbnb, the logs said.
Tao was issued $2,132 in fines from the February 2022 incident — $500 per day for the four days the alleged Airbnb guest said they were staying in the home, plus additional fees, according to city records.
Tao said he believed that, after the February 2022 incident, his tenant had stopped renting out his property on Airbnb and the issue was resolved. He claimed he was unable to confront the tenant directly because he was managing the property remotely from Oregon.
The tenant vacated the property in September 2023, and a cleaner was sent to the premises to tidy up, Tao said. Stuck to the window was a notice of a $180,000 fine.
"I was shocked. I didn't know what was going on. I thought it might be fraud," Tao told Business Insider. "How do we go from $2,000 to $180,000?"
Las Vegas is cracking down on Airbnb hosts
In January, Tao asked the Las Vegas City Council to reconsider the fine, but lawmakers unanimously upheld the decision by a vote of 7-0, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
In 2019, Las Vegas instituted sweeping regulations of short-term rentals, including banning out-of-state investors from owning Airbnbs, amid outcry from local residents who complained of an influx of "parties, prostitution, and drugs into residential communities," according to the Las Vegas Sun.
Some Sin City residents are still frustrated by short-term rentals in their neighborhoods.
"I am constantly getting texts, emails, calls, pulled aside in the grocery store about short-term rentals," Councilman Brian Knudsen told local outlet Fox 5 in January. "If we continue to erode laws by not enforcing the fees and fines associated with them, we continue to lose the dignity of our neighborhoods."
The city arrived at the $180,000 fine based on a $500-a-night penalty for each of hundreds of nights it tracked as booked at Tao's property, according to documents submitted to the City Council.
Tao told Business Insider he will continue to fight the fine in part because he argues the city did not notify him properly that charges continued to accrue after February 2022.
He added that the currentfine would have devastating effects on his family.
"We have a mortgage and car payments," he said. "One hundred eighty thousand dollars is definitely something I cannot afford."
Mihail Eric, a former senior machine learning scientist at Alexa AI, wrote in a lengthy X post about how he felt Amazon missed its opportunity to turn Alexa into a leading product as competitors make headway with their own AI-infused voice assistants.
"We had all the resources, talent, and momentum to become the unequivocal market leader in conversational AI," Eric wrote on Tuesday.
He added: "But most of that tech never saw the light of day and never received any noteworthy press. Why? The reality is Alexa AI was riddled with technical and bureaucratic problems."
Eric, who left Amazon in 2021 according to his LinkedIn profile, said Amazon might have fumbled its chance to dominate the conversational AI space due to a "bad technical process," "fragmented org," and "product-science misalignment."
In his view, Amazon's infrastructure was "agonizingly painful" for its developers because of guardrails put in place to protect user data. He added that computing resources to carry out experiments were limited.
Eric also claimed that progress on Alexa was hindered by a organizational structure that resulted in overlaps between teams that sometimes worked on similar challenges.
"This introduced an almost Darwinian flavor to org dynamics where teams scrambled to get their work done to avoid getting reorged and subsumed into a competing team," he wrote.
According to Eric, the Alexa team had to "constantly justify" its existence to senior leaders, and there was a conflict between the product and science teams in weekly meetings. He said this led to a churn of managers every few months and the sunsetting of its efforts to make Alexa a multimodal agent in Amazon customers' homes.
Eric also said that after OpenAI unveiled its multimodal GPT-4o model, which has a voice assistant called Sky, he received a message from a former Alexa colleague, who he says told him: "You'd think voice assistants would have been our forte at Alexa."
Amazon and Eric didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.
Travel agents are pitching overwhelmed millennials and Gen Zers a stress-free vacation.
Edmon de Haro for BI
I had just turned 9 when I discovered Anthony Bourdain's show "No Reservations." It wasn't like the other Travel Channel shows. Sure, the premise was straightforward: Bourdain traveled around the world to meet up with locals and try their cuisine. But instead of focusing on tourist hot spots and flashy, curated experiences, "No Reservations" was about traveling by the seat of your pants and getting as close to the local culture as any outsider could be allowed. I was an immediate disciple.
Travel shouldn't be about checking off items on a bucket list by sticking to sanitized excursions marketed to foreigners; it should introduce you to someone else's slice of life. On family trips to New York City, I cringed when my mother pulled out a paper map. "Everyone is going to know we aren't from here,"I thought.
Though I grew less self-conscious over the years, that mentality remained. Others in my generation — I'm on the cusp between Gen Z and millennial — were on the same page, determined to seek out "authentic experiences." For years, people explored the world with the help of travel agents. But those services — sending you to places curated just for tourists — seemed to fly in the face of the Bourdainian ethos. Travel agents felt like vestiges of the preinternet world, like video-store clerks or pay phones, and I couldn't imagine ever needing them. What could they tell me that Reddit couldn't? Isn't it simpler to just book my own flights? Doing everything myself felt easier.
As of late, though, my attitude has changed.
Ever since the pandemic-era travel restrictions subsided, travel has boomed. Everyone is jetting off to Italy, Japan, and Costa Rica. Money spent on travel and entertainment surged 30% in 2023, fueled largely by young people. We're all desperate to make up for lost time, but there's a catch: Many of us 20- and 30-somethings are tired. It turns out that aspiring to be a DIY traveler takes a lot of energy — energy that we've already exhausted on careers, relationships, and day-to-day responsibilities. When we do finally have the time to venture away from home, we're burning ourselves out trying to coordinate all the details of our trip. Meanwhile, the sense of precarity we all felt during the pandemic hasn't left. Flight delays and cancellations from weather, short staffing, technical issues, and random bad luck are more common than before. The odds that something could go wrong feel higher.
That's precisely why some are turning back to travel agents. In 2014, the number of travel agents was half of what it was at the industry's mid-'90s peak, with many expecting it to become obsolete. But by 2021, 76% of advisors were seeing more customers than before the pandemic. And in a 2023 survey of 2,000 American travelers, 38% of Gen Z and millennial respondents said they preferred a traditional travel agent over online booking. Only 12% of Gen Xers and 2% of boomers said the same. Whether we're bopping around the Mediterranean or just posting up at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico for a week, a lot of us are deciding we'd rather put the planning in someone else's hands.
Matt James, a 29-year-old software engineer in New York City, was initially excited to plan his summer trip to Vietnam himself. Like many his age, he's primarily interested in sightseeing in cities. "I found myself going down hourslong internet rabbit holes trying to hone in on a perfect itinerary," he said, "Googling 'best neighborhoods in Hanoi Reddit,' 'two-week Vietnam itinerary Reddit,' etc."
After a while, though, he said it was hard to find the time and energy to plan. Doing his own research was mentally exhausting. He decided to give up the hunt and hand the work over to a travel advisor who was also a family friend. "He was able to take care of booking visas, flights, hotels, and a few excursions," James said. "It was very tempting to have him take care of it all in one email thread for a couple-hundred-dollar fee." Now, he said, all that's left is deciding what to see and eat at each location — something that lets him satisfy his urge to rabbit-hole.
A flight to Mexico City and five nights at a boutique hotel in Coyoacán, however, feels a little more firmly within our grasp.
In a Business Insider survey, in collaboration with YouGov, millennials cited travel as one of their most important goals for the next five years, more important than having fulfilling romantic relationships, owning a home, advancing their career, or starting a family. In fact, the only two goals millennials considered more important than traveling were being financially stable and improving their health. Amid rising costs for housing, childcare, and everything else, key milestones get pushed further down the road. A flight to Mexico City and five nights at a boutique hotel in Coyoacán, however, feels a little more firmly within our grasp. In a 2023 Morning Consult survey, both millennials and Gen Zers were more likely than older generations to travel frequently, with half of each cohort saying they took three or more leisure trips a year. Gen Zers were also more likely to go overseas than their older peers.
For as little as $100 — or nothing at all, given that some agents work on commission from the hotels and other travel companies they work with — overwhelmed young travelers can have someone take all the pressure off the experience. There are travel agents specializing in just about every type of travel imaginable, from multicountry group tours to luxury all-inclusive trips. And different types of agents can offer different perks.
For complex overseas trips, where a million things could go wrong, it makes sense to hire an agent to not only ensure everything goes as smoothly as possible but also handle the rebookings in the event of a hiccup. When something goes awry, it's someone else's problem.
While James decided to have his agent handle just the basics of his Vietnam vacation, many agents can help curate the experiences in between, promising to find their clients the coolest markets to shop at or the most-recommended museums. On a different trip, to Oktoberfest in Germany, James' travel agent — a native German speaker — was able to secure all sorts of reservations that James would never have been able to land on his own.
Increasingly, travel agents are luring people in through social media, where they can speak straight to the millennial and Gen Z desire for a unique experience and a relaxing trip. "We can give you the special slice-of-life experience you want," they pitch, "just without the hassle." Companies like Fora, for example, use TikTok and Instagram to seed sleek ads for package trips to the Croatian coast or boutique hotels in the Florida Keys, with extra attention given to "sustainability" and travelers' specific "aesthetic" desires.
Agents elsewhere on TikTok tout all-inclusive trips where the point is to just lie on the beach and chill the hell out for a second. Searches for topics like "best all-inclusives Cancún" heavily feature travel agents promoting their services, ranking their favorite resorts and highlighting the perks they can offer clients who book with them. One of their main selling points: Their services are free. And many agents also claim that their customers can receive better deals thanks to the special pricing and perks available to agents.
"We can give you the special slice-of-life experience you want," they pitch, "just without the hassle."
"Many of my Gen Z clients are in entry-level careers, graduate programs, or saving for other big expenses, so they're often looking for destinations that allow them to relax while making the most of their limited vacation days and budget," said Kayla Smith, a travel advisor for Sojourney Travel, a company specializing in beach vacations, cruises, and theme-park trips.
Smith is a Gen Zer and said that over half her clients are Gen Z. "Going from school to the workforce is already a huge life transition, and when you add on a pandemic and varying career expectations, you're bound to see a generation who is experiencing burnout at a rapid rate," she said.
For that reason, resort groups like Sandals are seeing an influx of Gen Zers and millennials. Ashley Kooker, a senior business-development manager for Unique Vacations, a sales and marketing affiliate of Sandals and Beaches Resorts, said that these properties had been attracting younger customers in part by blending the all-inclusive format with the opportunity for more exploration. At Sandals Royal Curacao and Sandals Royal Bahamian, guests can opt to go off-resort and visit local restaurants as part of their all-inclusive plan — allowing experience-minded vacationers to have their cake and eat it, too.
Exhaustion aside, many of us 20-somethings still yearn for these hard-to-get-to, out-of-the-box journeys — the trips that make us feel like travelers rather than tourists. William Lee, a travel agent at Chima Travel, a family-owned agency in Ohio that's been operating for over 100 years, told me he often gets requests for obscure destinations young clients see on social media. "We had a client come in and ask us about Oeschinen Lake in Switzerland," he said. "They saw the lake on TikTok and wanted to go there. I had to let them know that to do so would require hiking into the Swiss Alps and going a bit off the beaten path."
I recently wrapped up a 10-day trip to Peru, where I hiked for three days through the Lares District, ate quinoa soup in the San Pedro Market in Cusco, and bar-hopped in Lima. It was a trip packed with experiences — the kind that my generation is always talking about prioritizing — but I don't think I relaxed for a moment. And that's despite leaving all the planning to my friends.
I'm already plotting my next big, multiweek international trip — I'm looking at Vietnam, myself — but before then, I need to book a few days somewhere where I can be by a pool with a margarita in hand. Where will I go? I'm not sure. That's for a travel agent to decide.
Magdalene Taylor is a writer covering sex and culture. She lives in New York City and publishes the newsletter Many Such Cases.
Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington on season three, episode six of "Bridgerton."
Liam Daniel/Netflix
"Bridgerton" season three, part two has the longest sex scene of the franchise so far.
Colin and Penelope have an intimate scene that lasts over 5 and a half minutes.
The actors, Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton, have been teasing this scene for months.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Bridgerton" season three, episode five.
"Bridgerton" season three gets a whole lot sexier in part two.
For years, "Bridgerton" has been praised for its female gaze-focused, explicit sex scenes. Season one and the "Queen Charlotte" spin-off were filled with raunchy romps that weren't common in the Regency series.
But Colin Bridgerton and Penelope Featherington take this to a whole new level in season three, episode five.
A day after his sudden proposal (and that steamy carriage hook-up), Colin (Luke Newton) takes his childhood friend Penelope (Nicola Coughlan) to see the Bridgerton property that will become their home after their marriage.
While alone, Colin tells Penelope he loves her and begins describing all the parts of her body he adores. As the pair look at each other in the mirror, Colin starts touching Penelope up and down her body and then strips her of her clothing.
Though there have been many shirtless scenes with male leads, this is the first scene in "Bridgerton" history where a female lead character is fully nude in front of the camera.
Colin and Penelope then have an extended lovemaking scene on a chaise lounge chair while a string cover of Ariana Grande's song "POV" plays in the background.
The scene is sensual, and Penelope, a virgin, is a lot more of an active participant in the sex scene compared to the previous lead couples' first times.
The physical foreplay to the end of the scene lasts over five and a half minutes, which is the longest sex scene of the show, according to Business Insider's extremely scientific calculations.
Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton have been teasing this scene for a long time
Luke Newton and Nicole Coughlan attend Netflix's "Bridgerton" Season 3 world premiere in NYC on May 13, 2024.
Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images for Netflix
For months, Coughlan and Newton have been steadily building anticipation for this sex scene in numerous interviews, sending fans into a frenzy.
Coughlan told Entertainment Weekly in April that she and Newton broke "a piece of furniture" while filming one of the intimate scenes.
She wouldn't say what the furniture was at the time, but the chaise lounge chair in the episode five scene fits Coughlan's description when she spoke about it again to CapitalFM in May.
"I would say it's like a piece of furniture that you would more see in the past than the present, but yeah, we did break it during a sexy scene because we were really going for it," Coughlan said.
In May, Coughlan also told the Stylist that she specifically asked to be "very naked on camera" during an explicit scene to clap back at people who have commented on her body in the past.
"It just felt like the biggest 'fuck you' to all the conversation surrounding my body; it was amazingly empowering," Coughlan said, referring to people who have body-shamed her on social media.
Netflix's marketing team also helped create buzz around season three's sex scene by releasing promotional material showing Colin and Penelope in front of a mirror. Fans of the books that "Bridgerton" is based on immediately saw this as a signal that the show was adapting the "mirror scene."
All these teases made "Bridgerton" fans believe they would see some very spicy scenes this season. Sure enough, season three, part two finally rewards their patience.
All episodes of season three of "Bridgerton" are now streaming on Netflix.
Quinn is an audio erotica app where creators can post scripted scenarios.
Courtesy of Quinn
Quinn is the audio erotica app that Gen Z is loving right now.
CEO Caroline Spiegel founded Quinn in 2019 during her senior year at Stanford University.
Celebrity collaborations and viral TikToks have fueled Quinn's 440% year-over-year revenue growth.
Quinn founder and CEO Caroline Spiegel knows she's supplying a niche demand, but she likes it that way.
And it's working. Quinn, an app that lets subscribers listen to scripted erotic scenarios, is seeing listeners tune in for about 24 million minutes every month.
"It sort of takes the best elements of romance novels and condenses it into a 15 or 20-minute audio experience," Spiegel said.
Quinn is a hit with Gen Z. According to metrics, about 56% of its user base are adults between the ages of 18 and 24. Its popularity on TikTok — also the home of BookTok, which has been instrumental in fueling a boom in "romantasy" fiction, which usually features a lot of so-called "spice," or erotic scenes — may have something to do with that. Many of the categories listed on its website match "tropes" regularly seen in romance novels, like "enemies to friends" or "co-workers."
Subscribers pay $4.99 per month or $47.99 annually to have access to erotic audio clips from voice actors. Quinn said its revenue has grown 440% year-over-year for the past two years.
Celebrity collaborations no doubt also help.
One specific corner of the internet went feral in May when they found out actor Andrew Scott would voice a series for Quinn. The "Fleabag" star has already got an admiring fanbase after his role as what is now known as the "Hot Priest" in the series, and as of Wednesday, the official account where the announcement was posted has over 460,000 followers.
Replying to @Lorel Rea Now introducing… Andrew Scott as Robb the Protector. The Queen’s Guard, a Quinn Original series, hits the Quinn app on May 16, 2024.
"I've never downloaded an app this quickly in my life," one of the top comments on Scott's video for Quinn reads.
Audio clips on Quinn offer something for everyone's taste. Scott, for example, is the voice of "The Queen's Guard," a historical fantasy with some explicit scenes.
Spiegel, the younger sister of Snap cofounder Evan Spiegel, said she began working on Quinn in 2019 while recovering from an eating disorder and experiencing sexual dysfunction (an issue that often isn't addressed in women).
"I felt like the way that I experienced desire wasn't really reflected in the options that were out there," she told Business Insider.
She found solace in audio erotica on Reddit and Tumblr and wanted to bring the unique format to the masses, so Spiegel dropped out of Stanford University and launched Quinn in 2021, according to Forbes.
Today, women make up 77% of Quinn's entire base.
Quinn could be compared to OnlyFans, albeit without visuals, in that it's a platform for creators to get their content in front of a paying audience. But according to Spiegel, it's more like Peloton, in that its creators are sort of like the fitness company's instructors, and "people have their favorites that they go really hard for."
To become a Quinn creator, applicants can answer a brief questionnaire and submit an audio recording sample similar to those already on the app.
Quinn's other original celebrity collaborations — including "You" actor Victoria Pedretti and Jesse Williams from "Grey's Anatomy" — have clearly appealed to Gen Z, and she teased that there are at least two more big names coming to the app in 2024.
"I feel like the biggest clue is that one is a woman and one's a man," Spiegel said.
"Bridge jobs" are in-person roles in the service industry, many of which pay very low wages.
simonkr/Getty, Tyler Le/BI
Giovanna Ventola was laid off for the third time in three years in November 2023.
After struggling to find another corporate job, she tried to land a "bridge job" in the meantime.
She always thought she could fall back on a bridge job but has been met with rejection or silence.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Giovanna Ventola, a 34-year-old job seeker in South Carolina. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I was laid off three times in three years in the real-estate industry, most recently in November 2023.
Since then, I've applied to around 180 corporate jobs and have only gotten six interviews, none of which have led to getting hired.
I've also applied for 18 "bridge jobs" — in-person roles in the service industry, many of which pay minimum wage or very low wages. I went through two rounds of interviews for one before being rejected for what felt like an arbitrary reason.
Failing to land a bridge job completely changed my outlook on the job market. I knew it would be difficult to land a high-paying corporate job with benefits, a 401(k) plan, and stock options, but not being able to get a job pouring coffee or stocking shelves has made me lose faith.
I've held service industry jobs before
I started my career as a professional dancer in Chicago. To supplement my income, I also worked as a personal trainer, bartender, server, dance teacher, and babysitter.
I got into real estate after one of my personal training clients recommended that I interview for an open role at the real estate development firm he worked for.
I got hired and became the executive assistant to the CEO. I learned the business over the course of the first year, got my broker's license, and became a leasing manager. I worked there for almost five years.
After 2 layoffs, the third came after only 90 days on the job
In October 2019, I left the firm for a better opportunity with a bigger developer. I thought this would be my career path for at least 10 years, but when COVID-19 hit, my job switched from growing the brand to just surviving.
I was unemployed for seven months before joining WeWork as a leasing manager. I worked for WeWork for two years, but in March 2023, I was laid off again.
Four months later, I got a new job but was only there for around 90 days before they laid me off in November 2023.
I've since applied for over 180 corporate jobs
I applied to 11 jobs in December, 30 in January, around 60 in both February and March, and 20 in April.
I applied for jobs I was qualified for in Chicago and elsewhere and to any and all types of roles — in-person, remote, and hybrid. I even applied for jobs I'm overqualified for, with much lower salaries than I wanted.
I was networking and doing everything you're "supposed" to do, but I couldn't get any traction on anything.
I moved on to applying for bridge jobs
In March, I started looking for bridge jobs. I applied to about 18 bridge jobs, like barista, grocery-store shelf stocker, and store manager. I heard nothing back besides some auto-rejections.
Many of these bridge jobs also required cover letters. I explained that I'd lost my corporate job and wanted to change industries. I talked about wanting to learn something new from the bottom and why I was interested in the job. I still got zero responses.
I started wondering, are they not hiring me because my résumé is too corporate? Bridge jobs may not want to hire people they think will leave. I understand that, but I don't know what they can expect if they pay minimum wage.
I applied for a guest itinerary designer role at a luxury resort down the street. There were a lot of requirements, but it paid $18 an hour plus potential commission, and I thought it'd be a great bridge job.
I connected with the interviewer and landed a second interview, which also went great. I was excited for the third interview, sent my availability, and promptly stopped hearing back.
After multiple follow-up emails and calls, I was told they couldn't hire me because I lived too close to the business, and they didn't want to hire anyone living in the neighborhood. I still don't understand why that's their policy.
Being rejected from minimum wage bridge jobs makes me feel even worse than my other job rejections
I'm pretty strong and confident, and I feel very lucky to have an amazing, supportive network of people. Yet, being unemployed has caused me to feel a lot of self-doubt, insecurity, and isolation.
I got my first bartending job years ago because I was watching a football game at a dive bar and mentioned to the manager that I needed a job. It was slammed, and he said, "Yeah, come in on Monday." Now, I have to answer 10 questions about my personality and tell the hiring manager something fun about myself in 120 characters, and I still don't hear back.
One of my friends recommended I share my experience on TikTok. I quickly realized that my For You page was all other people who had been laid off.
When I saw how many people were in the same boat, I started a Slack networking community that now has over 1,500 members. The people who have joined are so smart — there are molecular biologists and people with PhDs. If even they can't get a job, I'm screwed.
It feels like I've gone backward
It feels like everything I've learned and the knowledge I've gained from my amazing mentors is obsolete because nobody will give me a chance.
I'm 34. I've built a career, am educated and smart, and have accomplished many things.
I don't want to work somewhere for minimum wage — I've scrambled and worked five jobs before, and now it feels like I'm taking a hundred steps backward to when I was 22. I don't want to work at a bar until 4 a.m. anymore.
Freelance work is tiding me over
I started an hourly freelance social media job for a construction company, which I heard about through a friend. I'd be willing to take on a second job, but what happened to being able to have one stable job with benefits?
I'm still applying for jobs. I've never worked this hard trying to figure out what to do. I feel like I'll never stop looking for jobs because I'm afraid that any job I get won't last. I'll never approach the job market the same again.
If you have struggled to find a bridge job and want to share your story, email Jane Zhang at janezhang@businessinsider.com.
Employees work on an EV factory assembly line in China.
VCG/Getty Images
The European Commission announced additional tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports on Wednesday.
The tariffs follow a probe into Chinese subsidies and include up to 48.1% in duties.
Stocks of China's EV makers surged despite the tariffs, driven by perceived manageability.
The European Commission, or EC, announced it will be slapping hefty tariffs on China's electric vehicle imports — but most investors seem unfazed.
On Wednesday, the EC said it will impose tariffs of up to 38.1% on Chinese EV imports from next month — on top of existing 10% duties.
All Chinese EV imports will be subject to additional tariffs from next month, but the commission singled out three major EV makers: BYD, Geely, and SAIC.
BYD will be subject to an additional 17.4% in duties, while Geely will pay an extra 20%. State-backed SAIC will be subject to additional levies of 38.1%.
On Thursday — less than a day after EC dropped its bombshell announcement — the shares of most Chinese EV automakers were up.
EV giant BYD was surging as much as 8.8% in Hong Kong, while Geely gained as much as 2.4%. The shares of EV startups Nio and Li Auto were also higher.
Shanghai-listed SAIC was an outlier in Thursday's Chinese stock rally, declining by as much as 3%.
The unlikely rally for most Chinese EV companies appears to stem from the perception that the European Union's tariffs were "modest," as Vincent Sun, an equity analyst at Morningstar, wrote in a note on Wednesday.
After all, US President Joe Biden's administration is levying a 100% tax on Chinese EVs.
BYD, one of the world's largest EV makers alongside Tesla, would be less impacted by the new EU tariffs than its peers, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Joanna Chen said on Thursday.
"BYD will likely be able to absorb most of the burden from EU import duties, since its cars carry peer-beating profitability," said Chen.
Even though the market indicates that the EU's tariff hike on Chinese EVs is manageable, Beijing is still extremely displeased.
"I would like to stress that the anti-subsidy probe is typical protectionism," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said of the EU's tariffs on Wednesday.
"To levy additional tariffs on EVs imported from China violates market economy principles and international trade rules, disrupts China-EU economic and trade cooperation and the global automotive industrial and supply chains and will eventually hurt Europe's own interests," said Lin.
However, Beijing has consistently pushed back on the West's criticisms. Chinese authorities say the West's accusations are protectionist and aimed at containing China's economic growth.
Musk might have dropped the lawsuit on Tuesday, but there's no evidence to suggest that that had anything to do with him wanting to bury the hatchet with Altman.
Moreover, Musk's contempt for the Apple deal may stem from more practical considerations. For one, Apple seems open to cutting deals with Google for the use of Gemini, but xAI doesn't appear to have been part of those conversations just yet — if the WWDC keynote on Monday was anything to go by.
For one, the Cupertino-based tech giant has over one billion iPhone users at its disposal. Such a massive user base would be a boon for any AI company looking to gain a foothold in the highly competitive field.
In Musk's case, letting OpenAI grab the precious mindshare of Apple's users could prove to be a major blow to his AI company, xAI. This is because xAI doesn't have easy access to a wide-ranging consumer platform like OpenAI will soon own.
OpenAI can now count on both Apple and Microsoft to promote its AI offerings to their user bases. Even Google, whose AI products have been hit with scathing reviews, can turn to its mobile operating system, Android, which boasts over three billion users.
That said, one shouldn't rule out Musk and xAI just yet. The company said in late May that it raised $6 billion for its Series B funding round, giving it a total valuation of $24 billion.
And while Musk might not have a product with iPhone-levels of popularity, he still has the "Muskonomy" to back him up.
Musk's constellation of businesses, which includes Tesla and his satellite internet service Starlink, could give xAI the type of boost most AI startups can only dream of.
Musk may have been preoccupied with the Tesla shareholder vote, but there's no telling when he will refocus his attention on xAI and fire the next salvo in the AI race.
"There will be more to announce in the coming weeks," Musk said on May 27, shortly after xAI's funding announcement.
Representatives for Musk and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.