Rebecca Yarross romantasy novel Onyx Storm stormed the book charts in January, becoming the fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years. Indeed, demand for romance contentin books, on screens, and on TikTokhas grown exponentially in recent years. Enter audio erotica company Quinn. Founded by 27-year-old Caroline Spiegel, the 6-year-old platform publishes dozens of creator-driven, female-centric erotic audio stories each week.Creators, who write and perform the audio, receive a portion of the apps subscription fees ($4.99 per month or $47.99 per year) based on user engagement.To date, Spiegel has raised $10 million from venture capital firms and investors such as Entourage star Adrian Grenier. The company is generating more than $12 million in annual recurring revenue.According to Spiegel (who is the sister of Snapchat cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel), the app has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, more than three-quarters of whom are women.For the past couple of years, the app has also been growing its roster of Quinn Originals: stories produced in-house and voiced by famous actors, including Andrew Scott (aka the hot priest from Fleabag) and Kate Moennig of The L Word. (This expansion landed Quinn on Fast Companys Brands That Matter list in 2024.) Spiegel came on the Most Innovative Companies podcast to talk about creating female-centric content, going viral on TikTok, and attracting dream Quinn Originals performers.Romance as a category both in audio and in book sales has grown a lot over the past few years. What factors do you think contributed to that?For one, the pandemic. A lot of people cite it as being something that really helped the romance industry because people were not having as much physical connection and physical intimacy as they did before the pandemic. I also think the rise of self-publishing on Amazon [helped]. That has fueled this boom of amazing new writersparticularly female writers. Then I think generally women have more economic power and purchasing power. We dont have to have erotic content for women until we actually have liberated, empowered women who make their own money.How did you discover erotica as a category?On Reddit and Tumblr. Its been a really big thing since the early 2000s. There are these massive user-generated communities and thousands of Tumblr blogs dedicated to erotic audio. Theres also this old kind of web 1.0 site called Literotica. Wattpad is also big. I was a consumer, not a creator. I was struck by how immersive it was. Listening to it feels like youre having an intimate moment with someone, whereas I think traditional visual content can feel voyeuristic, forced, or overly graphic.How did you convince investors to make a bet on Quinn?To be honest, I didnt really. We got turned away so many times. I probably pitched 40 or 50 investors trying to raise our first pre-seed roundmost said no. We ended up raising it from some angels, and then we used that to get a little bit of traction. Once you have some traction, you have a little bit more to hang your hat on, and I think investors found it more compelling.Quinns contentboth the scripts and the recordingis user-generated. How do you vet and attract the right content creators?In the earliest iteration of Quinn, the content was all actually Quinn produced and Quinn curated. There was no such thing as the Quinn creator. Eventually we started to realize that listeners actually really care about the voice actors and the personalities making this content. They have these fandoms around their favorite creators. That led to our approach now, which is more of a Spotify-type situation where you can kind of follow your favorite creators. Our quality-assurance process and creator vetting is pretty thorough. We do background checks, we make sure people have the best equipment, and we do technical audits of creators. We connect them to scriptwriters.You have also released Quinn Originals. One, called The Queens Guard, is read by actor Andrew Scott, famous for playing the priest on Fleabags second season. How do you balance these splashy releases with your creator strategy?The idea is that celebrity-driven content brings people onto Quinn, then they find our other creator-driven content. Originals are less than 1% of our content, but theyre a great way to introduce the genre to people who havent experienced it before.How do these creators get compensated?Its based on the frequency of uploads and the performance of their content on Quinn. Theyre incentivized to share their content with their followers and bring their followers and fans onto Quinn.You were talking earlier about creating erotic content for empowered women. How do you approach that?Generally, visual erotic content has not been made from a female perspective. A lot of our audios follow different patterns. Sex on Quinn is a little more intuitive, experimental, playful. We also have extremely clear tagging and go to great lengths to make sure our tagging is thorough and gives the listener a good idea of what theyre getting into, so theyre not surprised by anything potentially triggering or off-putting. A lot of audios feature condoms or conversations or safe words or just check-ins, and you might think, Is that going to make it clinical and not hot? Its actually the exact opposite. People find those kinds of moments of intimacy and vulnerability extremely erotic.There are a couple of other audio erotica platforms, including Bloom, that are using generative AI to create content. Is there a role for AI at Quinn? Because the content on Quinn is so intimate and vulnerable and uniquely human, its tricky. While I see how AI is creeping into every part of our lives, our approach to AI, if any, will be creator-driven. Creators are the backbone of our platform, and all of their fans really like them, so we take our cues from them. Ive seen some of the technology out of Eleven Labs, and seen Character.AIits really interesting. But really our priority is creators and their fans.Quinn is talked about a lot on social media. What are some of the trends youre seeing?Our top categories always have been male dominance and boyfriend, [the latter of] which are our most sweet, loving kind of relationship-style audios. This year, professor also is one of our top categories.Viral TikToks have helped fuel Quinns 440% year-over-year revenue growth. The pink earphones you give some influencers have become synonymous with your brand. How did you come up with that idea?On TikTok, we were so jealous of brands that could do taste tests of their product or show their product in unboxing videos. But our product is an appso we wanted to make some sort of physical representation of it. Headphones were obviously kind of a natural extension of that. So our pink headphones have become a really nice thing to send to influencers so they can have a natural way to bring up Quinn and its not just this kind of awkward ad read.What is the future of the business? Where do you want to take it next?Were going to increase our output of Quinn Originals to six this upcoming year. Weve more than doubled our budget, and we have some really exciting stories in the pipeline.Would you turn a Quinn Original into a movie or TV show?We have talked to some people who are interested in turning Quinn Originals into TV shows and movies, but its not really our primary focus at the moment. I think if the right thing lined up, it would be amazing to do that. But its also like when you first read Harry Potter and you have this whole image of what its like in your mind, and then you see the movie and its like . . . thats not what Diane Alley looks like!Who is on your wish list to record a Quinn original?Oscar Isaac, Pedro Pascal, and Aaron Pierre (hes Mufasain The Lion King).Can you give us some Quinn recommendations?Theres a great creator named Naudio. Id recommend his audios. His most popular is called Getting Even. Its about a couple. The female partner has been sending her boyfriend pictures and teasing him all day. He finally gets back home from work after being teased all day via text with her, and he wants to . . . get even.Then theres Sarah Gibson, who is a great female creator. She has a great roommates series called Prying Eyes, about two female roommates where one thing leads to another.