“She Has Always Played Life on Hard Mode”: A Female Founder on Battling Poverty, Online Harassers and Tim Cook

“This account is a safe space for horny women,” Rosie Nguyen announced to her 156,000 Twitter followers earlier this week. “You are loved and seen.”

The sentiment was actually a bit tame for Nguyen, who’s gained a large and loyal social media following for her often racy tweets posted under the handle @Jasminericegirl. Nguyen broadcasts the kinds of inner thoughts that some might only whisper to their friends, her account littered with references to graphic sex acts and X-rated jokes. On Valentine’s Day, she posted pictures of herself holding a pastel-hued bouquet with the message, “whoever got me these flowers is so getting laid.”

But when you speak to Nguyen, @Jasminericegirl is, for the most part, nowhere to be found. Nguyen, in addition to being an influencer with over 30,000 followers on Instagram and another 9,000 on Twitch, is co-founder and chief marketing officer of social media app Fanhouse, which has raised over $20 million from Andreessen Horowitz, The Twenty Minute VC host Harry Stebbings, and prolific Web3 investor Li Jin. Over a video call in April, Nguyen spoke softly into a microphone wrapped in white flowers. After 30 minutes of discussing her passion for the creator economy, it was almost jarring when she dropped an f-bomb and later derided competitor OnlyFans as “a place for someone to pay and then jerk off to you.”

“[My tweets] might be vulgar, but they’re never problematic,” she said. “They’re never harmful.” If Nguyen seems brash, her supporters say, it’s because she’s earned the right to be. At age 24, the Wharton School graduate has become a figurehead for the creator industry’s ongoing war against Apple. She’s also single-handedly created a new model of tech founder—a young woman who doesn’t dampen her personality or shy from a fight, making all the lewd jokes she wants, critics and future investors be damned. “Within Silicon Valley, we haven’t seen that many people like Rosie,” said Fanhouse investor Jeff Morris Jr., a former Tinder executive who’s backed hot crypto startups Dapper Labs and The Graph.