Betches’ Jordana Abraham on How Failure–and Your Friends–Can Lead You Toward Success

Welcome to E!’s Tales From the Top, our series on women who are leaders in their fields and masters of their craft. Spanning industries and experiences, these powerhouse women answer all the questions you’ve ever had about how they got to where they are today—and what they overcame to get there. Read along as they bring their resumés to life. 

A website, 12 podcasts, a dating app, three books, merch, comedy tours and more than 7 million Instagram followers. 

It’s all in a day’s work—or should we say empire—for the founders of Betches Media, that sarcastic, sassy, unapologetic corner of the internet for millennial women that blossomed out of a WordPress blog a not-so-casual 10 years ago. Back then, Jordana Abraham, Samantha Fishbein and Aleen Dreksler were not the trio of commanders-in-chief Betches fans know today, but childhood friends-turned-Cornell University roommates with some extra time on their hands…and keys at their fingertips.

“It really just started late one night,” Abraham, Betches’ chief revenue officer, recalled in an exclusive interview with E! News, “sort of as a funny kind of joke.” Instagram had just been born, Kim Kardashian was in a relationship with Kris Humphries and Selena Gomez was still starring on Wizards of Waverly Place. Meanwhile, Abraham, Fishbein and Dreksler were busy finding the words for their internet character to comment on the culture around them—while drawing a thin line between satire and seriousness in the process.  

While those early posts have seemingly disappeared down the digital rabbit hole, perhaps this quote from the introduction of their first book, Nice Is Just a Place in Paris, gives you an idea of how far they once pushed their snark: “First we must commend you on already making it farther into a book than Helen Keller ever could. Nice. Apologies if that last comment was insensitive. Relax, it’s not like she can see it anyway. That, however, was a test, and if we’ve already offended your sensibilities, we advise you to walk away.”

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