Miss O and Friends: Helping Girls Across the Globe to Find their Voices

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

I have 10 years of experience in Digital Marketing. I spend my time using my expertise to get businesses and brands I believe in to get off the ground and do better marketing-wise with as little marketing spent as possible.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

MissOandFriends is the first and still the only safe social networking website for tween and teen girls. Juliette started the website when she was only 15 and since then it has helped millions of girls across the globe to find their voices and get them heard.

What is the origin story?

Juliette Brindak Blake and her mom, Hermine Brindak founded Miss O and Friends 15 years ago when Juliette was 15. They wanted to create a safe place for her little sister, Olivia (the O in Miss O), and her friends to play online, and they did it!

Miss O and Friends is a no-bully, non-toxic, place for girls to make friends, get great advice, read blogs from girls, and get published! The only global platform that’s truly by girls, for girls!

It’s 100% safe for MissO.com users 24/7 because it is COPPA compliant, so everything is moderated before it goes live!

No personal info is shared, ever! The website’s forum, the Girl2Girl Wall became so popular, the team decided to launch an app!

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

I love that it’s a family-run website. I love that there is a very small team of women who run it and they are super passionate about what they do and that most of us have been here for decades. I love how everyone involved is so dedicated to the cause - safe internet for tween and teen girls.

I solve the marketing problems with the marketing experience I have accumulated over 10 years while running other brands, geeking over email marketing, other day jobs but still keeping MissO.com as one of the projects I work on the side.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

I would be doing my day job and be more focused on writing. I love writing and I love marketing. More than that, I love teaching marketing.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

We measure success by the experience our girls are having on the website, the forums are super friendly, super active with young girls discussing topics they are curious about.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

Once you know the story about MissO.com, you discover that all the girls in that header image are real. Disney and YouTube did a series on Juliette creating MissO.com, partly fiction and party taken from her own life. The series was very STEM-focused and according to internal studies, 11% of the viewers (among a small testing group only) were more inclined to pursue STEM as their career.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

I love how the future is not bound by code. I love how new technologies like Webflow are becoming more common that you don’t really need that much knowledge about coding to create something today. I’m super excited about tools like Klaviyo, Iterable, and Drip out there making email marketing strong and so user-friendly. However, I am worried about some social channels like TikTok and the content it is mostly known for. Miss O and Friends aim to

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

I love the Hackernoon story. I love how it is run by a couple (and a few others). I have always believed in David Smooke’s publications, his work, and his fun but the dedicated attitude towards his work. Hackernoon is a respected platform and it’s an honor to be here.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

That was less than 2 years ago. I would tell her to slow down, stop worrying, and be truer to herself and everyone around her. Continue to be persistent and determined and what awaits her will come to her.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

You need confidence, experience, and the power of making others believe in you. If they believe in you, they will believe in your ideas.