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Juliette Brindak started MissOandFriends.com when she was 13 years old. She is now a Washington University sophomore, and her Web site has reached preteen girls around the country as a site “created by girls for girls.”
Brindak got the idea for the Web site from doodles she and her younger sister, Olivia, started drawing. The blonde cartoon, Miss O, is based on Brindak’s sister. The girls’ mother, a creative director, made large cut-out drawings of Olivia and her friends for her birthday one year, and their reactions showed Brindak that the idea of the Miss O cartoon could go somewhere.
“I was 13 and leaving my tween years. I knew how hard those years were so I wanted to create something for my sister and her friends that could help them,” Brindak said.
With the help of her parents and a web team, she began researching what young girls were interested in through focus groups.
“What they said, we did. And what they said they wouldn’t like, we didn’t put on our site,” Brindak said of the development process of Miss O and Friends. “There wasn’t anything out there like this for young girls where they could have fun on the Internet in a safe, wholesome, yet hip and cool way.”
As it stands now the Web site has five characters, including one named Juliette; each character has different interests and personalities. It also features games, music playlists and contests offering prizes like tickets to a Jonas Brothers concert. It also has a “scoop” section that includes articles, some written by Brindak, on celebrities, environmental issues, advice and anything else a pre-pubescent female heart could desire.
Because of the success of Miss O and Friends, Brindak has learned a lot about the business world.
“I’ve been to big companies such as Proctor and Gamble, Yahoo and Colgate and presented at all of them, which is scary. But I learned a lot about how to comport myself in front of adults and large groups of people.”
And while she said had no idea that Miss O and Friends would get as big as it is today, Brindak said, “When girls tell me that something on Miss O has helped them, that’s probably the best feeling in the world.”
This is the third in a series of four articles about student entrepreneurship on campus.
