Trust Your Instincts — Interview with Sall Grover, Founder of Giggle
How do you start an exciting new business after being endlessly harassed during a career in LA?
I interviewed Sall Grover from Giggle to find out (Listen to the interview with Sall Grover on Mental Wealth For Entrepreneurs Podcast #5)
About Sall Grover
Sall Grover — a founder of a Girls Only Social Network Giggle who had been a screenwriter in Hollywood for almost ten years, left Hollywood just before the #MeToo Movement began, but for all of the reasons the #MeToo Movement exists. During her career in LA, Sall had been endlessly harassed and this started affecting her mental health and well-being. Finally, she had to admit to herself that she could no longer go on. She returned to Australia because she needed to be with her family to recover. One day Sall and her mum (now the co-director at Giggle) were chatting about having a secure online community where groups of girls could connect. And, this very conversation inspired a new project and this is how “Giggle” was born.
Mental Wealth For Entrepreneurs Podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Girls Only Social Network Giggle
Giggle is designed to give girls choice, control and connection. Whether it is finding a roommate, a running buddy, a gig or simply someone to confide in and receive emotional support from, girls can do this on giggle.
Show Notes
Katerina: Hi Sall.
Sall: Hi, thank you so much for inviting me here.
Katerina: Thank you so much for coming. It’s great to have you on the show because fear and anxiety actually is what made you who you are today — an entrepreneur. Could you tell us a little bit more about you and how did you start Giggle?
Sall: Yeah, sure. So, I was a screenwriter in Hollywood for almost 10 years. And while I was there, I experienced everything that the #MeToo movement is about. But I actually left just before it happened because I just couldn’t handle it any more… Because everything that would happen to me… I would tell my agents and managers about it… [they were all men] and I would always be told, um “Do you want your movie made?”… when a director would groped me and do horrible things or… This is just how it is when I would go to a meeting or just to be told to impress them with a script to sort of win them over after they would do horrible things and so I got to the point where I couldn’t write any more… I was crippled… I could… The only reason I got out of bed every day was because I had to feed my dog. I couldn’t write but I would try everyday to write, and I just couldn’t.
And I’ve since found out through therapy that the reason I couldn’t is because my sort of survival instincts have kicked in and writing meant going and getting assaulted. So I was protecting myself from that happening. And so, I was in it, I was completely isolated because Hollywood and lots of different industries like Hollywood are designed that way… to sort of isolate you… that you don’t have anyone to talk to… or anything like that and then living in a big city like LA.. I live by myself and I work by myself.
So finally I got to the point I had to come back to Australia to spend time with my family and have some therapy and recover from everything. And it was while I was in therapy, my therapist kept saying that I had to learn how to reconnect with people, and especially with women. And my mom at the same time, when I would be telling her everything… she would be going… “We have to find a way for girls to help girls, so that they have someone… they can reach out to each other in a private and safe secure way”.
And so, from all of these experiences, we came up with Giggle. And so “giggle” is the collective noun for a group of girls. And the Giggle app is a girls only app… and we have AI verification when you’re onboarding so that it is only girls who are allowed on the app. And it is where it goes at the moment… the categories we have for freelance work, activism, emotional support and and health but in the future it will also be for room-mates and for travel companions and AirBnB style, accommodation. If you want to talk about like your religious beliefs, exercise, hobbies… just social things like Trivia or going to the movies… things like that… so it’s going to open up lots of other things… But yeah at the moment it’s sort of a bit smaller and it’s just a place for girls to be able to connect, be who they want to be exists, sort of… in this tiny little corner of the world where boys don’t exist…
Katerina: Yeah, I’ve actually downloaded this app today… and I am still in a process of verifying but yeah, it’s using AI and it’s really clever. My passion is AI and I’m studying and researching the impact of disruptive technologies on jobs.
Sall: How cool…
Katerina: It’s fascinating but they it verified the face.
Sall: Yeah, yeah, it does and basically what it does…. there’s been this… there’s been controversy about this. All it does is the company that we use that has implemented the AI into it. It just compares your selfie with like a million other selfies and it’s actually set to not allow boys in. So it’s not… that it’s not set to not allow girls in… like it’s not judging your appearance or anything… it’s just like is this a photo of a girl or just a photo of boy. Yeah, it’s as simple as that. Um, yeah… it’s pretty simple and it’s just, you know, the best technology that’s available at this very moment in time.
And there’s been there has been controversy. I’ve gotten quite a lot of hate from it from, especially from men — it’s the number one group… but having such a thing. And I’m like, if you were this impassioned about it…
Katerina: What’s wrong with women just having their own space right?
Sall: Exactly. It’s just the anger of like women having their own space is very interesting.
Katerina: Yeah, because you see creating an app it’s… it’s a very technical thing to do, right? How did you pull it all together? Because its…
Sall: Yeah, well, actually, so I’m actually creating a new feature at the moment. I draw. I had a vision like I don’t code, obviously, so I had a vision of what I wanted it to look like. And what I wanted to do. And I designed the whole thing. And then we actually with my dad… my dad taught himself how to sort of design user programme… to sort of just design the framework of it for the… sort of… they’re just… not a working model but just a good demo model of it. And so by the time we went to developers we had what it was for them to be able to code so there wasn’t any confusion. But yeah, it’s, it is crazy technical… I just get ideas of this… what I want to do and then I have to go and ask all of the technical people like “Is this actually physically possible?” or like is this something that exists… I don’t know. So, yeah, it’s been so far so good.
Katerina: Yeah, it’s great and I guess… the problem with these social apps is that very often if if something doesn’t work… like there are some technical problems or bugs, people just leave you one-star reviews. How do you deal with it?
Sall: Well, we only have we have… people… okay so Giggle has early… like has apparently a one star rating on both on Google Play and App Store. And that’s because… they’re basically in February… so we haven’t officially… we hadn’t officially launched at this point, but I had done a video and posted it to our Instagram about the misogyny that I deal with everyday as a female, CEO of a company. And is… I deal with it every day, it is crazy. And it’s, to me it’s even crazier because of the company I’m a CEO of like I just think that it’s absurd to be misogynistic to me. How stupid could a person be? Knowing that I’m going to talk about it. And, use it to prove the need for Giggle. So I didn’t this video and so anyway…. Some boys had sent it viral on Reddit, and Twitter, and so we’ve got this rush of people in February. And so because we exclude one half of the population which is boys, they leave us one star reviews.
Katerina: Right.
Sall: So, we’ll never have a five star rating.
Katerina: Girls… if you’re listening… please leave Sall a five star review.
Sall: I stopped, I stopped reading them like because it’s not, it’s not, it’s not healthy to. I only care, the opinions or anything, opinions, I care about, or if you’re like part of the population of Giggle. And so if you’re a girl. And like some girls have said like oh I would like it if it had this or like this didn’t work for me on this time and it’s like “Cool”… I’m still… you know so new, we’re still working out bugs and so I always want to know, different things. There was one… I stupidly ventured into a Reddit thread, where there were some people talking about Google and… And there are some, especially sort of what they self described as very radical feminists who have an issue with the name “giggle”, and then also that I often refer to sort of females or women as girls. And I was trying to explain to them like… they would say like, you know, the biggest thing was… they were saying like, you know, men use the term girls to press down… it’s a patriarchal term and things like this. And, I was like every word is a patriarchal term like.
Katerina: So who’s making comments like this.. other women?
Sall: Yeah, well, they are self described radical feminists… yes… yeah. It’s so funny. Some people will call me a radical feminist and then others will say I’m not feminist enough. But I’m like “No… “giggle” is the collective noun for group of girls… that’s just… what it is. I just think it’s cute I thought what a great way to reclaim that the connotation that is that, you know. I know that people think like giggling girls and stupid and vapid, but we all know that when a group of girls is together. They’re not vapid or stupid. And they will just go on not being vapid or stupid. And so the concept of what a giggle is will change. It’s just, you just have to reinvent language that way by doing. And then the only reason I say girls is because I would never…
I am 35 and I still refer to myself as a girl. But I I just sort of thought like, oh, because we’re dealing with different ages like woman might be too limiting… not everyone’s a lady. What would you use females? It’s too clinical… girls… like it’s just fun. That’s how it feels right so we have girls talk we have girl power and now we have a girl app.
Katerina: Gosh.. Because I mean… that people have a problem with the word describing it?… I mean that the concept is great… isn’t it? It’s just the place to connect women in one social place… give them empowerment and freedom to express themselves.
Sall: Yeah. Exactly. One thing stuck out to me… I sort of always remember it… and play it over my head. It was just in Reddit and it was this woman who said that she was a Professor at a small college in America and she was like “My students and I saw it and we just laughed about it and how ridiculous it was to call something giggle, and then we moved on to more important things.”
And I was like you know what, beyond like… you know… no, that’s not cool because not only it’s called “giggle” because it’s that’s a great name for a group of girls. That’s what the app does… it builds groups of girls so it’s a double entente, like, there’s a reason it’s called this so it’s like if you go to college… research before you go and publicly state something. It’s like… it’s like a hated dismissal of a noun, which is… moving on to talking about more important things, because I was like I sit here every day working out how can I help girls and connecting with other groups that help girls… especially in countries where they don’t have the privilege of caring about language. They need to be able to connect with each other because they don’t get to go to school or get to go to work or leave the house there. We are privileged.
Katerina: Yeah, if she has a problem with the name… I guess she’s not a part of your tribe.
Sall: Exactly. She’s not part of the Giggle.
Read the full interview notes Here.
Originally published at Katerina.Thomas.com
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About the Author:
I help entrepreneurs to build their emotional and business resilience. Throughout my professional life, I helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to launch their businesses following their passion.
