Miami Founder Kristin Brown Has Built Dear Bestie, the Friendship App Women Can Trust

Making new friends as an adult is hard enough. For women, doing it safely is a challenge all its own. On most apps there is no reliable way to know that the person on the other side is even real, which means every new connection carries a quiet undercurrent of risk. What women have long yearned for is a place designed so that safety comes first.

That gap is what Kristin Brown set out to close. Her company, Dear Bestie, launched publicly this year as a friendship app for women where every member is identity- and selfie-verified before she gains full access, with safety and moderation at the forefront.

The problem women keep running into

Kristin Brown, who is based in Miami, Florida, has experienced moving to a new city and rebuilding her community. She also knew what most women already know from hard experience: the tools that are supposed to help you meet people are, too often, the least safe places to do it.

Open almost any social or dating app with the simple goal of meeting new friends, especially the ones built for women and the same problems appear. Bots and fake profiles clutter the experience. Men slide into spaces meant for something else entirely. A woman who just wants to find other women to grab coffee with ends up filtering out harassment, catfishing and accounts that aren't real people at all. The result is that the very thing women need most when they're starting over somewhere, a genuine and local circle, is guarded by a wall of noise and risk.

How verification sets the tone

Dear Bestie has made trust the foundation rather than an afterthought. Before a member can meet anyone, she confirms her identity with a government photo ID and a live selfie.

Members can discover women nearby based on shared interests, city and vibe. They can join circles organized around anything from fitness and career to travel, book club and brunch. They can find and host local events in their own neighborhoods, promote their own businesses directly on their profiles and share a profile as a QR card so a new friend can find them in seconds. The goal, in Kristin's framing, is not more screen time. It is more IRL meetups, more real connection, more of the friendships you actually show up for.

Why the timing matters

Dear Bestie arrives at a moment usually framed around a loneliness epidemic, but Kristin sees it differently.

So much of the conversation about women today starts with a 'loneliness epidemic,' and I don't agree with that framing at all. As much as men and public-health researchers love to sensationalize it, I believe women are actually at an all-time high of choosing themselves and their friendships over the dating-focused norms and apps we've been handed before.

That shift is one the market is beginning to notice. Some of the most respected investors in consumer technology have started backing companies built on the premise that adults are hungry for real, in-person connection. What almost none of them have built is a place designed for women, organized around safety, from the first screen. That is precisely the space Dear Bestie was created to own.

The traction, so far

Since going live on April 8, 2026, Dear Bestie has grown almost entirely through word of mouth, women telling other women. More than 2,000 have joined, spanning all 50 states, with communities taking shape especially in South Florida and Miami in particular, where Dear Bestie first launched and now reaching cities across New York, California, Texas, New Jersey, North Carolina and Arizona. Every member is verified with a government ID and a live selfie before she gets full access and the women who join are meeting: thousands of conversations started, hundreds of message requests accepted and matches turning into real friendships.

Kristin is candid that Dear Bestie is still early and that she has built it as a solo founder. To her, the fact that it has grown this far on word of mouth alone is the most meaningful signal there is, evidence that the problem she set out to solve is real in thousands of other women's lives and that when you give women a safe, genuine place to find one another, they show up.

What's ahead

Her mission is to keep women safe while giving them a place to connect, build real friendships and find community wherever they are. In practice that means deepening the network city by city so there is always someone nearby worth meeting, continuing to invest in the trust-and-safety work that makes verification meaningful and expanding circles and local events until "I just moved here and I don't know anyone" stops being a sentence any woman has to say alone. As it enters that next chapter, Dear Bestie is inviting its community and aligned investors to be part of what comes next.

Dear Bestie is available now on the App Store and is launching on Google Play this week. Learn more at dearbestie.app or reach the team at hello@dearbestie.app.