User:Kristin hodgson at meetup/scott
Scott Heiferman | |
|---|---|
 Scott Heiferman at TechCrunch Disrupt in May 2010 | |
| Born | 1972 Homewood, Illinois |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Iowa |
| Known for | Founding Meetup |
Scott Heiferman is an American businessperson and internet entrepreneur. Heiferman co-founded Meetup and currently serves as the company's Chairman.
Heiferman was born in Homewood, Illinois in 1972. He had an interest in entrepreneurship and technology as a child. Heiferman earned a business degree from the University of Iowa in 1994. After graduating, he worked in marketing at Sony before starting a digital marketing agency called i-traffic. i-traffic was sold to Agency.com and Heiferman started Meetup a few years later, in 2002. By 2017, Meetup grew to 32 million members in 182 countries. It was acquired by WeWork that year.
Early life
[edit]Scott Heiferman was born in 1972 in Homewood, Illinois.[1] Heiferman has four siblings, each of which are more than a decade older than him.[2] He developed an interest in technology and entrepreneurship as a child.[2] In his teens, Heiferman started learning computer programming on an Apple II.[1] In High School, Heiferman sold coupon books for a nearby town,[1][2] while attending Homewood-Flossmoor High School.[3]
Heiferman earned enough money from coupon books to pay for his first year of college.[1][2] He attended the University of Iowa.[1] Initially Heiferman majored in engineering, but he changed his degree to business.[1] While in college, Heiferman worked for a local radio station that was an early adopter of internet radio.[1] Heiferman graduated with a business degree in 1994.[1][3]
Career
[edit]Scott Heiferman's first job out of college was in Montvale, New Jersey working for Sony.[1] While there Heiferman helped develop their first corporate website.[1] His job title was "Interactive Marketing Frontiersman."[2] Heiferman worked at Sony from 1994 to 1995.[3] Afterwards, he moved to New York City, where Heiferman started an online ad-agency called i-traffic.[1] i-traffic grew to about 100 employees,[3] when Agency.com acquired it in 1999[2] for $15 million.[4] Heiferman sold the company just before the end of the dot-com bubble.[2] He continued working for Agency.com for about a year.[2]
In 2000, Heiferman left Agency.com and worked a short stint at McDonalds.[1] According to Heiferman, the McDonalds job was to help him "get back in touch with the real world."[1] After McDonalds, Heiferman took a two-year break, starting Meetup in 2002.[3]
Meetup
[edit]At the time of the September 11 attacks, Heiferman lived just a few miles from the Twin Towers.[5] The attack caused him and his neighbors to meet each other for the first time, on the roof of his building.[4][6] The experience made Heiferman interested in the idea of face-to-face interactions and community.[7] Heiferman was influenced by the book Bowling Alone, which is about creating connections between strangers[1] and the deterioration of community in American culture.[8] He was also a fan of the band Luna and often went to their concerts alone, because he couldn't find other fans to go with.[1][2]
These events caused Heiferman to start Meetup in 2002[1] with five co-founders[9][7] and 10 employees.[10] Around the same time, Heiferman also started a photo-sharing service called Fotolog, which he sold five years later for $90 million.[4] During Howard Dean's 2004 Presidential campaign, Dean persuaded supporters to create or join local Meetup groups.[4] In 2004, Meetup reached one million users and Heiferman was named "Innovator of the Year" by MIT Technology Review.[4] Subsequently, then Presidential hopeful Barack Obama promised to attend any Meetup event of supporters that can get at least 100 attendees.[4][6]
In 2005, Heiferman made the unexpected decision of charging users a fee to start and run Meetup groups, rather than using an advertising-based business model.[4] Afterwards, the activity on Meetup dropped 95%, but rebounded over time.[4] The company made a profit for the first time in 2009.[4] By 2017, Meetup had 32 million members in 182 countries.[4] That same year, Facebook invested in new features in a competing service called Facebook Groups.[11] In response, Heiferman developed a plan to redesign Meetup to focus more on activities than groups.[11] The re-design was also based on feedback from Meetup employees.[4] In late 2017, Meetup was acquired by WeWork.[12]
In 2018, Scott Heiferman stepped down as CEO and former Investopedia CEO David Siegel took his place. Heiferman became Chairman of Meetup.[13][13]
Personal
[edit]Scott Heiferman married Emily Krasnor on September 13, 2008.[1] Krasnor is an officer of the United Nations Development Fund for Women.[1] Heiferman has a daughter and a son, born in 2011 and 2014 respectively.[14]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Nisen, Max (June 7, 2013). "INFOGRAPHIC: The Unusual Career Path Of Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman". Business Insider. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Mookherji, K. (101). 50 Digital Revolutionaries of the World:. Prabhat Prakashan. p. 114. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ a b c d e "How Did I Get Here? Scott Heiferman". Bloomberg.com. August 19, 2015. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Sánchez, Cristina; Caballero, Lucía; Caballero, Lucía (July 26, 2017). "Quince años de Meetup, la red social que llegó antes pero no supo ser Facebook". eldiario.es. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ Benz, Kate (January 23, 2014). "Pittsburgh Meetup members use the Internet to get off the Internet". TribLIVE.com. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ a b "Dawn of the techlash - Rachel Botsman". the Guardian. February 11, 2018. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ a b Evans, Teri (June 7, 2011). "Meetup's Scott Heiferman on Connecting Communities". Entrepreneur. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ Gordinier, J. (2008). X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft But Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking. Viking. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-670-01858-1. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ Review, MIT Technology. "Innovator Under 35: Scott Heiferman, 32". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ Bonazzo, John (September 7, 2016). "How 9/11 Inspired One of the First Social Networks". Observer. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ a b Ransom, Diana (July 20, 2017). "What This 15-Year-Old Tech Company Did When Facebook Declared War". Inc.com. Retrieved March 14, 2018.
- ^ Hempel, Jessi (August 28, 2017). "WeWork is Buying Meetup Amid an Increasingly Disconnected World". Retrieved June 28, 2018.
- ^ a b "Meetup CEO Scott Heiferman moves into chairman role". TechCrunch. July 17, 2018. Retrieved November 8, 20182.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help) Cite error: The named reference "TechCrunch 2018" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page). - ^ Green, Penelope (June 26, 2017). "'Alexa, Where Have You Been All My Life?'". The New York Times. Retrieved March 14, 2018.