Scott Heiferman | |
|---|---|
 Scott Heiferman at TechCrunch Disrupt in May 2010 | |
| Born | 1972 (age 52–53) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Iowa |
| Known for | Founding Meetup |
Scott Heiferman is an American community organizer and entrepreneur. Heiferman co-founded Meetup and was CEO from 2002 to 2018.
Scott Heiferman was born in 1972 in Homewood, Illinois. Heiferman has four siblings. While attending Homewood-Flossmoor High School, Heiferman sold coupon books for a nearby town, earning enough to pay for his first year of college. [1] [2]
He attended the University of Iowa, where he began his studies as an engineering student. He later changed his degree to business and graduated in 1994. [1] [3]
Scott Heiferman's first job out of college was in Montvale, New Jersey working for Sony as an 'Interactive Marketing Frontiersman.' [1] He worked at Sony from 1994 to 1995. [3]
While there, Heiferman helped develop their first corporate website. [1]
In 1995, he moved to New York City, and started an online ad-agency called i-traffic, which was dedicated to online media. [1] I-traffic grew to about 100 employees, [3] before it was purchased by Agency.com 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 until 2000. [2]
After Heiferman left Agency.com, he worked at McDonald's for a few weeks, starting in 2000. [1]
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 could not 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] [14]
Scott Heiferman has a daughter and a son, born in 2010 and 2014 respectively. [15]