Meetup.com helps groups with common interest get together

By Brad Spirrison

If you are headed to the polls Tuesday and are passionate about a particular candidate or political cause, chances are you have heard of Meetup.com. Maybe you have even attended a "meetup" in your area. Founded in 2002 by Homewood native Scott Heiferman, New York-based Meetup.com is an online bulletin board that helps people with like- minded interests from around the world schedule a time and place to get together. The nonpartisan service attracted international acclaim in 2003 when supporters of Howard Dean began hosting meetups across the country. Organizers from both sides of the political aisle have since used Meetup.com to bring people together.

"It is exciting to see political meetups still going strong," said Heiferman, who last month hosted his own gathering for a few dozen Chicago area meetup organizers at the Goose Island Brewpub in Lincoln Park. "The idea that political engagement is just raising money so you can buy television ads, that is not the end of the story. You can use the Internet to get people off the Internet."

While more than 1,500 politically related meetups are operating worldwide, political activism is only a small percentage of the company's overall offerings.
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2 MILLION MEMBERS MEETING UP
More than 2 million people are members of meetup groups with topics ranging from entrepreneurship to vegan lifestyle to owning a pug. More than 700 different meetups are active in the Chicago area alone, including several software-developer user groups and "Chicago Beta," which is focused on Web 2.0 issues. Meetup organizers pay between $15 and $20 per month to promote and schedule their meetings through the Web site.

To date, Meetup has raised approximately $10 million from eBay, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and the Omidyar Network (the personal investment fund of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.) Heiferman, who previously founded Internet advertising agency i-traffic and served as "interactive marketing frontiersman" for Sony, said his 30- person company is nearly profitable, and that revenue has doubled in the last seven months.

Heiferman hosts a technology industry meetup in New York City, and also pays attention to technological development in his hometown. In fact, he commissioned local development firm 37Signals - - a 2006 Chicago Innovation Award honoree -- to build the first version of Meetup.com.

Explained 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried, "Bringing people together for politics or pets is the same thing. People are rallying around something they care about."

More than 90 percent of Meetup.com's revenue comes from monthly subscriptions. However, the company has recently focused on generating income through alternative means, including selling relevant sponsorships of select groups. Intuit, the developer of Quickbooks accounting software, recently signed on to sponsor a series of entrepreneur-focused meetups.

Heiferman is cognizant of the potential conflicts of selling sponsorships to what in many cases are informal gatherings of friends and fellow hobbyists. Accordingly, organizers have a choice of whether to participate, and can access a share of the revenue to subsidize the costs of their meetings.

"This is something we are exceptionally sensitive to," he said. "We will not disrupt the growth and authenticity of what is going on."

Earlier this year, the company hired Rogers Park-native and St. Ignatius and Northwestern grad Ben Flammang to serve as director of partnerships to focus on sponsorship and business development deals. Flammang, who ran a startup at the Evanston Innovation Center before moving to New York in 2001 and learned about the Meetup.com position via an ad on CraigsList, said his biggest challenge is finding the right match between marketer and meetup group.

"Most brands are stuck in the old paradigm of hitting people over the head with e-mails and messages," he said. "For brands to be successful, they have to provide the right information and support."