How long has meetup com been around

The launch was a near-immediate success , thanks to a clever marketing campaign cooked up by Mr. They sent out emails notifying these groups of an upcoming made-up holiday—International Pug Lovers Meetup Day and International Witches Meetup Day, for example—and instructed them to go to the website to find out where to meet in their cities. Thanks for letting me know! Then Mr. Meeker told the story that every new Meetup employee hears on his or her first day.

Meeker about pitching Meetup groups centered around politics. No, Mr. Meeker told him repeatedly. The youngster, his efforts frustrated, went outside to have a cigarette and read The New York Times , which carried an article about a fiery Democrat from Vermont who was running for president: Howard Dean. Then he asked Mr. Meeker for money for a train ticket. After presumably chewing his young employee out for insubordination, Mr. Heiferman joined Will to meet with Mr.

Dean, and his advisor Joe Trippi to talk about how the governor might make use of this new website. Dean said. The deluge of press won Meetup national attention. By April , the site had more than 1 million members. NewMeetup Meeker left Meetup in Meetup creates possibilities. Meetup is a platform for finding and building local communities. People use Meetup to meet new people, learn new things, find support, get out of their comfort zones, and pursue their passions, together.

Women programmers. Over , women gather in Meetup groups around the world to sharpen their software development skills. What you can do. Laurel Touby : When you did the sale, were you made an offer you couldn't refuse or were you done with this?

Scott Heiferman : I was done, and it was the end of , and anyone who had half a brain realized there was a bubble going on We sold it. The remnants of it are still a good business to Omnicom, so we sold something that was valuable to the buyer. Heiferman : Honestly, I don't even know at the end. It was all kind of a big ole stock thing, that merged into a company called Agency. So, I don't know what the figure was. Heiferman : Everyone in the company had stock.

Almost exactly two years later, WeWork has emerged as a poster child of the excesses brought on by billions of dollars in private funding and a growth-now, profits-later mentality. While WeWork and Meetup share some common traits around community building, the two companies are a contrast in how to build a tech company. Now, Meetup is in limbo. As tension builds at WeWork to divest its noncore businesses, Siegel has a mandate to find a buyer, and to do so within the next month or two.

In the days and months that followed, he noticed people were connecting more with neighbors, saying hello and checking up on them. The next year, along with Matt Meeker, he launched Meetup as a way to get people offline and making friends in real life. Meetup started to take off in when the presidential campaign of Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, used it as a tool for grassroots organizing in the Democratic primary.

Meetup has 49 million members, compared to 2. However, Meetup shares the same global reach and is available in more than countries. Compared to other tech companies, Meetup grew slowly but steadily.