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Who

A serial entrepreneur, Heiferman is the founder and CEO of MeetUp.com.

Backstory

The 1994 University of Iowa grad gained fame in the industry thanks to his first online marketing company, iTraffic, which was acquired by Agency.com for $15 million in 1999. (Agency.com was itself later sold to Omnicom.) He went on to create Fotolog, a photo sharing site. But it's MeetUp.com that's been Heiferman's most prominent success to date. Founded in 2002, the site achieved major buzz in 2004 when Howard Dean and a few other presidential candidates harnessed it to organize supporters. Today MeetUp.com has close to 20,000 user-created groups, catering to disparate constituencies like Boggle enthusiasts, Argentinean expats, and Cockapoo owners. MeetUp's investors include eBay, the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Esther Dyson, and Fred Wilson's Union Square Ventures.

For the record

Heiferman hasn't succeeded with every venture he's worked on. RocketBoard, a free keyboard with sponsored advertising buttons to automatically direct your computer to sites like Amazon and eBay, folded soon after it was founded.

Personal

Heiferman lives with his wife Emily Krasnor on the Upper West Side.

True story

Following iTraffic's sale—and amid the rapid meltdown of the tech economy in 2001—Heiferman decided to "get back in touch with the real world" by applying for a job at the McDonalds on Broadway and 4th Street. The valuable life lesson he learned: "The fry basket burns skin."