---

Scott Heiferman, 35

Co-founder and Chief Executive

Meetup

Scott Heiferman's Meetup, the Web site where people connect and form social networking groups, was launched just as former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean decided to run for president in 2004. Mr. Dean's supporters used the site to build a movement, earning Meetup a place in grassroots-organizing history.

With $3 million in annual revenue and 3 million registered users, the networking site helps people form book and fan clubs and make political associations online and in person. Mr. Heiferman sees Meetup as a force for creating broad social movements in the 21st century.

"We're just getting started," he says. "There are things to learn, causes to forward and problems in your life that can be helped by forming community groups."

Meetup is one of several Internet concepts Mr. Heiferman has been associated with. The Homewood, Ill., native launched a college radio show on the Internet in the early 1990s, when he was at the University of Iowa. That move caught the eye of Sony Corp., which hired him with the title of interactive marketing frontiersman in 1994.

One of the few exploring the medium at the time, Mr. Heiferman soon heard about a Web artists consortium--a dozen guys meeting over pizza to talk. He joined them, and his belief in the power of community was born. Today, he runs the New York Tech Meetup, which has 2,700 participants.

One Meetup investor, Internet guru Esther Dyson, says she first noticed Mr. Heiferman as "a kid with a pencil behind his ear" who placed a Sony ad on the home page of fledgling AmericaOnline. "He was one of the original visionaries," she says. "He saw how to extend the technology beyond advertising to social issues."

- Anne Michaud

---