Union Square Ventures revealed its investment in social event organizing site operator Meetup Inc. through a pair of blog posts from partners Brad Burnham and Fred Wilson. The firm invested an unspecified amount in the new round, which follows a 2006 funding that included online auctioneer eBay Inc., Omidyar Network, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Esther Dyson, Allen & Co., and Senator Bill Bradley. (Omidyar Network is the fund operated by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.) Those investors collectively took a stake of just over 10% in the previous round.
In a blog post from March 2008, Burnham suggested that Union Square will be more selective in early-stage investments in Web 2.0-type companies, while increasingly evaluating later-stage opportunities. Meetup, which allows users to plan and organize in-person events, was founded in 2002, and said in June that it had more than 3 million members in 130 countries. The site first gained prominence during the run-up to the 2004 Presidential election, when users organized rallies around various candidates.
"Organizing people online to make a difference offline has been the
central mission of Meetup since the beginning," Burnham says in his post. "The team there has
always understood that there was a difference between collective
intelligence and collective action.
But the folks at Meetup were prescient in another way as well. They
knew all along that the web would only reach its potential if it
reached real people.
Founding MeetUp CEO Scott Heiferman (pictured) is a highly connected entrepreneur, well respected in New York's Silicon Alley. He co-founded photo-blogging site Fotolog Inc., which was backed by John Borthwick, the co-founder of innovative incubator Betaworks. Borthwick took the CEO reigns of Fotolog for awhile last year, ultimately selling the site to Hi-Media Group for $90 million. Heiferman is a stakeholder in Betaworks.
"Meetup is using online to strengthen offline, real connections," Betaworks co-founder Andrew Weissman tells Tech Confidential. "It matters in people's real lives." -- Paul Bonanos and Mary Kathleen Flynn
See blog posts from Brad Burnham and Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures
See May 2 profile of Betaworks from Tech Confidential
Continue reading below
