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COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY CLASS NOTES
Jared Hecht ’09 Reinvents Mobile Communication
Jared Hecht ’09 does
sleep. Some nights. As for
how many hours a day he
works? “All of them,” he
says.
Many 24-year-olds living in
New York would sympathize.
But few can say they’re running
their own start-up valued at a
reported $80 million.
In May 2010, Hecht co-founded
GroupMe (groupme.com)
with 29-year-old Steve Martocci
as a group text messaging application
that allows any
phone (smart or otherwise)
to function like a chatroom.
Users form groups and can
see and respond to all the
text messages sent to each
other. A year-and-a-half
later, the app boasts users
in more than 90 countries
with at least 100 million
messages sent per month.
Like many inventions,
GroupMe was inspired by
love. Hecht’s now-wife,
Carrie Weprin, didn’t have
a good way of keeping
in touch with friends at
a concert; festivals are
notorious for shaky phone
and Internet service. Hecht
knew they could solve the
problem over basic text.
He enlisted his good friend
Martocci, the lead software
engineer at Gilt Groupe,
and a few weeks later, they
developed a group messaging
prototype.
Within a week, the app
had changed the way Hecht and
Martocci communicated. By August,
they had quit their jobs at
Tumblr and Gilt Groupe, respectively,
met with venture capital
investors and raised $850,000.
In September, they launched
the beta version of the app
and users skyrocketed beyond
what they ever imagined. What
started out as a convenient way
to keep in touch with friends at
music festivals evolved into a
life-changing system for stopping
crimes in a neighborhood
watch and coordinating relief
efforts after natural disasters.
By December, Hecht and
Martocci had raised another
$10.5 million of financing from
investors. Then, almost a year
after the launch, and with
competitors such as Facebook,
Google and Apple working on
their own group messaging
services, GroupMe was acquired
by video phone giant Skype for
a reported $80 million. “What
was most important to us was
making sure people all over the
world can experience GroupMe,
and we wanted to take every
competitive advantage we had
to make sure that happened,”
Hecht says.
Though his baby face and
typical sweatshirt-and-jeans attire
suggest an amateur, Hecht
has been honing his entrepren-
eurial skills since college. Working
his senior year as managing
director and publisher for
Columbia’s student-written and
produced guidebook, Inside
New York, provided him the
foundation for running his own
company. As part of the Center
for Career Education’s (CCE)
Student Enterprise program,
Inside New York was founded
B y y e l e n a shuster ’09
WINTER 2011–12
93
to develop management skills
through student-operated
businesses. “I was running a
business with real revenue
and a real product that was
distributed with sig-
nificant impact,” Hecht says,
reminiscing about receiving his
own copy during freshman year
orientation, which he referenced
throughout college. Dean of Career
Education Kavita Sharma
and senior associate director
Beth Vanderputten served as
GroupMe co-founder Jared Hecht ’09 at his sleek Flatiron office.
PHOTO: GROUPME
mentors. “They were the safety
net, and that was a rare opportunity
to have in business,”
Hecht says.
Vanderputten was not surprised
at all that Hecht achieved
success so quickly after graduating.
“The level of maturity he
brought as a manager usually
takes a lot more coaching,” she
says. Hecht’s editor-in-chief at
Inside New York, Joseph Meyers
’10, seconds that opinion: “Jared
possesses a rare combination
of traits — a gleeful, boyish
enthusiasm and a hard-nosed
pragmatism — that made him a
great publisher to work for.”
The political science major
oversaw finances, managed a
core staff of 20 daily as well as
30–50 freelancers, built a sales
team and entered new markets.
Under Hecht’s leadership, Inside
New York evolved into the intercollegiate
guidebook to NYC
with writers contributing from
schools such as Fordham, Pratt
and NYU. In addition, Inside
New York finally developed a
digital presence beyond a static
Contact Us page. For the first
time, all reviews were published
online, along with
a blog that was refreshed
throughout the academic
year. “We wanted to be
competitive with Spectator
and Bwog — something
students paid attention to
day in and day out — and
not just Columbia students,”
Hecht says.
Aside from inspiring him
to one day start his own
business, the experience had
a more direct effect: Hecht
was personally recruited by
Tumblr president John Maloney
to join its tech start-up
after Maloney heard about
Hecht’s leadership with the
publication. After a year of
accumulating tech savvy as
Tumblr’s business development
manager, the idea for
GroupMe came along.
Since then, the life of this
young entrepreneur has
been both exhilarating and
exhausting: “Some nights
you are on top of the world and
think you’re building the best
thing ever, and then other nights
you think that some horrible
competitor is going to knock
you off the face of the earth.”
Even so, he would never trade
the inherent risks for a typical
office job. “We’re helping change
the way people communicate,”
Hecht says. “That is the best
feeling ever.”
Yelena Shuster ’09 is a freelance
writer whose work has
been featured in Manhattan
magazine, The Fiscal Times and
Cosmpolitan.com.