Geoff Cook is a serial entrepreneur. He is the CEO and co-founder of The Meet Group (NASDAQ: MEET). The Meet Group started out as a single brand, which Geoff grew to over $30 million in revenue before merging with a public company in a $100 million deal. Since then, Geoff has led the company to acquire three additional social apps — Andreessen Horowitz backed Skout for $55 million in Q4 2016 and if(we) for $60 million in Q1 2017 – to become The Meet Group. Recently, Geoff announced it had executed a definitive agreement to acquire LOVOO, the #1 social dating app in German-speaking countries (Germany, Switzerland, and Austria), for $70 million in cash. The Meet Group earned $76.1 million in 2016, representing 34% year over year growth. The company has guided to over $120 million in revenue in 2017. Geoff has won a number of awards, including Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Philadelphia region in 2011. Other awards include Deloitte Technology Fast 500, #3 Fastest Growing Company in North America; Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania (2012 and 2011); AlwaysOn Global 250 Top Private Companies (2011); Power Book, Global Dating Top 100 (2017). Geoff previously founded EssayEdge and ResumeEdge from a Harvard University dorm, which he then sold to the Thomson Corporation in 2002. He lives in Princeton, NJ, with his wife, two daughters, and son.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
Elon Musk
When business started difficulties overcame:
“The difficulty in creating a social app or an early social network in early 2005 was pretty great, I thought what would be an interesting way to grow would be to launch my yearbook in one high school and that high school was Montgomery high school, it was the high school that my sister and my brother were a student at and so I thought okay great I’m going to launch it in this one high school and we’re going to grow it out of that high school and it’s going to work well and sure enough we launched it into that high school and we get a few hundred people to join it, friends and acquaintances of my brother and sister and people used it but it didn’t show any signs of real virility, at least showing signs of being able to go beyond the school …[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me about Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything Book by Chris HadfieldFavourite Quote:
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”
Recommended Online Resources:
- Audiobooks
- Podcasts
- Intercom – make customer messaging apps for sales, marketing, and support, connected on one platform. Their mission is to make business personal again
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“Get started, a lot of times you see people who just didn’t start and the lesson I’ve seen and maybe the only thing I’d do differently is actually start something and I think that in the 2 businesses I’ve really done, one got started as a student and ended up selling for a good exit and did exactly the same thing the entire time and then the second one which was the first and second thing that I thought the business was it turned out not to be and then it turned out to be the 3rd thing and doing that for some time” …[Listen for More]
More About Geoff Cook:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” William S. Burroughs
Other Quotes From the Chat with Geoff Cook:
- “Know what you’re trying to do”
- “Get the product right, it’s not a mysterious secret but so much of running a business drives off of the core product, sweat the little things, get the product right, find that market fit, maybe start with a tribe of users like we did in Montgomery high school and really just try to find that right way of serving them”
- “If you have a mediocre product with a great marketing idea that can be a very successful phenomenon, but if you had a great product with a great marketing idea, that could be a home run”
Leave a Reply