ELAINE WHERRY

Place of Birth : Bay Area, Corey hails

Place of Living : California, United States

Net Worth : $3.5 Million

Elaine Wherry, is a co-founder of meebo.com in Mountain View, California. She majored in Symbolic Systems at Stanford and upon graduating, joined Synaptics and led their Usability team for several years. In 2005, she started meebo with two friends from Stanford, Seth Sternberg and Elaine Wherry. Shortly thereafter, Nielsen/NetRatings named meebo the fastest-growing IM destination in the US – ahead of Google Talk and Skype Messenger. Investors include Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Elaine plays the violin and migrated west to California after growing up on a goat farm.

Our revenue stems from brand advertising. We’re fortunate that Meebo has long engagement times and a very social audience which is an ideal formula for brand advertisers. Brand advertisements typically focus on building meaningful interactions that users will want to share or talk about with friends. We’ve been optimizing this model throughout 2009 and we’re pleased that our advertising product has been so well-received and performed so well.

“We want to encourage lots of different partners . . . to build really super-viral, super-engaged platforms to sit outside of cbs.com,”

Her advice to entrepreneurs… – “I’m sure everyone’s experiences are different. From my founder experience, I am constantly hiring or mentoring someone to fill my current role so I can continue to build the team in other areas. As a result, I have never had a role that didn’t somehow evolve after 3-6 months. One thing that I sometimes miss is the feeling of routine and expertise (i.e. “been there, done that”) that comes when you’ve had a role for a longer duration. As soon as I understand a role well enough, then I am off hiring or mentoring someone into that new opportunity”.

Elaine and Team explain the whole “Meebo” thing