I was building something similar to meetup for a while but focussed on making new friends instead of networking/paid events. The thing is, when I sat down and

I was building something similar to meetup for a while but focussed on making new friends instead of networking/paid events. The thing is, when I sat down and analysed the business model I realised that if it worked successfully, no one would use the platform again. I.e. if you wanted to meet new people, if you used my app and it had a 100% success rate, you wouldn't use it again. I think that is the difficult problem to solve with an app in this space and explains Meetup's poor UX. If it actually worked, you'd just become friends and switch channels to whatsapp/FB/whatever and cut them out.