20 ms·

WeWork sells Meetup

641 points by uptown 7y ago

bitxbitxbitcoin 7y ago
Good news for Meetup as far as I'm concerned.
code4tee 7y ago
This never made sense under WeWork. Hopefully will help stabilize their future and maintain a service that’s used by many. Still not really sure what the “business” here is but the site and its network are certainly popular.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  They charge meetup organizers a decent fee. I paid something like $90 per 6 months to run a book club on there.
  - gamegod 7y ago
    Are the spam comments on Meetup free or do you have to pay extra for that?
    - monksy 7y ago
      They're free.. you had to harass the management enough to get their head off of their ass just to "disable group discussion" (aka spam the group) Suffice to say.. I'm not a fan of meetup, however for group management they're better than FB groups.
  - justincormack 7y ago
    $90 for 6 months actually.
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      You're right, thanks. I updated my comment.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  They didn’t even rebrand them as WeetUp
- 1123581321 7y ago
  Meetup was one of the early advocates of paid, sustainable, non-VC-funded SaaS pricing along with 37Signals (Basecamp.) Here’s an article about how they solved their financial problems and quality problems by charging money: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2751-scott-heiferman-looks-back-at-meetups-bet-the-company-moment- https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2751-scott-heiferman-looks-ba...
- caseysoftware 7y ago
  As much as I hated WeWork owning them, it made perfect sense. The problem with office space is that it's sitting idle much of the time. Hosting Meetups is a good way to keep it active for more hours of the day and into weekends. Yes, it takes staff and utilities to keep it open but it's great marketing to groups who may not know you exist otherwise. * I ran a coworking space for years.
  - amrrs 7y ago
    It definitely made sense in terms of a good synergy. But WeWork wasn't the right candidate for that. They were really lousy with spending. Their books were in a bad shape. They hired way too many people, so much perks. You have run a co-working space i guess you'd agree the importance of being lean in such business.
- iamben 7y ago
  I thought it made complete sense. There was some kind of event almost three nights a week in my WeWork at one point. If you enabled people running meetups to use the WeWork space (free beer! Neon lights! Exposed brick!) it's the perfect opportunity to sell "the dream" to people attending that aren't WW members.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  A lot of meetups are held in WeWork spaces. I also presume the idea was to rent space from inside of Meetup, as finding meeting space is one of the more annoying parts of running a Meetup (I've run 2 language user groups). Meetup isn't free, so it's more than just a popular site. (edit: changed from "We-work owned properties")
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    WeWork doesn't own properties. WeWork-leased, maybe.
    - bdcravens 7y ago
      True, thanks for the correction.
ravenstine 7y ago
I don't get how sites like Meetup can be "struggling". Shouldn't a company that runs a site like Meetup be pretty lean, only needing a handful of people to work on it? Seems like it would cost very little to maintain, but what do I know.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  Sure you could run meetup with a handful of people, but VC funded companies tend to have loads of cash to rapidly expand and hire hundreds of people, who do everything possible to grow the company 100% per year until usually all the users are disillusioned, growth can't be maintained, and the service dies.
  - koolba 7y ago
    You forgot the part about never having any meaningful revenue. Growth of metrics that don’t translate to $$$ in the bank means only your costs are growing.
    - abakker 7y ago
      "Sure, we lose money on the transaction, but we make it up in volume!"
  - braythwayt 7y ago
    If we can have "Security Theatre," perhaps we can also have, "Growth Theatre," growth that is accompanied by lots of young go-getters that "look the part," who meet in glass-walled offices so everyone can see how much busy-ness is going on. Meanwhile, the actual growth is being driven by investors burning cash to offer the product/service at an unsustainable price plus spending money like water on advertising. Which continues until the company is unloaded onto the public markets.
    - unlinked_dll 7y ago
      I have a question for you, and the peanut gallery. If you hold this opinion - how many venture-backed startups have you personally been employed by? Because I see this attitude a lot, but as someone who has worked primarily at these enterprises (good and bad) I don't think you can think that way without being completely divorced from reality. Not all of us are working with Saudi money from Softbank. Startups that can't stay cash flow positive might as well be enriched uranium right now. Could be worth a lot of money to the right people, but you're not keeping it around the house.
rootsudo 7y ago
Well that was quick.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
Since they started to sell stuff: I am looking to buy the trademark for "We," but I doubt the sell the crown jewel :) https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-ceo-gives-back-millions-from-we-trademark-after-criticism-2019-9?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-ceo-gives-back-millio...
amrrs 7y ago
As a meetup organizer, this is a huge relief honestly. Meetup joining Wework was one of the most concerning things since you know how Wework was lavish in everything. One good feature though was to book space directly through meetup which was quite handy since as a programming language local group organizer every month I've to look for some free space provider. Hopefully meetup.com can bring that side to this service!
- suyash 7y ago
  As a fellow meetup organizer, I think Private Investors will be worse than WeWork for Meetup.
  - benmarks 7y ago
    It depends on the PE firm. We thought the same at Magento (eBay > Permira Funds), but in the end it was a pretty good ride into Adobe. Ryan does not strike me as a corporate raider - he seems to genuinely like building companies (e.g. MongoDB)... curious if others have more to add.
    - nerpderp82 7y ago
      Meetup cannot be saved, they attempt to milk their existing herd too hard rather move them to better pastures. Meetup is only a verb, elastic search and a document store replaces it with <new verb>. It has zero compelling functionality.
      - zrobotics 7y ago
        Eh, technically I'd agree that the site itself wouldn't be very hard to clone. However, Twitter wouldn't be hard to clone either; the value with meet up is the user's are there and people are familiar with the site.
      - ravenstine 7y ago
        People don't choose sites like Meetup for the features. They use it because it provides discoverability that would otherwise take effort outside of Meetup.com. I've run a few Meetup.com groups in my time, and I currently run the LA Ember.js meetup. I still choose to use Meetup because it's ridiculously easy to get people to join and show up. When I've done Facebook or Eventbrite, I had to put in effort, but all I have to do on Meetup is pay the monthly fee and people will come. If what you say is true, then there would be a new verb to replace it. Can you name one? I can't really.
olivermarks 7y ago
Our current era -before the virus panic and now - reminds me of the great unwinding after the dot com boom. Ironically meetup was born lean and hungry in 2002 and took advantage of Web 2.0 later that decade as they matured. Now they are an old, fat company that failed the networks effect business goal, got bought by the crazy softBank/WeWorks 'let's take over the world' Saudi and Japanese megafund who just like the later dot com founders last century seem to be completely deluded. Meetup had already missed the boat and is twisting in the wind. Big opportunity for the next generation when the dust settles post Covid 19 for a '20's next generation iteration...
- eloc49 7y ago
  Big opportunity if FB gets hit with antitrust. I don’t see how anybody could effectively compete with FB events.
  - olivermarks 7y ago
    Great point, I'm hoping Big Tech gets more regulated to allow innovation by startups to resume
    - isoskeles 7y ago
      I hope Big Tech isn't writing the regulations, which it is already attempting to do (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-rules-internet-regulation-a9341816.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...). This is one of the easiest ways to burden startups that do not have the resources to comply with regulations written by and for Facebook, etc.
chrisa 7y ago
If anyone here is a Meetup organizer looking for an alternative - I'm building one! It already has > 100 live groups around the world, and all the basic features work. I'm adding a bunch of new features all the time, including virtual events and (soon) remote groups (super important given what's happening): https://meetingplace.io/ https://meetingplace.io/ Happy to answer any questions!
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Not a question but a suggestion: create tools that help organizers deal with no shows, especially chronic no shows. One of the meetups I used to attend planned for a 50% no show rate. Other organizers have stated they have similar no show rates. I myself ended a meetup I had maintained for half a decade after one particular incident where an event was full two months in advance but then had a 90% no-show/last minute cancellation rate. This creates all kinds of problems for organizers and can impact the enjoyability of events for the attendees. Meetup offers little in the way of tools for tracking and dealing with this problem so you've got a chance to differentiate your service from them.
  - chrisa 7y ago
    Yeah, that's high on my list after talking with other organizers like yourself. Currently I have plans to give organizers tools to track no-shows, as well as the ability to "check in" people. Do you have specific ideas about what would have been most helpful to you as an organizer?
    - subpixel 7y ago
      I largely solved this problem by charging $5 per RSVP on Meetup. I had to rent my venue, so nobody thought I was profiteering. That said, a deposit would probably work even better. E.g. you put up something like a $10 deposit to RSVP, and are charged the full amount if you no-show, but only a nominal fee if you show up.
      - lmm 7y ago
canada_dry 7y ago
Sadly the original meetup concept might be irrecoverably lost - and WeWork is only slightly to blame (with their high costs). I belonged/actively participated in at least half a dozen groups several years ago but now - none. Many of the groups simply disbanded due to poor/disinterested organizers. Some turned into for-profit (vs. for-fun) groups by the organizers. A couple went fully into becoming travel agents or middle-men flogging another companies travel itineraries (for a kick-back) as the organizer's full time paycheck.
- subpixel 7y ago
  That's the problem - Meetup _really didn't want_ their organizers to be businesses. They wanted them to be political discussion groups or whatever. Meetup should have been Eventbrite, and they could have, but they sort of turned their nose up at the opportunity.
- rapnie 7y ago
  I hope that federated meetup apps [0] like Mobilizon will gain popularity and meetups become integrated part of the Fediverse. [0] https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-activitypub-apps#events-and-meetups https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-fo...
- codeledger 7y ago
  As an attendee of many technical meetups, you missed one other problem with group organizers: burnout. In addition to their regular job they are trying to find speakers & space (and sponsors). At some point in their lives, they decide to move on and there is no one else to pickup the torch so the meetup dies.
markx2 7y ago
https://gettogether.community/ https://gettogether.community/
coupdejarnac 7y ago
Hopefully the new owner makes Meetup usable again. In the recent past I tried to show random people that they could meet new people with similar interests. I would bring up the website, but it was so locked down as to be useless.
mharroun 7y ago
I dont know if it was because of wework but I interviewed some od rgw top engineering leaders at meetup for replacing leadership roles at a startup I was consulting for. I gained a lot of insights into the engineering org at meetup. As someone who looks at a "growing" startup up as 30-100 people the "bloat" of the company had me beside myself. Its a site where you search/join/pay to have groups meetup. Why do you need 10 different engineering teams with managers, directors, and VP's? Conversation points like "I only lead the api for payments" and "how did you launch 5 features in 3 months!!!! Makes me wonder how much bloat, inefficiency, and dead weight exist in such companies. Disclaimer 1: I get companies in certain spaces requires slower and more careful development practices and policies such has fintech and medtech, i do not consider meetup fitting those criteria. Disclaimer 2: The startup I consulted for, asside from the founders, executives, and senior management had a great work/life balance so it wasnt like the engineers were doing double time effort, they just focused on being lean and efficient.
- treelovinhippie 7y ago
  VC is responsible for creating these behemoth bloated cesspits. If Meetup wasn't constantly being bailed out by venture capitalists, it would have died long ago and been replaced with a more nimble distributed ecosystem. The efficiency of capitalism lol. I'm a big fan of consciously capping a startup to 20-100 people max. Just hire slowly and automate everything. If you don't hard cap numbers you'll inevitably end up with multiple layers of managerial hierarchy in both vertical and horizontal silos.
  - codeisawesome 7y ago
    Except for the nasty first sentence you make debatable points... I’d get rid of the deplorable usage of the word “cesspit”.
    - treelovinhippie 7y ago
      Cesspit || monopoly. You can't please HN when it's sucking on or thirsting for that VC juice.
subpixel 7y ago
Didn't Meetup sell because Facebook basically said they were going to own groups? I'm not sure that ever happened.
- mooreds 7y ago
  Plus FB groups have a discoverability problem. Meetup leverages all the power of google for discoverability.
  - wodenokoto 7y ago
    I found most of my meetups through Facebook.
    - suyash 7y ago
      A lot of people don't have Facebook or limit the usage.
    - mooreds 7y ago
      Fair. #anecdata :) Facebook groups pluses: lots of users. Facebook groups minuses: not discoverable on the open web.
  - christefano 7y ago
    This is much less the case now that anyone, be it a company or organization or even a solo organizer, can link a Facebook group to a public Facebook page. (It isn’t immediately obvious how to do that, though, which perpetuates the discovery problem.)
    - mooreds 7y ago
      Didn't know you could do that. Til.
Traster 7y ago
This is good news for Meetup. Wework is as good as gone now, let's lay aside how troubled they were before Coronavirus, now they're sitting on a tonne of long term leases, with all their tenants on short term leases and guess what? Coworking spaces are right there with Cruises and airlines in how well they work when everyone's under lockdown. Huge fixed costs. They're going to have to eat months of expensive leases and there's going to be 0 demand. I wonder if there are other parts of Wework the're looking hive off.
- dsl 7y ago
  These days short term rental desks are a much smaller part of WeWork's business. Between enterprise business (about 1/3 of the Fortune 500 lease entire floors or buildings from WeWork) and SMBs on yearly contracts, they will be fine. If everyone just stops paying rent to landlords, WeWork can do that too. The ones left holding the bag are the property owners - so being on long term leases is probably the best position for them. After the IPO fiasco they did a pretty good job of bringing in actual adults to run the business.
marcjensen 7y ago
Any good alternative to Meetup (not counting Facebook Groups)?
- jonathanbull 7y ago
  Try Ticket Tailor
- jdmg94 7y ago
  eventbrite is the closes alternative I've found
- mikestaub 7y ago
  I am launching peapods.com soon.
- chrisa 7y ago
  https://meetingplace.io https://meetingplace.io
peter303 7y ago
I think their market has stopped growing. At one time I'd monitor about 20 local meetups, half in computers, half in hobbies. But 80% havent had meeting since last summer snd are zombies. I attribute these to a variety of issues. Sometimes they exhaust the local experts in a subject and runs out of topics. sometime its hot new technology that is no longer hot anymore and interest is in the next shiny object. Some meetups are tightly run by an individual and fade when leader runs out of energy, changes a job, etc. Maybe finances too in gathering $300 annual fee to buy a meetup topic.
- reilly3000 7y ago
  I ran an SEO+SEM meetup in early 2010’s. It was a great time at first, but ended up being overrun with MLM and IRL spammers.
- christefano 7y ago
  I think you’re conflating the success of Meetup with the success of individual meetup groups. In the time the 20 groups you mentioned grew quiet and languished I’m sure Meetup signed up hundreds if not thousands of new meetup organizers. (It’s also ~$200 / year, not $300 / year, but now I’m just seeming pedantic.)
jaredcwhite 7y ago
I think this is great news. Meetup still has major brand recognition out there, and I've been so many awesome events and groups over the years solely due to Meetup. But their online tools for too long have lagged behind in terms of effective group communication, so my hope is that this renewed business focus will result in a better (and more sustainable) product as well.
mrfusion 7y ago
Meetup is really ripe for disruption. Kind of like how stackoverflow overthrew expertsexchange. It’s hard to navigate, seems to not have many young people. Randomly stopped sending me email alerts.
- nerpderp82 7y ago
  Meetup is the classmates+myspace of events. It will get replaced by a young person that doesn't even know it exists.
- mikestaub 7y ago
  I am building peapods.com, which aims to be the spiritual successor to meetup.
cgb223 7y ago
Buy high sell low Gotta respect that business mindset
TheAdamist 7y ago
You can't cancel a meetup subscription online, you have to submit a ticket. You can start a subscription online however. Another sign of a failed company, trying to hold onto those who want to leave. Seems like its chargeback time.
- johnmoonyy 7y ago
  This is a big pet peeve of mine. Just seems desperate when it's twist and turns to cancel and get 1 extra month. E.g gyms
- siquick 7y ago
  Not a great solution, but VPN into California and it should show a cancellation option.
  - nickcox 7y ago
    Seriously? What possible reason could there be for limiting this to Californians?
    - dhosek 7y ago
      Dark patterns. Make it hard to cancel unless legally compelled otherwise.
    - joeconway 7y ago
      It's a Californian law mandating that subscriptions that can be started online, must be cancellable online. https://www.androidauthority.com/california-online-subscription-law-883800/ https://www.androidauthority.com/california-online-subscript...
      - baddox 7y ago
        AMC’s movie ticket subscription service requires waiting for and chatting with an ostensibly human support agent in order to cancel a subscription. If that’s a real loophole in the CA law then they should obviously patch it.
CrankyBear 7y ago
OK. I'll bite. How does a business, which is all about promoting IRL meetings survive, never-mind prosper now. Pivoting to online meetings? Hello, there's already a wee bit of competition there. I wouldn't have paid a plugged nickel for this "business."
hideo 7y ago
Does anyone know of a fully self-hosted Meetup alternative that lets me plug in my own authentication?
iamleppert 7y ago
$168 million for Meetup? I bet the founders were laughing all the way to the bank. Reminds me of the time LinkedIn paid $20 million for a browser extension with 20,000 users.
peburrows 7y ago
I originally read this headline as "WeWork sells TO Meetup" and I was extremely confused.
manfouchi 7y ago
if you happy click up
sourc3 7y ago
Meetup was/is fundamentally a marketing platform for event organizers. The value it brings is the user base. So it had to always find ways to bring people to the platform to keep the value for organizers. However, more casual users resulted in more no shows, legal issues, spammers etc. As a result considerable amount of effort went into operations. It was a great idea but as a business scaling it required proportional investment into operations, so it never made any real money.
32005600 7y ago
Meetup is by far the worst company I've ever dealt with. I'm not the sort of person to leave negative reviews on anything. I've never given less than a 5 star review to an Uber driver. But I will straight up say that Meetup is an atrocious company that has consistently (over a period of several years) ignored its customers (organizers), made obnoxious decisions that negatively affected its customers, increased prices, decreased quality of service, and just generally been an absolute nightmare to deal with. I truly loathe this company and wish there was some way to export my group members (but of course, Meetup has deliberately made that impossible). Almost every group organizer I have spoken to feels the same way.
peter_d_sherman 7y ago
Related (2017): "$20 billion startup WeWork continues its shopping spree with $200 million for Meetup" https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-buys-meetup-for-200-million-2017-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-buys-meetup-for-200-m...
buovjaga 7y ago
Just ran into this nice collection of open source Meetup alternatives: https://github.com/coderbyheart/open-source-meetup-alternatives https://github.com/coderbyheart/open-source-meetup-alternati...

641 points by uptown 7y ago

Good news for Meetup as far as I'm concerned.

This never made sense under WeWork. Hopefully will help stabilize their future and maintain a service that’s used by many. Still not really sure what the “business” here is but the site and its network are certainly popular.

toasterlovin 7y ago
They charge meetup organizers a decent fee. I paid something like $90 per 6 months to run a book club on there.
- gamegod 7y ago
  Are the spam comments on Meetup free or do you have to pay extra for that?
  - monksy 7y ago
    They're free.. you had to harass the management enough to get their head off of their ass just to "disable group discussion" (aka spam the group) Suffice to say.. I'm not a fan of meetup, however for group management they're better than FB groups.
- justincormack 7y ago
  $90 for 6 months actually.
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    You're right, thanks. I updated my comment.
Apocryphon 7y ago
They didn’t even rebrand them as WeetUp
1123581321 7y ago
Meetup was one of the early advocates of paid, sustainable, non-VC-funded SaaS pricing along with 37Signals (Basecamp.) Here’s an article about how they solved their financial problems and quality problems by charging money: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2751-scott-heiferman-looks-back-at-meetups-bet-the-company-moment- https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2751-scott-heiferman-looks-ba...
caseysoftware 7y ago
As much as I hated WeWork owning them, it made perfect sense. The problem with office space is that it's sitting idle much of the time. Hosting Meetups is a good way to keep it active for more hours of the day and into weekends. Yes, it takes staff and utilities to keep it open but it's great marketing to groups who may not know you exist otherwise. * I ran a coworking space for years.
- amrrs 7y ago
  It definitely made sense in terms of a good synergy. But WeWork wasn't the right candidate for that. They were really lousy with spending. Their books were in a bad shape. They hired way too many people, so much perks. You have run a co-working space i guess you'd agree the importance of being lean in such business.
iamben 7y ago
I thought it made complete sense. There was some kind of event almost three nights a week in my WeWork at one point. If you enabled people running meetups to use the WeWork space (free beer! Neon lights! Exposed brick!) it's the perfect opportunity to sell "the dream" to people attending that aren't WW members.
bdcravens 7y ago
A lot of meetups are held in WeWork spaces. I also presume the idea was to rent space from inside of Meetup, as finding meeting space is one of the more annoying parts of running a Meetup (I've run 2 language user groups). Meetup isn't free, so it's more than just a popular site. (edit: changed from "We-work owned properties")
- lonelappde 7y ago
  WeWork doesn't own properties. WeWork-leased, maybe.
  - bdcravens 7y ago
    True, thanks for the correction.

ravenstine 7y ago

I don't get how sites like Meetup can be "struggling". Shouldn't a company that runs a site like Meetup be pretty lean, only needing a handful of people to work on it? Seems like it would cost very little to maintain, but what do I know.

londons_explore 7y ago
Sure you could run meetup with a handful of people, but VC funded companies tend to have loads of cash to rapidly expand and hire hundreds of people, who do everything possible to grow the company 100% per year until usually all the users are disillusioned, growth can't be maintained, and the service dies.
- koolba 7y ago
  You forgot the part about never having any meaningful revenue. Growth of metrics that don’t translate to $$$ in the bank means only your costs are growing.
  - abakker 7y ago
    "Sure, we lose money on the transaction, but we make it up in volume!"
- braythwayt 7y ago
  If we can have "Security Theatre," perhaps we can also have, "Growth Theatre," growth that is accompanied by lots of young go-getters that "look the part," who meet in glass-walled offices so everyone can see how much busy-ness is going on. Meanwhile, the actual growth is being driven by investors burning cash to offer the product/service at an unsustainable price plus spending money like water on advertising. Which continues until the company is unloaded onto the public markets.
  - unlinked_dll 7y ago
    I have a question for you, and the peanut gallery. If you hold this opinion - how many venture-backed startups have you personally been employed by? Because I see this attitude a lot, but as someone who has worked primarily at these enterprises (good and bad) I don't think you can think that way without being completely divorced from reality. Not all of us are working with Saudi money from Softbank. Startups that can't stay cash flow positive might as well be enriched uranium right now. Could be worth a lot of money to the right people, but you're not keeping it around the house.

rootsudo 7y ago

Well that was quick.

onetimemanytime 7y ago

Since they started to sell stuff: I am looking to buy the trademark for "We," but I doubt the sell the crown jewel :) https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-ceo-gives-back-millions-from-we-trademark-after-criticism-2019-9?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-ceo-gives-back-millio...

amrrs 7y ago

As a meetup organizer, this is a huge relief honestly. Meetup joining Wework was one of the most concerning things since you know how Wework was lavish in everything. One good feature though was to book space directly through meetup which was quite handy since as a programming language local group organizer every month I've to look for some free space provider. Hopefully meetup.com can bring that side to this service!

suyash 7y ago
As a fellow meetup organizer, I think Private Investors will be worse than WeWork for Meetup.
- benmarks 7y ago
  It depends on the PE firm. We thought the same at Magento (eBay > Permira Funds), but in the end it was a pretty good ride into Adobe. Ryan does not strike me as a corporate raider - he seems to genuinely like building companies (e.g. MongoDB)... curious if others have more to add.
  - nerpderp82 7y ago
    Meetup cannot be saved, they attempt to milk their existing herd too hard rather move them to better pastures. Meetup is only a verb, elastic search and a document store replaces it with <new verb>. It has zero compelling functionality.
    - zrobotics 7y ago
      Eh, technically I'd agree that the site itself wouldn't be very hard to clone. However, Twitter wouldn't be hard to clone either; the value with meet up is the user's are there and people are familiar with the site.
    - ravenstine 7y ago
      People don't choose sites like Meetup for the features. They use it because it provides discoverability that would otherwise take effort outside of Meetup.com. I've run a few Meetup.com groups in my time, and I currently run the LA Ember.js meetup. I still choose to use Meetup because it's ridiculously easy to get people to join and show up. When I've done Facebook or Eventbrite, I had to put in effort, but all I have to do on Meetup is pay the monthly fee and people will come. If what you say is true, then there would be a new verb to replace it. Can you name one? I can't really.

olivermarks 7y ago

Our current era -before the virus panic and now - reminds me of the great unwinding after the dot com boom. Ironically meetup was born lean and hungry in 2002 and took advantage of Web 2.0 later that decade as they matured. Now they are an old, fat company that failed the networks effect business goal, got bought by the crazy softBank/WeWorks 'let's take over the world' Saudi and Japanese megafund who just like the later dot com founders last century seem to be completely deluded. Meetup had already missed the boat and is twisting in the wind. Big opportunity for the next generation when the dust settles post Covid 19 for a '20's next generation iteration...

eloc49 7y ago
Big opportunity if FB gets hit with antitrust. I don’t see how anybody could effectively compete with FB events.
- olivermarks 7y ago
  Great point, I'm hoping Big Tech gets more regulated to allow innovation by startups to resume
  - isoskeles 7y ago
    I hope Big Tech isn't writing the regulations, which it is already attempting to do (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-rules-internet-regulation-a9341816.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...). This is one of the easiest ways to burden startups that do not have the resources to comply with regulations written by and for Facebook, etc.

chrisa 7y ago

If anyone here is a Meetup organizer looking for an alternative - I'm building one! It already has > 100 live groups around the world, and all the basic features work. I'm adding a bunch of new features all the time, including virtual events and (soon) remote groups (super important given what's happening): https://meetingplace.io/ https://meetingplace.io/ Happy to answer any questions!

Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Not a question but a suggestion: create tools that help organizers deal with no shows, especially chronic no shows. One of the meetups I used to attend planned for a 50% no show rate. Other organizers have stated they have similar no show rates. I myself ended a meetup I had maintained for half a decade after one particular incident where an event was full two months in advance but then had a 90% no-show/last minute cancellation rate. This creates all kinds of problems for organizers and can impact the enjoyability of events for the attendees. Meetup offers little in the way of tools for tracking and dealing with this problem so you've got a chance to differentiate your service from them.
- chrisa 7y ago
  Yeah, that's high on my list after talking with other organizers like yourself. Currently I have plans to give organizers tools to track no-shows, as well as the ability to "check in" people. Do you have specific ideas about what would have been most helpful to you as an organizer?
  - subpixel 7y ago
    I largely solved this problem by charging $5 per RSVP on Meetup. I had to rent my venue, so nobody thought I was profiteering. That said, a deposit would probably work even better. E.g. you put up something like a $10 deposit to RSVP, and are charged the full amount if you no-show, but only a nominal fee if you show up.
    - lmm 7y ago

canada_dry 7y ago

Sadly the original meetup concept might be irrecoverably lost - and WeWork is only slightly to blame (with their high costs). I belonged/actively participated in at least half a dozen groups several years ago but now - none. Many of the groups simply disbanded due to poor/disinterested organizers. Some turned into for-profit (vs. for-fun) groups by the organizers. A couple went fully into becoming travel agents or middle-men flogging another companies travel itineraries (for a kick-back) as the organizer's full time paycheck.

subpixel 7y ago
That's the problem - Meetup _really didn't want_ their organizers to be businesses. They wanted them to be political discussion groups or whatever. Meetup should have been Eventbrite, and they could have, but they sort of turned their nose up at the opportunity.
rapnie 7y ago
I hope that federated meetup apps [0] like Mobilizon will gain popularity and meetups become integrated part of the Fediverse. [0] https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-activitypub-apps#events-and-meetups https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-fo...
codeledger 7y ago
As an attendee of many technical meetups, you missed one other problem with group organizers: burnout. In addition to their regular job they are trying to find speakers & space (and sponsors). At some point in their lives, they decide to move on and there is no one else to pickup the torch so the meetup dies.

markx2 7y ago

https://gettogether.community/ https://gettogether.community/

coupdejarnac 7y ago

Hopefully the new owner makes Meetup usable again. In the recent past I tried to show random people that they could meet new people with similar interests. I would bring up the website, but it was so locked down as to be useless.

mharroun 7y ago

I dont know if it was because of wework but I interviewed some od rgw top engineering leaders at meetup for replacing leadership roles at a startup I was consulting for. I gained a lot of insights into the engineering org at meetup. As someone who looks at a "growing" startup up as 30-100 people the "bloat" of the company had me beside myself. Its a site where you search/join/pay to have groups meetup. Why do you need 10 different engineering teams with managers, directors, and VP's? Conversation points like "I only lead the api for payments" and "how did you launch 5 features in 3 months!!!! Makes me wonder how much bloat, inefficiency, and dead weight exist in such companies. Disclaimer 1: I get companies in certain spaces requires slower and more careful development practices and policies such has fintech and medtech, i do not consider meetup fitting those criteria. Disclaimer 2: The startup I consulted for, asside from the founders, executives, and senior management had a great work/life balance so it wasnt like the engineers were doing double time effort, they just focused on being lean and efficient.

treelovinhippie 7y ago
VC is responsible for creating these behemoth bloated cesspits. If Meetup wasn't constantly being bailed out by venture capitalists, it would have died long ago and been replaced with a more nimble distributed ecosystem. The efficiency of capitalism lol. I'm a big fan of consciously capping a startup to 20-100 people max. Just hire slowly and automate everything. If you don't hard cap numbers you'll inevitably end up with multiple layers of managerial hierarchy in both vertical and horizontal silos.
- codeisawesome 7y ago
  Except for the nasty first sentence you make debatable points... I’d get rid of the deplorable usage of the word “cesspit”.
  - treelovinhippie 7y ago
    Cesspit || monopoly. You can't please HN when it's sucking on or thirsting for that VC juice.

subpixel 7y ago

Didn't Meetup sell because Facebook basically said they were going to own groups? I'm not sure that ever happened.

mooreds 7y ago
Plus FB groups have a discoverability problem. Meetup leverages all the power of google for discoverability.
- wodenokoto 7y ago
  I found most of my meetups through Facebook.
  - suyash 7y ago
    A lot of people don't have Facebook or limit the usage.
  - mooreds 7y ago
    Fair. #anecdata :) Facebook groups pluses: lots of users. Facebook groups minuses: not discoverable on the open web.
- christefano 7y ago
  This is much less the case now that anyone, be it a company or organization or even a solo organizer, can link a Facebook group to a public Facebook page. (It isn’t immediately obvious how to do that, though, which perpetuates the discovery problem.)
  - mooreds 7y ago
    Didn't know you could do that. Til.

Traster 7y ago

This is good news for Meetup. Wework is as good as gone now, let's lay aside how troubled they were before Coronavirus, now they're sitting on a tonne of long term leases, with all their tenants on short term leases and guess what? Coworking spaces are right there with Cruises and airlines in how well they work when everyone's under lockdown. Huge fixed costs. They're going to have to eat months of expensive leases and there's going to be 0 demand. I wonder if there are other parts of Wework the're looking hive off.

dsl 7y ago
These days short term rental desks are a much smaller part of WeWork's business. Between enterprise business (about 1/3 of the Fortune 500 lease entire floors or buildings from WeWork) and SMBs on yearly contracts, they will be fine. If everyone just stops paying rent to landlords, WeWork can do that too. The ones left holding the bag are the property owners - so being on long term leases is probably the best position for them. After the IPO fiasco they did a pretty good job of bringing in actual adults to run the business.

marcjensen 7y ago

Any good alternative to Meetup (not counting Facebook Groups)?

jonathanbull 7y ago
Try Ticket Tailor
jdmg94 7y ago
eventbrite is the closes alternative I've found
mikestaub 7y ago
I am launching peapods.com soon.
chrisa 7y ago
https://meetingplace.io https://meetingplace.io

peter303 7y ago

I think their market has stopped growing. At one time I'd monitor about 20 local meetups, half in computers, half in hobbies. But 80% havent had meeting since last summer snd are zombies. I attribute these to a variety of issues. Sometimes they exhaust the local experts in a subject and runs out of topics. sometime its hot new technology that is no longer hot anymore and interest is in the next shiny object. Some meetups are tightly run by an individual and fade when leader runs out of energy, changes a job, etc. Maybe finances too in gathering $300 annual fee to buy a meetup topic.

reilly3000 7y ago
I ran an SEO+SEM meetup in early 2010’s. It was a great time at first, but ended up being overrun with MLM and IRL spammers.
christefano 7y ago
I think you’re conflating the success of Meetup with the success of individual meetup groups. In the time the 20 groups you mentioned grew quiet and languished I’m sure Meetup signed up hundreds if not thousands of new meetup organizers. (It’s also ~$200 / year, not $300 / year, but now I’m just seeming pedantic.)

jaredcwhite 7y ago

I think this is great news. Meetup still has major brand recognition out there, and I've been so many awesome events and groups over the years solely due to Meetup. But their online tools for too long have lagged behind in terms of effective group communication, so my hope is that this renewed business focus will result in a better (and more sustainable) product as well.

mrfusion 7y ago

Meetup is really ripe for disruption. Kind of like how stackoverflow overthrew expertsexchange. It’s hard to navigate, seems to not have many young people. Randomly stopped sending me email alerts.

nerpderp82 7y ago
Meetup is the classmates+myspace of events. It will get replaced by a young person that doesn't even know it exists.
mikestaub 7y ago
I am building peapods.com, which aims to be the spiritual successor to meetup.

cgb223 7y ago

Buy high sell low Gotta respect that business mindset

TheAdamist 7y ago

You can't cancel a meetup subscription online, you have to submit a ticket. You can start a subscription online however. Another sign of a failed company, trying to hold onto those who want to leave. Seems like its chargeback time.

johnmoonyy 7y ago
This is a big pet peeve of mine. Just seems desperate when it's twist and turns to cancel and get 1 extra month. E.g gyms
siquick 7y ago
Not a great solution, but VPN into California and it should show a cancellation option.
- nickcox 7y ago
  Seriously? What possible reason could there be for limiting this to Californians?
  - dhosek 7y ago
    Dark patterns. Make it hard to cancel unless legally compelled otherwise.
  - joeconway 7y ago
    It's a Californian law mandating that subscriptions that can be started online, must be cancellable online. https://www.androidauthority.com/california-online-subscription-law-883800/ https://www.androidauthority.com/california-online-subscript...
    - baddox 7y ago
      AMC’s movie ticket subscription service requires waiting for and chatting with an ostensibly human support agent in order to cancel a subscription. If that’s a real loophole in the CA law then they should obviously patch it.

CrankyBear 7y ago

OK. I'll bite. How does a business, which is all about promoting IRL meetings survive, never-mind prosper now. Pivoting to online meetings? Hello, there's already a wee bit of competition there. I wouldn't have paid a plugged nickel for this "business."

hideo 7y ago

Does anyone know of a fully self-hosted Meetup alternative that lets me plug in my own authentication?

iamleppert 7y ago

$168 million for Meetup? I bet the founders were laughing all the way to the bank. Reminds me of the time LinkedIn paid $20 million for a browser extension with 20,000 users.

peburrows 7y ago

I originally read this headline as "WeWork sells TO Meetup" and I was extremely confused.

manfouchi 7y ago

if you happy click up

sourc3 7y ago

Meetup was/is fundamentally a marketing platform for event organizers. The value it brings is the user base. So it had to always find ways to bring people to the platform to keep the value for organizers. However, more casual users resulted in more no shows, legal issues, spammers etc. As a result considerable amount of effort went into operations. It was a great idea but as a business scaling it required proportional investment into operations, so it never made any real money.

32005600 7y ago

Meetup is by far the worst company I've ever dealt with. I'm not the sort of person to leave negative reviews on anything. I've never given less than a 5 star review to an Uber driver. But I will straight up say that Meetup is an atrocious company that has consistently (over a period of several years) ignored its customers (organizers), made obnoxious decisions that negatively affected its customers, increased prices, decreased quality of service, and just generally been an absolute nightmare to deal with. I truly loathe this company and wish there was some way to export my group members (but of course, Meetup has deliberately made that impossible). Almost every group organizer I have spoken to feels the same way.

peter_d_sherman 7y ago

Related (2017): "$20 billion startup WeWork continues its shopping spree with $200 million for Meetup" https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-buys-meetup-for-200-million-2017-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-buys-meetup-for-200-m...

buovjaga 7y ago

Just ran into this nice collection of open source Meetup alternatives: https://github.com/coderbyheart/open-source-meetup-alternatives https://github.com/coderbyheart/open-source-meetup-alternati...