Back in the days I've started eBay Tech Talk Germany. We started small, with only people from my company attending (as CTO I kindly asked them to attend). We gr

Back in the days I've started eBay Tech Talk Germany. We started small, with only people from my company attending (as CTO I kindly asked them to attend). We grew steadily to nearly 100 people attending, my employer payed the pizza and the location was (later) a coworking space (free). When I left others then grew the meetup to 150+ people attending and made it really successful. Later in the small startup of my wife, we started a sofatalk meetup. Starting small, we ended up with up to 100+ monthly people attending and made it to the Berlin Olympia Stadium (free) as a location and caterer - with the stadium in company pink :-) But this took lots of effort, lots of talking to people on Linkedin, inviting them, lots of work to get free catering etc. I think, start small, keep a constant pace, have good talks and the meetup will grow. But it will take many months and hard work (my wife successfully started a literature meetup last year).