Our meetups generally have about 20 people. The problem is that without generating network effects, you can't generate awareness that the event is happening at

Our meetups generally have about 20 people. The problem is that without generating network effects, you can't generate awareness that the event is happening at all. We've had a brick-and-mortar location in a Chicago suburb for over 8 years. In the early days, Meetup's network effects were the only way to get people in the door, until much later when word-of-mouth spread.