
WeWork sells Meetup - uptown
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/30/wework-sells-off-social-network-meetup-to-alleycorp-and-other-investors/
======
amrrs
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!

~~~
hodgesrm
I'm mildly hopeful this acquisition will be an improvement. I really depend on
Meetup for scheduling open source community meetings. It's quite useful but
over the last couple years it seemed as if they had stopped trying.

p.s., It's kind of a mystery to me how anyone thought Meetup would be the next
big thing. It's hard to monetize.

~~~
netcan
This, in a nutshell, demonstrates where the internet has gone awry.

Wikipedia is hard to monetize, but it's still a "big thing." Luckily, it's
organised in a way that doesn't require S&P 500 revenue targets.

The economics of startups->dragons is such that it's near impossible for
certain mass-market services exist even thought they are useful _and_
economically viable.

The internet makes it possible to serve tens of millions on a modest budget.
In theory, this enables a business to exist on a modest budget. In practice,
serving tens of millions represents more-than-modest potential and that
_chance,_ even if quite small, is worth more than the business.

Say a service like meetup makes $20m revenue, expenses of $16m and is growing
@ 10% pa. In theory, a nice business. Should be worth $50m-100m.

In reality though, a business like this is not just a business. It's a chance,
however small, to be the next FB. At the least, it's a chance to be a FB
acquisition. Even a minor threat to FB could easily be worth $1bn.

Chances of success don't have to be very high for the "risk the house"
strategy to dominate. A 10% chance @ $10bn is worth $1bn. Systemically, that
means a meetup is destined to be continuously bought or funded by investors
taking that chance. It can never settle into a steady, viable state where it
just does its job.

~~~
indigochill
>It can never settle into a steady, viable state where it just does its job.

I agree with your argument that numerically, playing the odds make sense, but
I don't see how this necessarily rules out the possibility of settling into a
steady business if that's what the company's owner(s) want.

Especially with the backlash/burnout from VC demands, it seems to me like
there would be plenty of business owners who would prefer the stabler
"lifestyle business" over the moonshot because for emotional reasons, they
prefer to leave potential money on the table in exchange for stability.

~~~
netcan
It doesn't rule it out in any particular case.

It just makes it rarer in the population, so to speak. Sure, people can make
whatever choices they want and wants vary. However, people make the economic
choices on average. If these are individual people making choices, then we get
a distribution of choices.

Mostly these are companies though, collections of people making a common
choice. Shareholders are not going to divide up their $1.5m dividend and chill
when there's a $150m offer on the table. We barely even have the financial
institutions to do that.

"Lifestyle Businesses" are also not always peaches and cream.

Say meetup is resold cheap because no-one can meet up irl anymore. You buy it
and you are now the "Lifestyle CEO" of meetup. You have the inglorious &
immediate task of downsizing all the VC/WeWork fat the company is carrying.
Or, you _could_ raise money and "grow into" your expenses. So, either you are
raising money again and not a lifestyle company anymore or you are making deep
cuts.

Walking back to a "lifestyle Businesses" from this position is not a choice
that gets made often, unless there's no choice.

Finally, startups exist within startup business culture... meetup certainly.
Giving up an growth is equivalent to failure. Successful companies grow fast,
everyone gets promoted. Options convert. That's the culture.

------
mharroun
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.

~~~
bartread
> 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.

I did a contract for $LARGE_MULTINATIONAL_RETAILER a few years ago. We needed
to build a new customer registration process for online customers.

To be clear, we're talking two web pages and some data (name, other necessary
personal information, contact details) inserted into a handful of databases.
This data would then be used by all other online services.

It took 8 months. I estimated it involved 60 people from at least half a dozen
teams. One of my colleagues estimated over 100 people.

I... couldn't really cope. I wanted to fire everyone[1], or at least almost
everyone, and do the whole job with a small team (one to two pizzas) with some
careful systems analysis in a few weeks.

At the end of the project, when all key stakeholders were on a call, and we
finally ran a test that inserted all the data in the right places and allowed
a customer to actually buy something, I nearly came from sheer relief. It is
_not_ healthy for a human being to get that excited over such a small victory
after such a long period of time and effort expended.

Every single project was like that.

 _[1] Actually I wanted to let at least 70% - 80% of the people go in the
entire directorate, along with a large swathe of middle and senior management.
These weren 't bad people, or stupid people, or even inept people - many were
very smart, and very competent: just useless within the context of the
company's needs._

~~~
imtringued
That reminds me of the Ghostcat vulnerability in Tomcat. Basically our manager
informed us about the vulnerability and set up a meeting to discuss possible
solutions. Well, it was pretty obvious that you just need to set an AJP secret
and update to the latest version. So that means editing maybe 4 lines in
apache/tomcat config files and then restarting tomcat after the latest version
has been installed. Obviously, we were done before that meeting even started
but for some reason our manager got super excited about this microscopic
victory. I'm not sure what caused his expectations to be so low but then I
took a look at the results of our automated vulnerability scanner and I
suddenly understood why. Some teams within this organization truly don't care
about security at all.

------
TheAdamist
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.

~~~
siquick
Not a great solution, but VPN into California and it should show a
cancellation option.

~~~
nickcox
Seriously? What possible reason could there be for limiting this to
Californians?

~~~
joeconway
It's a Californian law mandating that subscriptions that can be started
online, must be cancellable online.
[https://www.androidauthority.com/california-online-
subscript...](https://www.androidauthority.com/california-online-subscription-
law-883800/)

~~~
wccrawford
The question wasn't "Why does CA get this?"

The question was "Why doesn't _everyone_ get this, if CA has it?"

~~~
marcosdumay
Because they want it to be hard.

------
olivermarks
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
Big opportunity if FB gets hit with antitrust. I don’t see how anybody could
effectively compete with FB events.

~~~
olivermarks
Great point, I'm hoping Big Tech gets more regulated to allow innovation by
startups to resume

~~~
isoskeles
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/ne...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/news/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-rules-internet-regulation-a9341816.html)).
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.

------
ravenstine
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.

~~~
code4tee
There are a lot of companies that should probably be 5 people in a basement
somewhere run in the cloud... but everyone wants the VC money, big offices,
huge teams and such. Maybe the whole current situation will change attitudes
back toward lean and mean which always seems to be when tech does it’s best
work.

~~~
0xfffafaCrash
The idea that a company on the scale of Meetup could be effectively run by 5
people in a basement strikes me as completely absurd.

I've seen similar comments about companies like Twitter, YouTube, Spotify, and
even Facebook and I'm really in awe of how completely out of touch with the
reality of what it takes to run a global business with millions of users and
customers people have to be to suggest these things.

Do people imagine you can just take the UI, have a few people wire it up to
scale in "the cloud" and basically call it a day?

~~~
fizx
Depends on whether you want to exist on ads revenue.

You could run Meetup with 5 people in a basement if you had simple
subscription revenue, but effectively maximizing an advertising opportunity
requires at least ~1000 people.

~~~
bcrosby95
The question isn't about effectively maximizing something. It's about whether
they can turn a healthy profit. And in my experience you can, if you build the
company and product correctly. But if you have VC money you won't because you
can't be happy with tens of millions of profit with VC funding.

~~~
wolco
VC money can win a market and make everyone rich. You just need to be aligned
with the goals. Making a little bit of money isn't the goal. It's all of
nothing if you stumble there might be a pivot. You agree not to stop until it
dies, you die or you hit 2 years and growth doesn't look like a hockey stick
and they take it away.

------
chrisa
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
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
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
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
I'd think carefully about what that incentivises. Do you really want a bunch
of people who don't really wanna be there turning up to get their $10 back?

~~~
subpixel
I ran a pretty advanced-level soccer meetup, so if people showed up to play
and I didn't care what their motivation was. But anytime RSVPs didn't show up
we had mismatched teams and incessant whining.

------
canada_dry
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.

~~~
rapnie
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-
fo...](https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-
activitypub-apps#events-and-meetups)

------
peter303
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
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.

------
peter_d_sherman
Related (2017):

"$20 billion startup WeWork continues its shopping spree with $200 million for
Meetup"

[https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-buys-meetup-
for-200-m...](https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-buys-meetup-
for-200-million-2017-11)

------
mrfusion
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
Meetup is the classmates+myspace of events. It will get replaced by a young
person that doesn't even know it exists.

------
code4tee
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
They charge meetup organizers a decent fee. I paid something like $90 per 6
months to run a book club on there.

~~~
gamegod
Are the spam comments on Meetup free or do you have to pay extra for that?

~~~
monksy
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.

------
32005600
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.

------
coupdejarnac
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.

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

~~~
chrisa
[https://meetingplace.io](https://meetingplace.io)

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

------
subpixel
Didn't Meetup sell because Facebook basically said they were going to own
groups?

I'm not sure that ever happened.

~~~
mooreds
Plus FB groups have a discoverability problem. Meetup leverages all the power
of google for discoverability.

~~~
wodenokoto
I found most of my meetups through Facebook.

~~~
mooreds
Fair. #anecdata :)

Facebook groups pluses: lots of users.

Facebook groups minuses: not discoverable on the open web.

------
sourc3
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.

------
iamleppert
$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.

------
jaredcwhite
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.

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

------
peburrows
I originally read this headline as "WeWork sells TO Meetup" and I was
_extremely_ confused.

------
CrankyBear
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."

------
rootsudo
Well that was quick.

------
markx2
[https://gettogether.community/](https://gettogether.community/)

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

------
onetimemanytime
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-
millio...](https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-ceo-gives-back-millions-
from-we-trademark-after-criticism-2019-9?op=1)

------
cgb223
Buy high sell low

Gotta respect that business mindset

