
WeWork is going to acquire Meetup - buryat
https://news.crunchbase.com/news/wework-acquire-meetup/
======
hammerbrostime
Having run Meetups for the last ~4 years or so, with my current one being a
nice size (~100/month attend), I can tell you the absolute biggest challenge
for myself and for others is getting a _good affordable /free space_ to run
the events. As WeWork has so much prime real estate, I can easily see the
Meetups being a natural feeder to get more people exposed to their spaces, and
also to create community events for those that rent. Seems like a nice
opportunity for synergy here. Hope it goes well. Two great NYC companies!

~~~
estreeper
As far as finding spaces, I've found that _local_ bars/restaurants/coffee
shops are usually quite happy to host events during off-times like Monday
through Wednesday nights. I always ask nicely, thank them in the event
description, during the event, and in an email after, and try to go out of my
way to make things easier for them (checking in with estimated attendees a few
days before, helping put chairs back in order afterward, etc.) It's nice
because these places are inherently social so people feel more comfortable
talking, you don't have to worry about food/drink, and it brings attention to
community-minded businesses.

~~~
sitepodmatt
Problem with these things is you can make yourself out to be not welcome
despite best efforts, some attendees are utterly hopeless / shameless that
they'll decline any offer of drink (soft drink or otherwise), demand free tap
water, speak like shit to staff (grunt with no thanks or please), leave no
tips, sneak their own beverages in, complain wifi is slow and so on. I
wouldn't host an event in a bar unless I knew the people attending, you're
judge by your company after-all and if you want to come again then bringing
shameless mingebag joe no manners is not a good idea. Note: this shitty
behavior isn't isolated to tech groups, bridge groups and other card game
groups are apparently worse that they now have to rent out community centres.

~~~
narrowtux
Maybe an entry fee that buys you your first drink would help for the first
problem at least

~~~
tedmiston
A meetup I frequent solves this by having a monthly drink sponsor that spends
a few hundred bucks to buy everyone's first drink, and get their logo
projected on the wall.

------
tluyben2
TL;DR is WeWork just an open office but for (way too many imho) many
companies/people in one space?

Are Wework spaces similar across the world? I have to work in a central London
one sometimes and I find it horrendous; it is almost literally good for
nothing; way too noisy and loose for meetings (even in the closed spaces; they
are glass and not soundproof) or actual concentrated work (with noise
cancelling headphones it is bearable). At lunch, because most of the space is
open and attaches to the central area, it smells like as mix of whatever
people are eating which can be interesting (kebab onion with garlic sauce
mixed with pizza mixed with fish mixed a spicy curry smell) and lingers for a
long time. Nice looking wooden floors so when people wear heals you can hear
them literally _everywhere_ when they walk around (programmers who are
supposed to be focused with noise cancelling headphones all look up every
single time; noise, all glass, heals (probably female) so they look). Beer
opens at 4 pm so drinking commences at that time too. Too many people allowed
in there so if you didn't strictly book rooms they are all full and meetings
cannot ever go over time.

It is more a clubhouse than an office. I could not really work there for long
stretches so I wonder if all these places are the same as a formula or this
one is just unique that way.

~~~
fredley
In Spitalfields. The noise is unbearable. We moved out of an office and back
to dedicated desks because it's actually much _quieter_ in there than in the
office spaces, where the walls let people who are on the phone think they can
talk as loud as they like - despite the fact the walls offer no sound
insulation. In the dedicated desks area people are usually much more
courteous, leaving the room to take phone calls.

If WeWork wants to do one thing to improve their spaces, sound engineering is
it. Figure out how to make the offices sound-proof, install sound absorbing
soft furnishing or even carpet (currently everything is a hard surface, so
sound absorption is basically zero).

------
ChuckMcM
I liked Meetup, I didn't like it enough to pay for it. It wouldn't give me
information without paying so I stopped using it.

I also note that they terms of the acquisition have not been mentioned. If it
is an all stock transaction it could be an example of Wework exploiting their
astonishing valuation to buy companies with stock. This was something that
happened a lot in the dot com boom and didn't end well. The other thing was
startups trading services to each other and the overvaluing them in dollars.
For example a startup I worked for gave a database company $110,000 in
advertising on the web site in exchange for a data base license and some
training. They both reported it as income (we got $110,000 in advertising
buys!, we got $110,000 in database sales!)

~~~
mfrommil
Completely agree. Tried using meetup several times, but the experience as a
free user is too limited... Can't view all event details, can't create a
group, etc.

~~~
oblio
You can definitely see all event details as a free members... You can't create
a group, though.

~~~
Larrikin
It depends on the group. Tech events tend to be undercover head hunting events
so they are usually sponsored so they waive the fee.

The smaller groups have to pay a fee too which gets put on the members.
Usually it's very small and I'm happy to pay two dollars a year to goto a
language exchange if it helps keep the group alive.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This. Apparently all of the things I'm interested in like SDR and Robotics and
what not the groups don't pony up the cash to make things visible to non-
paying members.

------
badestrand
I don't really understand the WeWork valuation of $20 billion. I guess they
buy all their properties so they greatly profit from the rising property
prizes in capitals around their world.

I work a lot in coworking spaces and they usually don't seem like a cash cow
for the owners. Now WeWork seems to target the B2B and luxury segment of
coworking with prices 1,5x-3x of the competitors'. Interesting strategy.

So is the coworking just a vehicle for the appreciating property prices? Or
are they much more popular than I thought? Or am I missing something else?

~~~
puranjay
I gave up on coworking early this month. I've been using a coworking space for
nearly 2 years, tested out various spaces and realized that they're just bad
for productivity.

Far too many people at coworking spaces seem to be there for networking, or
are simply not serious enough about work.

I moved to a 'business center' (like Regus) which has a much quieter and more
professional environment. Couldn't be happier.

~~~
hellofunk
I have found that a really good library is typically a much better work
environment than these coworking spaces, and at 100% less the cost.

I tried Regus for a couple days, but it felt no different to me than a
coworking space. Maybe it was that particular Regus location.

~~~
lostcolony
Yes! Whenever my wife and I have spent large amount of time at her mother's
(where there's effectively no internet due to being so far out in the
boonies), I'd drive the 10 minutes to a nearby library in town that actually
had a decent connection, and would work from there.

Only issue was the dearth of areas to take calls, but even that was only
mildly inconvenient, since I'm usually on mute, and could duck outside for
those.

~~~
jldugger
Every library I've been in has had a few small spaces available for
reservation for maybe 2 hour blocks. They're sometimes kinda hidden though,
and sometimes first come first serve, so not always what you need.

------
m52go
I haven't followed Meetup in much detail, but it seems like they lost their
way.

"Meetup" has become a common noun in many circles tech-related and
beyond...i.e., most people know about meetup.com and what it does.

But despite this ubiquity, what happened?

I stopped going to meetups a while ago because most just didn't seem
worthwhile. A lot of people I know did the same. If this trend persisted
across the service, did the company do anything about it?

I dunno. My perception of their failure is anecdotal...maybe they're doing
better than it seems to me.

I just find this outcome sad, especially given how rare ventures like this are
--ones that bridge the gap between offline and online.

~~~
potatolicious
I think it's just fundamentally a hard product. Most people aren't motivated
enough to organize events with enough regularity and quality for a community
to form. In my experience most Meetup groups are pretty dead.

That leaves the people who have something to gain - "new in town" groups run
by real estate agents, tech meetup groups run by recruiters, etc etc. These
communities tend not to develop a long-term following because most people can
smell the opportunism from a mile away.

The best Meetups tended to be run by professionals - non-profits, museums,
etc, who have something to gain but tended to be aligned with the interests of
the participants. Those are sadly few and fr between.

I liked Meetup for a lot of uses, but you really did have to sift through a
lot of cruft. I think their problem isn't really any execution failure, and
reflects simply the level of difficulty of community-building.

~~~
donw
Sports- or activity-based meetups tend to be the best of the bunch, as do
expat gatherings when you have just relocated to a new country.

------
sitkack
I wish them luck. Meetup itself is stagnant kludge that could have been
innovative, other than their stylesheet revamp like 8-10 years ago, Meetup has
innovated on zero.

I am sure WeWork will use the platform to drive bodies to their physical
locations which is a smart move.

~~~
forgotmypw
I loved Facebook in 2006. I would've kept loving Facebook if they didn't
change a single thing about it for the last 11 years. As it stands, with all
the innovation they've been doing, I deleted both my social account and my
family account, and now only stick around for the event calendars.

What parts of Meetup seem stagnant to you? What other innovation is there left
to do? They let you create a meetup and describe it, make it paid or unpaid,
allow +1's, post pictures, let people join, and have a message board. What
else is missing? It already doesn't degrade to no-JS, but is not yet at the
point where there's random shit happening all over the place without me
asking. Please don't encourage them to move in that direction.

~~~
bcherny
As someone that runs a 200+ member meetup in SF, I wish I had better tools to
promote my meetup and put events in front of people.

From the other side, discovering relevant meetups is hard. Searching all
meetups in my area one keyword at a time sucks.

~~~
forgotmypw
You've got a point there. Searching for something is hard, and basically boils
down to using a couple of keywords, but not too many, and then just patiently
going through all the results. It would be nice to be able to search by
location, for example, or "what meetups are happening in the next 2-5 hours?"

Unless I'm missing something, this is not easy at the moment.

------
avenoir
As a frequent user of meetup.com, I feel like it succeeded at making people
one-time acquaintances and failed miserably at making lasting connections. I'm
a member of several groups and most of these groups do not see any single
individual more than once. I won't even mention terrible attendance for just
about any groups I've ever been a part of. I think there could've been a lot
of improvements made here but meetup really hasn't done anything with the
concept for years, which is a shame. I still think this space is ripe for
innovation.

~~~
akvadrako
The key is don't go to meetups to meet people. Go because you want to
participate in the shared activity every week/month.

------
colmvp
I actually like Meetup.

In my home town, I've been able to meet a lot of people in tech (including
Civic Tech), government, and data science that I wouldn't have met as easily
otherwise since I mostly work from home. Most of the AI/Machine Learning
meetups here are 100% full with long waiting lists. And I ended up having a
relationship with someone I met at one of the meetups.

------
jasonbarone
Would love to hear from others who run groups/events on Meetup and/or
Eventbrite. I used to love Meetup, but the interest has been dwindling and the
pricing for Meetup is very odd. You can't run a multi-city Meetup from a
single account, which makes it very difficult to expand your Meetup without
greatly increasing your costs. Meetup then came out with
[https://www.meetup.com/pro](https://www.meetup.com/pro) in order to help you
wrangle your cluster of fragmented accounts all over the world. Between
Eventbrite, Facebook Events, and Facebook's direct integration to Eventbrite
ticketing, I'm not sure I see the point in using Meetup at all anymore.

~~~
estreeper
> I'm not sure I see the point in using Meetup at all anymore.

Just like any social platform, I think the advantage of using Meetup is that
you'll get to a different audience than Facebook. In my case I've found the
audience for Meetup to be smaller (i.e. far fewer RSVPs) but much more
engaged, perhaps as a byproduct of the sheer volume of things on Facebook
making it harder for yours to stand out. The breakdown of where attendees come
from is roughly 30/50/20 Meetup/FB/Email, and the incremental time for me to
post in all these places is very small.

The pricing is, as you say, odd, and I too have run into the frustration of
expanding a single group to a neighboring city without wanting to drastically
increase costs.

~~~
JoshMnem
Some people don't use Facebook. I wouldn't join Facebook to join a group or
event, and I know other people who feel the same way.

------
askafriend
I get the sense that Meetup has been sharply declining for years now and this
was an opportunistic pickup by WeWork.

------
siquick
Most Meetup events and groups have become a vehicle for salespeople and self-
promoters.

~~~
DoreenMichele
So, what is an effective means to try to connect with people for work related
stuff? Say, if you freelance and need a water cooler type group?

~~~
GuiA
Prefer smaller, more specific meet ups (eg functional video game programming)
over larger, broader ones (eg Python meetup) if you can.

Even better, try to start your own meet up for one of your interests! In any
reasonably sized city it’s not hard to get 10-20 people to get started.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Starting my own is what I have in mind. I was considering doing so via Meetup.
I am kind of flailing around, trying to figure out how to do that.

~~~
mschen
@DoreenMichele - Meetupper here, would love to help however we can. I'll reach
out via email.

------
personlurking
I'd like to see Meetup offer 1x1 'events', that is, a sub-section of the
platform to meet a person who is into the same idea/subject. Otherwise it's
lost potential to have everything ride on whenever an organizer happens to
schedule a meetup.

~~~
countessRostov
There's always Jamie App for meeting people one on one

------
roystonvassey
The way I (and others in my group) used Meetup was this:

1\. Schedule a meetup to meet players ( soccer, in my case) and organize a
game at the local ground.

2\. Repeat Step 1 for 3-4 months

3\. We now have enough regulars and switched over to Whatsapp. Easier to
coordinate, schedule games, manage rosters and because Whatsapp is so
ubiquitous, you don't need to download/track one more app/website.

4\. Exit Meetup.

It was similar for other activities too - board games, AI/ML groups and so on.

Meetup was always going to struggle with a viable business model this way.
Groups of people once formed into groups will drift away to more familiar,
informal ways of staying in touch.

~~~
propelol
How do new members find you?

~~~
akvadrako
I run a meetup and most people find us by searching meetup.com or occasionally
google.

~~~
oblio
I'm not 100% sure but his point my be: how do people find you once you quit
Meetup.com? Cause attrition happens and at least Meetup provides a somewhat
constant inflow of people.

~~~
roystonvassey
Right but once you have a pool of 25-30 people, you're set ( for most
activities).

~~~
jldugger
For a while. Unless your pool of people is good about inviting new members
(who also invite new members) that number only ever goes down, and eventually
the decay grows exponentially.

------
tedmiston
I think there are a lot of possibilities. Many tech meetups are hosted where
people work, so maybe something like Meetup.com event hosting will get bundled
in as a WeWork perk. Maybe WeWork can rent space to meetups. Maybe they'll use
it to monetize vacant WeWork space. I'm sure Meetup also has a data trove of
past meetups.

Maybe monetizing services on top of their longterm real estate leases is the
key to profitability: "workspace as a platform". Meetup fits that model well
with a huge userbase.

[https://qz.com/966956/wework-wants-to-make-its-business-
look...](https://qz.com/966956/wework-wants-to-make-its-business-look-more-
like-cable-tv-than-real-estate/)

------
minimaxir
It's a logical vertical integration, at the least.

------
brango
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.

------
ptr_void
I have been sitting on a startup idea in combination of use cases of something
like meetup and similar to what WeWork does for a 2+ years. I have no business
expertise so any hypothetical chance of success would have been very small,
nevertheless I feel like it's been a missed opportunity for me. Would be
interesting to see if they go into the route I was thinking of and manage to
make something big.

~~~
hkmurakami
A friend was in a similar situation (he was in BD at a quant hedge fund) and
had been doing research for over a year when he discovered a ~50 person
company doing exactly his idea. He cold emailed the CEO, the CEO was surprised
that someone in the wild was excited about their esoteric idea, they continued
to talk, and said friend eventually joined as their head of product after a
few months.

Just saying that this is a route available to you if you're so inclined and
your life circumstances allow you to take this path.

~~~
Tzeentch
What was his idea?

------
opensports
Shameless plug: if you are a sports organizer on Meetup and don't see Meetup
going in your direction, you can check us out. Here's a group that moved over
from Meetup as a sample:
[https://opensports.net/@PhiladelphiaVolleyball](https://opensports.net/@PhiladelphiaVolleyball)

------
peter303
I hope meetup doesnt get trashed like the Slashdot, Wired and Huffpost
acquisitions. They were destroyed by excessive advertising.

------
nickfromseattle
Makes total sense. I run marketing for a WeWork competitor and hosting events
is our #1 acquisition strategy.

------
skrebbel
I like that for a change, a new brick-and-mortar company buys an older web
company, instead of the other way around. It drives home the point that being
an internet business isn't special anymore. We're all just businesses, and all
notable businesses are on the internet.

------
andygrunwald
I am running a Web Engineering Meetup in Düsseldorf, Germany [1] since more
than 4 years. This group is quite big (~1.600 people) with 40 up to 100 people
per Event (depends on the weather, the topic, the day, if side events happen
in the city or not). We run it 100% non profit and community driven. No money
is involved for paying speakers or accommodation. This is a fact where we are
really proud of, because we believe if we involve money it will make things
harder and more complicated. Questions like Who do pay what flight, etc. Of
course, we have food and drink sponsors. But they order the food and deliver
this to us. No "direct" money involved. We run every month, except of december
(because december is a busy month everywhere, company parties, family, etc.).
For a german meetup, this is a quite big one (if you compare the topic and the
non profit).

I want to tell you what i like and what i don't like about Meetup:

What i like:

\- "Advertising" of the meetup via email: This is very good. People will be
reminded, it will suggest new people your meetup depends on tags / topics and
so on

\- Uncomplicated for attendees: Sign up or not sign up, this is quite easy for
people

What i don't like:

\- The user interface: It is horrible. Especially for a meetup organizer. The
editor is so limited, it is not intuitive at all

\- Innovation / Change: Since nearly 4 years, meetup has changed nearly
nothing. Recently they are working more and more on their iOS app (a lot of
updates coming in) and a new brushed layout for the website was released, but
it took way to long. Smaller changes, really iterating over it, this is what i
am missing.

\- Organizing a meetup: They are tools missing. Meetup is a kind of simple
CURD app. But really tools for meetup organzers are missing. I know tons of
companies who want to sponsor a meetup (location, food, etc.). I see tons of
meetups who suffer from finding a speaker or a sponsor. I know tons of speaker
who want to test their next conference talk befor eon a meetup to get
feedback. Connect them. Make it easy for meetup organizers to organize one. I
personally see so much potential in this area. In this regard i often ask
myself "What is Meetup doing with all these employees?"

\- The "pro" version: This is a joke. I tried it out. I guess the target group
are meetup groups that should run all over the world (like the wordpress one).
But for normal organizers, useless IMO. I expected so much from it
(Statistics, deep insights in my community, what are the members interested
in, etc.). So much potential.

The problem with meetup is, that without effort from people meetups will be
created, 1 meetup will be held, they are disappointed that only a hand full of
people showed up and they will never do it again. Because they realize that
organizing a meetup is a huge effort. And only time the number of people will
grow. But you need time for this.

I see a lot of groups that were created recently, but never have a meetup
scheduled at all. This is sad.

Why i don't create a "better meetup"? I would love to. But the big issue here:
Meetup.com has the critical mass. And signing up for a new platform etc. I
wouldnt do it as an attendee. Ideas?

My unwritten goal is to provide the opportunity in Düsseldorf to visit a tech
meetup every workday. This is what i fight for and i help other organizers
around to do this while connecting them and offer them my support and
knowledge. A year ago i wrote a blog article about "Lessons learned from
running a local meetup" [2]. I think i need to write a new one. I learned so
much new things in the last year. And we try to write/document everything we
need to do to organize our meetup on Github [3]. Not completed yet, but it is
growing.

[1] [https://meetup.com/Web-Engineering-Duesseldorf/](https://meetup.com/Web-
Engineering-Duesseldorf/)

[2] [http://andygrunwald.com/blog/lesson-learned-from-running-
a-l...](http://andygrunwald.com/blog/lesson-learned-from-running-a-local-
meetup/)

[3]
[https://github.com/WebEngDUS/WebEngDUS](https://github.com/WebEngDUS/WebEngDUS)

~~~
jarofgreen
I run a site mainly in the UK (
[https://opentechcalendar.co.uk](https://opentechcalendar.co.uk) ) but with a
small presence in Germany. (
[http://opentechcalendar.de](http://opentechcalendar.de) )

Our big idea is simple ..... we don't compete with meetup.com!

We are a event listing service only. We work hard to list events and make the
resulting data Open Data so many people can reuse it (and they do!).

We do not sell/do tickets - if organisers want that they use the service of
their choice and we link to that. We do not do members lists - organisers can
use the email list or whatever of their choice and we link to that.

Your point about it being hard to organise events - so true. To support event
organisers in Scotland, we run a private email list and private real life
discussion events to make connections, allow discussion and share resources
but it's always hard.

As for your goal - we would love to help you list all your local events :-)
Anyone can add - you don't have to be the event organiser to do so:
[https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/event/new](https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/event/new)

------
nunez
This acquisition makes total sense. It's totally fits the spirit of WeWork
(building professional communities) and also gives Meetup that exit that (I
think) they've been looking for for a while. (They took five funding rounds!)

Congrats to the Meetup team!

