WeWork is going to acquire Meetup
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WeWork is going to acquire Meetup
1–10 of 114 posts
Re: WeWork is going to acquire Meetup
#2It's a logical vertical integration, at the least.
Re: WeWork is going to acquire Meetup
#3I get the sense that Meetup has been sharply declining for years now and this was an opportunistic pickup by WeWork.
Re: WeWork is going to acquire Meetup
#4I 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.
Re: WeWork is going to acquire Meetup
#5I 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.
Re: WeWork is going to acquire Meetup
#6I 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.
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.
Re: WeWork is going to acquire Meetup
#7I 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.
Re: WeWork is going to acquire Meetup
#8I 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?
Re: WeWork is going to acquire Meetup
#9I 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, d…
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.
Re: WeWork is going to acquire Meetup
#10I 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.
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…
What was his idea?