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…
The key is don't go to meetups to meet people. Go because you want to participate in the shared activity every week/month.
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…
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…
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.
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…
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 th…
Maybe an entry fee that buys you your first drink would help for the first problem at least
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 th…
Maybe an entry fee that buys you your first drink would help for the first problem at least
Maybe, I can see it being a little tricky to implement unless you take the fee on meetup.com prior to arriving.
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 othe…
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.
You can definitely see all event details as a free members... You can't create a group, though.
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 othe…
I see Meetup - what do you mean by this:
>It wouldn't give me information without paying so I stopped using it.
?
Except for creating groups, I'm not sure if anything is "hidden"...
I run a meetup and most people find us by searching meetup.com or occasionally google.
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.
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…
We have totally different problem.
Finding a place is too easy, finding good speakers is the problem.
Where are you at?
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.
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…
Recall how McDonald's is more of a real estate company than a restaurant company. Owning the land which is then leased out to franchisees isolates failure with the franchise's owner while funneling franchise fees into buying more real estate, which creates a positive spiral whereby the value of McDonald's is always growing because the it keeps adding more and more lands as assets.
If WeWork buys real estate to operate co-working quasi-franchises on that real estate, and uses the profits to fund further asset acquisition, then that's a pretty similar model.