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Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

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Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#1
Hey everyone! I'm introducing Radius - a project I've been working on for too long! It's an early stage and pretty minimal (which, according to YC means I launched early enough) alternative to Meetup.com, built using Ruby on Rails. It's a platform for creating thriving communities and discovering events around you.

What can you do on Radius?

- Want to create a group, post events and gather RSVPs? You're covered!

- Want event discovery? Coming soon™!

I'm a software engineer based in the UK. My first attempt to make this failed spectacularly when I hired a budget dev years ago to "build an MVP" when I had next to no knowledge of software development. So naturally, I changed my career and learned how to build it myself.

I wanted to build something that made it easy to find out what was happening around you. We have all these platforms focused on ticketing, meetups, and other event types - but they're all niche enough that they each only list a fragment of what's going on around us. Then you have another subset of groups which host their own website/mailing list and may only advertise an event on -insert social network- and you never know about it until it's too late.

The issue I have with existing platforms:

- Meetup excludes too many groups by not offering a free tier for smaller/non-profit groups which make up for a huge number of small communities. So many groups just end up dying because one person has to pay the fees. Then there's the fact that their search experience is just terrible. FWIW, I also think they have a marketing issue with the name Meetup.

- Eventbrite does ticketing pretty well, but completely failed to develop the group/community aspect and doesn't seem to have put much emphasis on the discovery of events either. They, like Meetup, only attract a certain subset of groups/events as well.

So, it feels like there's an opportunity to fill the gap with something that focuses on a wider range of events/groups and emphasises discovery and community. There's so much activity happening around us in the real world - and that's what I'd eventually like Radius to capture.

I'm aware that the discovery app category falls into the list of "YC honeypot ideas" but in the time that I've cared about this, nobody has built the thing I wanted to exist, damn it (Maybe that's a sign NOT to build it..).

At best, people might find this useful and at worst, it's been a fantastic learning experience.

--

Feedback -

There are a bunch of groups using it for events at the moment, and they've given great feedback to date. I haven't advertised it much though, so this is my attempt at gathering the next wave of feedback. Feel free to:

- Try it out: See if Radius works for your groups and events.

- Give feedback: Let me know what you think and how we can improve.

- Request features: Tell me what features would make Radius even better.

Thanks!

Link:- https://www.radius.to/

Example group:- https://www.radius.to/groups/toronto-ruby

Example event:- https://www.radius.to/groups/toronto-ruby/events/s1tczn2usqf...

Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative
radius.to

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#3
From the FAQ:

> Are there any restrictions on the types of events I can create?

> Radius is open to a wide range of events, from small community gatherings to large-scale conferences. However, we do have guidelines to ensure all events meet our community standards and are appropriate for our audience.

The guidelines are neither linked from this answer nor are present in the Terms page. I’m not sure how a potential user would decide if their content is acceptable or brig group will suddenly vanish due to these unseen guidelines.

I couldn’t see anything about content moderation and related policies either.

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#4
Plenty of folks are sick of Meetup, so there should be a fertile audience. One question I would have before migrating an existing group is what your plans are for making this sustainable. People don't want to jump to a new platform that is great, only to find it migrate in the direction of the platform they've just left. On the other hand, people don't want to migrate to a platform that is going to go under because it's not financially sustainable.

If you can be transparent about what your goals are and what it will take you to get there, you'll probably find a lot more people willing to make the leap. I think of Garry Tan's Posthaven as a good model. [1]

1: https://posthaven.com/pledge

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#6
post #3

From the FAQ: > Are there any restrictions on the types of events I can create? > Radius is open to a wide range of events, from small community gatherings to large-scale conferences. However, we do have guidelines to ensure all events meet our community standards and are appropriate for our audience. The guidelines are neither linked from this answer nor are present in the Terms page. I’m not sure how a potential us…

Thanks for pointing that out! I'll need to update that - guidelines aren't something I've thought about in a great amount of detail, but I'd imagine there are some existing policies out there I can take inspiration from. Open to suggestions if anyone has any. Perhaps there's an open-source set of guidelines somewhere.

And yup - definitely need to define a process for that rather than removing groups with zero warning.

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#8
post #6
post #3

From the FAQ: > Are there any restrictions on the types of events I can create? > Radius is open to a wide range of events, from small community gatherings to large-scale conferences. However, we do have guidelines to ensure all events meet our community standards and are appropriate for our audience. The guidelines are neither linked from this answer nor are present in the Terms page. I’m not sure how a potential us…

Thanks for pointing that out! I'll need to update that - guidelines aren't something I've thought about in a great amount of detail, but I'd imagine there are some existing policies out there I can take inspiration from. Open to suggestions if anyone has any. Perhaps there's an open-source set of guidelines somewhere. And yup - definitely need to define a process for that rather than removing groups with zero warning…

TBH that's polish. I'd worry more about how you plan to monetise it/keep it sustainable, and solve the empty shop problem. The problem with hyperlocal is you basically need to launch in every locality to gain critical mass for people to actually use it.

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#9

Sign up to search is a blocker for me

I probably need to clarify that so thanks for mentioning this - search isn't an active feature at the moment - I'm focusing on the organiser side for now before opening that side up, as there aren't enough events currently for it to be useful.

Definitely won't be sign up to search once search is live.

Re: Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative

#10
I would be happy to see a good meetup alternative. You might want to consider hiding the numbers of groups and events until you have numbers that are likely to impress anyone viewing them. No shame at all in starting small (there's really no other way to start). But you might turn away potential users who think you're likely to disappear.
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