A Sad Day for the Future of Community: WeWork & Meetup Combine Forces
WeWork is set to acquire Meetup.
This is big, big news in the community industry for sure. WeWork is a unicorn on an acquisition spree aiming to platform community. Meetup has been around 15 years and is one of the shining lights of “community”.
When I heard the acquisition news earlier this evening, my first thought was that of sadness the shining light of building & strengthening real community is no longer independent — and likely will be neglected like virtually every other consumer focused product that has been acquired.
I’ve always been a huge fan of Meetup.
Why?
Their mission and focus is the same as Horizon’s: in person connections & experiences, which is the fundamental requirement to building community. They believe what we believe. A world experienced face to face is where life’s magical moments occur. As Scott Heiferman puts it:
our purpose is not to keep people glued to the screen — our purpose is to get people away from the screen and sparking communities that change people’s lives.
He’s got it right. Screens don’t change lives. People do.
To me, the win for WeWork is very clear; the Meetup side of the deal much less so.
Even if WeWork receives absolutely nothing else (such as more events using their existing spaces), access to the more than 35 million members of Meetup who have expressed interest in meeting others in the real world would certainly require far more capital in customer acquisition than the cost of the acquisition.
It’s less clear what benefit the acquisition gives Meetup. Perhaps a new way to monetize it’s audience (sign them up for offices)? The BuzzFeed article from July of 2017 included a few interesting stats from Meetup I hadn’t seen before:
- 300,000 paid groups
- 20,000 meetings a day
- nearly 40 million members
Let’s do some simple math based on their pricing. For basic groups (up to 50 members), groups are $9.99 per month. Unlimited groups are $14.99 per month. Let’s assume 50% of groups are larger than 50 members and pay $14.99 per month.
Revenue (basic groups): $10 x 150,000 = $1,500,000 per month
Revenue (unlimited groups): $15 x 150,000 = $3,000,000 per month
Total revenue = $4,500,000 per month ($54,000,000 per year).
If we assume a conservative profit margin of 25% (Facebook is 45%), that’s $13.5 million per year in profit. Not bad at all. In fact, I’d say that’s a pretty damn good business. How many people have built businesses that large? There’s very very few tech entrepreneurs who fit the bill.
It’s been mentioned the price tag of Meetup was $30 million. IF the number really was $30 million (it’s not, sources say it’s 200 M)— I’d say Meetup got robbed and squandered a huge opportunity to build community at a scale no one else has gotten close to reaching.
Maybe investors wanted their money out. Maybe Meetup lost energy to remain independent. Maybe they needed capital and this was better than raising another round. Maybe there is some strategic reason none of us know about. Whatever the reason — I’m certain I won’t be the only one wondering what would have happened had Meetup remained independent.
To close, I agree with my friend Kate Kendall when she says:
