Comment by s17n
1 year ago
Meetup has steadily gone to shit, and it's not hard to see why: you can't make money with a user-friendly platform for hosting community groups. Do you have a plan to avoid their fate?
1 year ago
Meetup has steadily gone to shit, and it's not hard to see why: you can't make money with a user-friendly platform for hosting community groups. Do you have a plan to avoid their fate?
Why can't you make money with a user-friendly platform for hosting community groups?
People are used to paying nominal transaction fees for commerce transactions. Pro versions of group facilitation, messaging, and ticketing is also a thing.
The problem is just cost. These post IPO companies grew massively with sales and support teams. It's very likely much easier to get to scale nowadays. Remove the sales teams and find ways to grow on the cheap. "can't make money" isn't right, it's managing costs to turn a profit inline with the current state of things.
> Why can't you make money
Once people have formed their community, they can just split any costs in-person and not go through your platform.
I'm not paying $20 in yearly "dues" to maintain a friend group that could be maintained for $0 as a group on any social media messenger.
You certainly can make money from a user-friendly group platform.
It's just not enough money to sustain a VC-backed model or a large sales/support staff.
If OP is careful about managing expenses and doesn't set outlandish expectations for profit (or raise VC), a profitable niche is doable.
> you can't make money with a user-friendly platform for hosting community groups
Well, hopefully, you're wrong!
The gist of my plan is to focus on a broader range of groups/communities, with the larger groups who want/need premium organiser features (or paid promotions in listings, etc) footing the bill for smaller, free groups.
Smaller communities/groups that don't collect fees from their members are likely what make up the bulk of groups that exist - so I don't think it makes sense to exclude them by not having a free option. They're what will bring more value to the discovery side of the platform, IMO.