Meetup was founded in June 2002 by Scott Heiferman and four co-founders. The idea for Meetup came from Heiferman meeting his neighbors in New York City for the first time after the
September 11 attacks. Heiferman was also influenced by the book
Bowling Alone, which is about the deterioration of community in American culture. Some initial funding for the venture was raised from friends and family, which was followed by a funding round with angel investors. In 2003, Meetup won the "Community Websites and Mobile Site"
Webby Award. Meetup was originally intended to focus on hobbies and interests, Initially, changes to the website had to be approved by two committees. In 2009, Meetup started running
hackathons, where employees came up with new features that would be implemented if their coworkers supported it. In July 2009, the company was profitable and had $9 million in annualized revenues. Meetup had 8 million users in 2010. The website was redesigned in September 2013. Meetup had 25.5 million users by 2013. In October 2013, Meetup acquired Dispatch, a struggling email collaboration company. In March 2014, a hacker shut down Meetup with a
DDoS attack, the hacker claimed to be funded by a competitor. The hackers asked for a ransom of $300. In February 2017, Meetup created 1,000 #resist Meetup groups with the intention of coordinating protests in response to the
Trump travel ban. Meetup also partnered with a labor group to organize anti-Trump protests. Meetup was acquired by
WeWork in November 2017 for about $156 million. By that time, Meetup had raised $18.3 million over 11 years. Some former employees said there was a 10% layoff after the acquisition. In 2018, Scott Heiferman resigned as CEO and former
Investopedia CEO
David Siegel took his place after a convincing interview with WeWork CEO
Adam Neumann. Heiferman became Chairman of the company. In October 2019, Meetup began to test a different pricing model in two US states, reducing the costs that must be paid by organizers of $23.99/month or $98.94/six months, but requiring users to pay a $2 fee in order to RSVP for events, leaving several users angry. In March 2020, WeWork sold Meetup to AlleyCorp and other investors, reportedly at a substantial loss, and
Kevin P. Ryan of AlleyCorp was added to the
board of directors of Meetup. In January 2024,
Bending Spoons acquired Meetup. ==See also==