Meetup was a darling of the tech industry. But can it survive WeWork?

Derek Andersen, CEO and co-founder of Bevy Labs, a software product that helps large companies build communities offline, said he first fell in love with Meetup in September 2010. He was able to use the platform to scale up his Startup Grind event series, which connects techies around the world, to 600 chapters.

WeWork, along with these other companies, was fueled by sizable investments from venture capitalists who funneled billions of dollars into their businesses and inflated their valuations will remaining private. Previously, tech companies had been pushed to go public and allow their stock to trade openly. WeWork, already bigger than many public companies, had no such need.

Siegel said that meeting with Neumann, who has been known for his love of private jets, and for wanting to be the world’s first trillionaire and to find a way to live forever, according to a“Honestly, we sat on comfortable couches. It was very conversational. It was really more about culture fit and belief in company mission than hard charging, let me hear data, the analysis. I think what he was looking for was someone who believed in Meetup and Meetup’s mission as much as he did,” he said.

In mid-October, Meetup announced it was testing a change to its business model that would generate new revenue. A Meetup spokesperson said plans for the test had been in the works before WeWork’s failed IPO and was not a result of its parent company’s woes, but the announcement was poorly received. Shortly after the blog was posted, Meetup added a note clarifying the change and said it was “a limited test for a small number of groups.”Two weeks after the RSVP fee debacle, Meetup laid off almost 25 percent of its workforce, most of whom were said to be engineers.

Over the past two months, he has been busy meeting with potential buyers, whittling down the offers until he finds the right one to present to WeWork’s board.

For peanuts

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