Hi there, Meetup community,
I’m Luca Ferrari, the co-founder and CEO of Meetup’s new parent company, Bending Spoons.
At Bending Spoons, we’re firm believers in radical transparency. In that spirit, I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you an important update about recent changes at Meetup and give you a glimpse of what’s to come.
Team restructuring & moving operations to Europe
The Bending Spoons and Meetup teams have been working together to bring the acquisition to a successful close and to ensure the vibrant Meetup community continues to thrive for years to come.
After evaluating the team structure, overlapping roles, and other logistical considerations, it became apparent that the best way to support Meetup’s continued success is to integrate it fully into Bending Spoons.
Regrettably, moving Meetup’s operations to our home turf in Europe means significantly reducing the size of the US-based team. We’ve now communicated to the whole Meetup staff that a layoff is taking place that will impact many of them. We then promptly informed the impacted individuals, who will receive a substantial separation package that includes sixteen weeks of pay and up to twelve months of health insurance coverage.
The layoff decision was not made lightly, and the entire Bending Spoons team is grateful to those departing for their work in building Meetup and helping millions of people create their own communities around the world. We’re honored to take the reins and build upon their efforts, and we hope to make the entire Meetup community proud.
The future of Meetup
As a member of the Meetup community, this news might make you curious about what’s in store for the future of your much-loved platform. I’d like to address that now.
Bending Spoons acquired Meetup because we believe in its mission to foster human connections, and we have an ambitious vision for its future. Over the next few years, we intend to invest nearly $50 million into improving the product and growing membership. To do so, we’ll leverage the expertise of the strong, sizable Bending Spoons workforce. The team has been hard at work these past few weeks to get familiar with the intricacies of the product and understand how we can best serve you, the Meetup community, going forward.
Some of the top opportunities that we’ve identified are as follows:
- Improving the discoverability of relevant events
- Reducing the friction for organizers to create events and engage with their communities
- Simplifying and automating areas of the experience that are currently buggy and aren’t optimized
I’m happy to say that our first new initiative, the Meetup Community Fund, has received over 1,500 applications since it was announced on January 23. This $50,000 initiative recognizes the thousands of organizers who have contributed to the growth of the global Meetup community over the years. The Fund will support exceptional Meetup organizers so that their communities can continue to grow. If you think you’d be a good candidate, I encourage you to apply at this link before February 14.
Thank you for putting your faith in Meetup and Bending Spoons. We’ll continue to share updates with you in due course.
Until next time,
Luca.
Last modified on February 5, 2024
