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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

Plenty of folks are sick of Meetup, so there should be a fertile audience. One question I would have before migrating an existing group is what your plans are for making this sustainable. People don't want to jump to a new platform that is great, only to find it migrate in the direction of the platform they've just left. On the other hand, people don't want to migrate to a platform that is going to go under because it's not financially sustainable.

If you can be transparent about what your goals are and what it will take you to get there, you'll probably find a lot more people willing to make the leap. I think of Garry Tan's Posthaven as a good model. [1]

1: https://posthaven.com/pledge

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Such a simple thing as a meetup clone does not cost much to host, and is therefore immediately economically sustainable. The real concern is, as usual: is it easy to move from meetup to there, will my friends do it, etc, which depends on:

- how simple it is to register an account

- how certain are we this is not going to take the same path to profit than meetup

An example I often consider is that of bewelcome.org, that become huge after Covid when couchsurfing decided to preserve its margins by raising prices. The service is simple, non-profit, its management is open, and it's free. It mostly replaced couchsurfing, at least in the cities in europe where I used it.

Can the same be done with meetup? Maybe, I'm not sure people are frustrated by meetup as much as they were from couchsurfing, but I strongly believe that ruby-on-rail is not the distinguishing feature that will win the argument.

It may not cost much to host, but does it cost much to moderate?

Maybe it's easy to self-moderate because there are few opportunities for spamming in a site like bewelcome, because most communications are one to one (forums are, in my experience, not very active). Might be harder for a meetup clone, I don't know.

> how simple it is to register an account

I think the sign-up flow is super minimal/easy at this point, but I'd love any suggestions you've got in mind.

Relevant features I'll be adding to make it easier:-

- Sign-in with Google option

- Potentially simplifying the RSVP flow with an email magic link - someone suggested that here - https://github.com/radiushq/feature-requests/issues/10

> how certain are we this is not going to take the same path to profit than meetup

I'm pretty adamant about not copying Meetup's model and keeping a Free option available for Groups. I think having a Pro plan with additional features, and potentially taking a % of ticketing fees once we've added ticketing will be sufficient. Have a few other ideas around event listing promotion and group memberships but these aren't fully fleshed out yet.

Open to suggestions on how best to convey that I won't be going the Meetup route to profit!

Thanks again for this comment.

Having thought about it a little, I'm going to try and address this by:-

- Adding a Pledge/Goals page with my plan for the platform

- Adding a Pricing page with Free and Pro (Coming soon) options

- Adding a "How are we funded" entry to the FAQ, explaining it's completely bootstrapped by me (whilst having a day job, hurrah), with a monetization plan of being funded by Pro plans, ticketing etc

- Publishing monthly financial data, open startup style (there won't be much in here currently aside from my Heroku bill) for additional transparency

I'm also considering the suggestion to add a "Support us" page for any groups/individuals who want to contribute to development efforts/running costs (though I'd be surprised if anyone would at this point.)

> I think of Garry Tan's Posthaven as a good model. [1]

This is an awesome suggestion - definitely stealing that idea. Thanks!

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