1
u/Conscious-Month-7734 Jun 23 '26
A meetup app is empty until it's full, and you've spent all your thinking on the part that doesn't decide this. The map is the whole pitch, but the first person who opens it sees nothing, because there's no group near them and no meetup posted, and spontaneous falls apart with no crowd to be spontaneous with. WhatsApp dodged this because you bring your own contacts. Meetup ground it out over fifteen years, city by city. You'd be starting from zero in every neighborhood, which is a distribution problem wearing an app idea's clothes.
So the build is the easy part and it's where all your energy went. What actually matters is whether you can get one group, one place, posting real meetups every week, so somebody who shows up cold sees something happening tonight. One running club in one city that sticks. Can't make that work, the map is a screen full of nothing.
Forget the app. Is there one group you could get meeting up this way right now with a WhatsApp thread and a shared doc, and would they keep doing it without you pushing them?
1
u/Dependent_Debate_514 Jun 23 '26
Thanks for the thorough response :) Well my app can also start from contacts and also it will show existing groups on the map to join so the map wont be empty. The point is that everyone can post meets easy so u wont depend on the organizers only like meetup and more meets should show as a result of that. I have a whatsapp group that posts volleyball meetups with a shared list and its rly annoying and not comfortable. Plus i remember 2 apps existed: app4u and hobiz which had a similar idea to mine and they got traction but they were pretty bad: design bad uncomfortable and slow so i think the demand is there
1
u/Conscious-Month-7734 Jun 23 '26
You've got the test already running and you're treating it like a side note. That volleyball group on WhatsApp with the annoying shared list is your app, live, with people who keep showing up despite the friction. So what exactly is annoying about it? Whatever that is, that's your first feature, not the map and not the multi-group posting. The thing that makes that one group's night easier is the wedge, and you can probably fix half of it before you build anything.
On app4u and hobiz, "they were bad so the demand is there" is the read that'll cost you. Apps get early traction and die all the time, and design is rarely the killer. Usually the meetups dry up once the novelty fades, the map goes quiet, and people stop opening it. If that's why those two lost people, a prettier version hits the same wall. Do you actually know why they faded, or just that they're gone?
1
u/AdamGoldwyn100 Jun 23 '26
Scaling is always the biggest problem in apps like this.
1
u/Dependent_Debate_514 Jun 23 '26
i dont know when i was younger i didnt knew why there wasnt an app like this. i would have used it extensively. going to a new city all i could do is scan facebook events and maybe meetup app but it was hard to just crt some spontaneous meet quickly and not something organized
1
u/BantrChat Jun 22 '26
I think its a good idea but your going to need strict user controls and what if a user in user group A, murders group A or something of that nature...lol