 If you are an organizer and you want to have a global footprint, rather than having to create, you know, 50 or 100 different locations, you can have a global footprint with an online event. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week, and we want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Let's start by sharing a little bit of your journey to meet up. Yeah, OK. So first of all, we always say we use technology to get people off of technology. And if there's no better use of technology than to actually get people off of technology, I don't know what there is. And the reality is, it's so important, as you know, not just from an entrepreneurship and from a kind of building business and networking perspective, but just from even a human perspective. The loneliness epidemic that exists out there in the world is just kind of terrifying. You know, 46 percent of people who are serving before the pandemic said that they regularly feel lonely. 46 percent and 25 percent of people, one to four people don't have one trusted confidant. And it's among Gen Zers, by the way, it's like 66 percent of people regularly feel lonely. College students during the pandemic, it's just it's terrifying. So from a business perspective, it's awesome, obviously, as you both know and have experienced, and also just from a personal perspective. OK, to answer your question, on my story, so I was a early employee at DoubleClick, so I got started in the Internet days at like 23, 24 years old. And the reason why that's kind of relevant is because from it, you might appreciate this in terms of thinking about relationships. The person who hired me at DoubleClick was a leader named Kevin Ryan, who was the founder of MongoDB, Guilt, Business Insider, Zola and like 15 other companies. And he is the person that 20 plus years later, I got to acquire Meetup out of WeWork. That's a big fast forward. And we kept in touch throughout and he was my mentor throughout. So relationships matter to put it lightly. To give you a fill in that gap a little bit. After DoubleClick, I went to business school, I worked for a bunch of publishers, 100 flowers and everyday health. And then I became the president of Seeking Alpha. After that, the the CEO of Investopedia. And I love I love finance because I believed that people make poor financial decisions and that the mission of helping to educate people around finance meant a lot. At one point, the largest investor in Seeking Alpha came over to me and his name is Michael Eisenberg and he runs a big, big fund. He was an investor in Seattle and he was on the board of WeWork. And he said, David, what do you think of Meetup? And I said, like Meetup has changed. So I go to Meetup events all the time. I go there for networking purposes, go there and meet amazing people. Like Meetup has changed like millions of people's lives. I love Meetup. Like I'm obsessed with Meetup. I'm obsessed with like interpersonal connections and helping people to lead more meaningful lives and lead more meaningful lives by getting together in person with people. Right. So he said, okay, that's good because we want you to become the next CEO. But I'm like, well, they already have a CEO. They're founders. Scott Hyperman. He's been the CEO and founder for like 17 years. Like, yeah, well, so after WeWork acquired Meetup, there was a decision to look for a new CEO. And 27 interviews later, I was hired. So I've been with the company for two and a half years, the only second CEO in Meetup's history. Best job I've ever had by far, predominantly because I really feel like I make a major difference in people's lives and make the world a better place. And and that's, you know, super important to me. Johnny and I can attest to that. And many of our clients who've moved towns or starting over socially, we've highly recommended because let's be honest, if there's a shared interest or a shared reason that you're in the room, connection magically happens a lot easier. So if you're struggling a bit with social anxiety, you're new to a town or an industry, and you're starting over, it's a great opportunity to get like-minded people in a room together who are open to connection, versus trolling random events or bars or opportunities where we're not gathering for those specific reasons. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Now, of course you have been CEO and leader of Meetup through a pandemic where meeting up in person is not really possible. And of course with a goal of using technology to get people off of technology, I doubt Meetup went in thinking that virtual events would be an opportunity for you to explore with its core ethos being bringing people together. So let's talk a little bit about what's changed about Meetup through this pandemic experience that none of us had really planned for. Yeah, so there's a saying, never fail to take advantage of, you know, a potential crisis or a challenge. And there were so many opportunities that in certain ways have truly helped Meetup to provide a better experience for its members and organizers that we were too scared to do in the past. So very specifically, the number one reason why we refuse to bring on organizers in the past was because they said we want to create virtual Meetup events. And we said, well, we're an IRL only platform. And we turned down no joke, tens of thousands of organizers because they wanted to create events that were virtual in nature with Zoom or whatever the Skype before that, you know, and have people all around the world. And we said, no, no, no, we don't do that. Well, in late February, we started seeing China, you know, the events and the RSVPs in China like go off a cliff. Like I'm not saying like 30 or 40 percent, I'm talking like 90 percent down. And suddenly like Italy 90 percent down. And we're like, oh, that's never going to happen in the US. Like it's going to be like, you know, swine flu or SARS, which is horrible, horrible devastating, but didn't really impact the US in any meaningful way. Obviously we're wrong. We were we were one of our employees was the first case of of of COVID and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. And we actually, you know, ironically, Meetup was one of the first companies to have to leave their their their office space in a WeWork, no less. I'm like March 2nd or March 3rd super early. And we're like, OK, what do we do? So we gathered everyone together and we said, change your policy. Now, you know, safety is the most important thing. We need to make sure people are safe and and we opened up the ability for online events. We created the ability for people to use 200 different event platforms. Zoom obviously being the most well known, but there's lots of different ones out there. And in the last year and a half since the pandemic started, we have had over three million online events. And now we're seeing, you know, due to the vaccines, things growing again. And just to just to I lead a podcast and I hate when people wax out for too long, but this this will be quick. So so just to share this one last tidbit, which is online events provide so much value for both members and organizers. And let me explain if you live in a rural town and you, let's say, are the parent of ADHD kids. And there's no meetup group for parents of ADHD kids in this rural town in Canada, like a friend of mine. So now he's able to be part of a parents of ADHD online group that has people from 30 or 40 different countries, which is a real value for a member. If if you are an organizer and you want to have a global footprint, rather than having to create, you know, 50 or 100 different locations, you can have a global footprint with an online event. Ultimately, it never can replace in person. And hybrid events is what's going to be something that becomes extremely popular in the future of both in person and online. And we're facilitating that. But there's so much value to be gained from members and organizers through going online. It's really been a blessing. It's really been a blessing. So what do you see as some of the biggest challenges as we move forward and your company goes back to IRL events after the entire world has been conditioned to pull everything back and has gotten incredibly comfortable sitting at home and doing everything as we are doing it right now. And I belong to certain groups and there is a focus on, hey, this has been great, but things are opening up. And unless we can transition this in real life, then our mission, our purpose and everything is going to collapse in on itself because all of those things solidify with face to face person to person interaction. Yeah, I think, Johnny, you have the tale of two worlds. You have the introvert world and you have the extrovert world, right? On the extrovert world, if there's like a group of salespeople or marketers that they're dying to get back out and they're just out there and the vaccines are happening and they're going IRL and we're seeing groups that are filled with more extra, like whether it's hiking groups or certain sports groups we're seeing enormous growth like people playing pick a ball, whatever, all these different groups we're seeing enormous growth in groups that have personalities that are more extroversion oriented. Now, the opposite, groups that are more correlated with introversion, not to stereotype but let's say many of our tech groups out there or some of our potential social groups out there especially around introverts, they definitively do need more coaxing and nudging and encouraging. So at one point in time, we created something called Meetup Live to help organizers be more successful at the transition from in person to online. Now we're actually doing the opposite and we're creating workshops for organizers who have been doing online for so long of how to get a plan and how to manage getting back in person and to understand that in the beginning there's going to be some people that are being less comfortable getting together back in person and that's okay. You don't need to wait until everyone is comfortable getting back in person. You need to wait until enough people are comfortable getting back in person that it will start becoming a regular flow and just the answer is Nike. Just do it.