WeWork Buys Meetup, the Service for Bringing Hobbyists Together<br />“You can’t have a musty church basement or whatever space people used in the old days.”<br />But Shiva Rajaraman, WeWork’s chief product officer, said<br />that the deal had been done for a bigger reason: to help instill a sense of broader community in the company’s spaces<br />In August, Mr. Heiferman met with WeWork’s chief executive, Adam Neumann,<br />and the two quickly came to believe that uniting the two companies made sense.<br />WeWork announced on Tuesday that it had bought Meetup, whose 35 million members use the service<br />to find fellow aficionados of some common interest: drone racing, say, or learning Dutch.<br />“It’s like a magical puzzle that fits together,” said Scott Heiferman, the chief executive and a co-founder of Meetup.<br />The event-organizing service has at least broken even over the last few years and has not taken in outside money in years, Mr. Heiferman said.
