Meetsies
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Meetsies
Online meeting platform
Public Limited Company
Belgium
Partnership with Kiron University,
Zoë King, city manager of Brussels
Simon Landsheere
Nik Subramanian, Ségolène Martin, Peter Heremans
Summary
Meetsies believes that meeting people should be easier. They bring together hosts and guests around the same idea: making friends. Meetsies allows those who like to organize events at their place, and those who like to attend to do just that!
Background
Meetsies was started by Nik Subramanian, Ségolène Martin and Peter Heremans in March 2015. They had the idea of starting Meetsies because they found it difficult to meet new people and most of all meet people from new horizons. The main focus is on food because people like food and food tells where people come from. When people are having a dinner or a lunch, they will talk easier. But now that Meetsies is growing, people can meet through different kind of things. Their focus isn’t just on food anymore. It’s on everything that brings people closer like games, food, books, movies, …
They describe their company as an online platform which allows people to be creative, to invite people for lots of things and to show their personality to people they don’t know. Community is the most important word they use. They want people to be confident with themselves and maintain a relationship with each other.
A the moment they finance themselves. They grow really fast and there are people who show interest in their company but because of the gap between people in real life and people behind their screen, investors don’t believe 100% in the company yet. Maybe they will find financing facilities in the future.
Mission
Helping people in finding their place within a community. They want to help people with meeting other people so they don’t feel lonely anymore. First of all, they had the mission to bring people together by food but now their mission is more open so they give people the opportunity to meet by games, books, movies, …
Vision
Their vision is being successful in a way that they help people finding their place within a community. They want to help people who are lonely but also refugees for example to integrate themselves in the community.
Values
Communication, honesty, integrity and perfection of the result but you’re allowed to follow an imperfect way.
Business Model
Meetsies is based on a business model like AirBnB uses. There are people who organise an event with for example a dinner of fish and chips, then there will be a maximum of people who can participate at this event. After that the event is placed online, it’s at other persons, people who would like to meet new faces, to react on this and pay, mostly, a small price for the food. The company itself will ask a commission of 15% on the price that the inviter askes to the invitees. But as already mentioned, people can also invite other persons for a movie night, a card game, … So there are a lot of categories people can choose out. Another important USP of Meetsies is that people can add to their invitation that they will donate a percentage of their price to the Kiron University in Berlin. This is a university that takes care of refugees and gives them the opportunity to study. This will convince people to react quicker on the invitations because they support a charity. The inviter can also give an indication of what age category he/she wants to invite. To get the concept on the rails, the workers at Meetsies organise a lot of events themselves. This will make the invitees feel comfortable with the concept and convince them to organize events like theirs as well. When people are interested in this concept and want to meet people, the first thing they’ll have to do is to create a profile on Meetsies. This is necessary because the invitee and inviter know the names of who will come and who invites. For Meetsies this is also helpful because by this way they create a database of people and can send a newsletter to all those people with their monthly updates.
During the starting-up of their company, they got some help by the KBC start.it incubator. They provided them with information but also with a shared building. They share a building with other start-ups so they don’t have to invest in a building as well.
Meetsies is a company that is quite small. Not a lot of people know about their company yet because they’ve only just started. But they do a lot of online marketing to reach their customers. Social media is their biggest tool to promote their business. Facebook is the most popular tool they use because there are a lot of people who use Facebook and it’s easy to use. Besides that, they also use Twitter and Instagram to promote their company. Online blogs and newsletters are also online tools they use to catch the attention of people. There are a lot of advantages of using social media for marketing. It’s not expensive and when someone likes their Facebook page for example, his/her friends will see it and then they can get interested and so on.
Growth
They feel that they’re growing. Last month for example they had more people who participated in events but also more inviters. Besides this people asked them more questions as well so they feel that people are getting interested in the concept. In the beginning of February, they also had a radio interview and in the near future they will have a TV interview. A reason why they get more attention is thanks to the contract with the Kiron University of Berlin.
Customers
Meetsies doesn’t want to say that they focus on a specific segment. Everyone who wants to participate at an event can actually participate. So the ‘events’ are very varied. Their marketing is focussed on social media so of course young people will be easier to attract, but even people above 65 are on Facebook now so they don’t want to exclude them. Miss Zoë King gave an example of what she experienced herself. She had a dinner with 2 couples. One couple was around the age of 30 and the other was around the age of 70. Because of the age difference, you would think that their interests aren’t the same but nothing is less true. They had good conversations about a lot of things.
Meetsies’ their goal is to bring people of all kind of ages together but also all kind of genders, races, … Out of the experiences, most of the people who participate at the events, are people who are desperate, singles who just broke up, the gay community, … Because of their concept, people care less about who you are and what you do. People get easier accepted by each other.
Competitors
Meetsies is still quite new but they’ve already some competitors. Examples of direct competitors are Made Up or Social Belly (London) but Meetsies doesn’t look at them like real competitors because Meetsies has certain boundaries while the others don’t have as much boundaries as they have. So for the moment they just keep focusing on their own. Examples of indirect companies are all the take away companies, … They are still doing a lot of research to figure out who their indirect competitors are.
They don’t think that there are already companies who copied their business concept. Sometimes they see companies who are doing the same things, but mostly there are some differences between them so they didn’t copy them for 100%. But because their company can be very similar to another one, people will be attracted to the one they saw first, so marketing is really important in this business.
Conclusion
The opportunities for Meetsies are that they can expand very fast as they are an internet company. They want to expand quickly to London, Paris and Berlin. Another opportunity is that they are with 4 creative people who are pushing each other to a whole new level and help each other in finding new things to focus on. The threats are that they don’t believe in their company anymore or if they don’t know any more how to think objectively. They are an internet company so they have to change really quick if they want to remain attractive to people.
The things they’ve learnt already from starting a company is that it’s hard to let people see the vision that you see. You have to educate people, for sure when you’re using a complete new concept. Besides this you also have to be confident in what you’re doing.
Getting people motivated in partnerships, in willing to experience new things and on social media is one of the biggest struggles they experience. But they think that’s a seasonal thing. When the weather will be better, people are happier and will organise pick nick events, …
There are also a few hints they gave for future starters. Research is the most important thing you have to do before and while you start a company. You also have to support other companies because you can learn from them but they can also learn from you. Knowing your product and trust in your instinct are also important things you need to focus on.
Posted on 16/03/2016