2002
Meetup.com launches (2002)
Scott Heiferman and co-founders launched Meetup as a platform for people to organize local gatherings around shared interests, from book clubs to hiking groups. It grew quickly, popularizing the idea that strangers could build sustained in-person communities offline.
Then
Meetup became a default tool for local interest groups, reaching tens of millions of members at its peak.
Now
Its later remote pivot and platform constraints showed the model's ceiling, leaving room for curated, paid operators to capture the market.
Why this matters now
Kindred applies the same in-person gathering premise but runs paid, vetted events rather than self-organized groups, a later stage of the offline-community market.