It's not a goodbye, it's see you soon!
Pausing to reflect on our story, and reimagining MeetHub's future: Join us as our CEO shares a personal message on MeetHub's journey, our pause to strategize ahead, and our unyielding fight against loneliness amidst the ongoing pandemic. Discover our story and the path forward from the founder’s desk.
It's been a crazy ride of 507 days since we launched MeetHub. After much reflection, we've decided to temporarily pause MeetHub to re-envision and create something even more impactful. While our resilient COVID-19 pandemic rages on, our combat against the age-old pandemic of loneliness is far from done.
Dear MeetHubsters,
I hope this letter finds you and your family doing well in these challenging times. It's a tough world out there, with all the grim news, and I have some disappointing news to add to it. TL;DR: We are forced to take a break, and shut down MeetHub for the time being! This change in our logo, sums it all up.
But wait, there is a lot more to the story. Allow this old man to reminisce a little bit! :)
Can you believe it's been just one year since that ominous nationwide lockdown? Our lives have changed a lot in these last 12 months, right how we interact with people (Am I audible?!), to how we entertain ourselves with all the OTT content churning out. We have lost the human touch, a vital essence of a strong bond. The silver lining is that we now know its value!
As you all know, when COVID-19 hit, we shifted our approach, pausing our offline events and meetups and building an online platform to continue offering meaningful experiences ranging from the online game and trivia nights, Netflix watch parties, and hobby clubs such as reading sessions, musical evenings, to growth activities such as mental health counselling and skill classes by experts. (I learned some mixology too with you all. If you're ever in Bangalore, hit me up for some mean cocktails. I'm calling mine Drunk SuPrMan, reminiscing my moniker. I'm all ears to learn how you've grown in this one year and how we at MeetHub have been part of your life!)
We have come a long way, haven't we? Here are some Picture of the day memories and a peek into how we did the last year.
We recently crossed 1,000,000 hours of community engagement, hitting an all-time high of 15,207 users! 🙌🏼🥳
The way we have quickly transitioned, and grown by 3x, adding more than 10,000 new users is a testament to the resilience and passion of our vibrant community!
It's been an eventful year, but this was always supposed to be a temporary measure to prioritize the safety and well-being of you and your loved ones. Just as things were looking positive in the last couple of months, with the lowest cases reported in January at less than 10,000, the teams met offsite to ideate and relaunch with a bang once things are safer to step out!
Alas, as the pattern suggested, the ongoing second wave in India, intensified by the dangerous Delta variant, has profoundly affected us all, especially the young guns such as yourselves, compelling us to remain quarantined for the foreseeable future. More than 70,000 new cases were reported yesterday alone! Stay at home unless you're on the frontline. (Thank you for your service to our nation, if you're one of the heroes!) Stay safe, everyone!
We have grown 3x over the last 9 months since launching the online platform in July, 2020. They say that with great power comes great responsibility. With this fast growth in the last few months since this pivot to purely online, we have found ourselves questioning how we drive engagement, solve for loneliness and healthy mental development of the people in such an isolated world, and create a larger impact as we grow MeetHub. On that front, we have wrestled with a crucial question: how can we sustain quality experiences for members and grow as a business in a virtual world, driving healthy engagement without compromising our core values.
It feels like ages ago that we launched MeetHub with a clear mission:
Connecting people offline over real-world experiences to beat the looming loneliness pandemic while distinguishing ourselves against other social networking companies who resort to dark practices that promote FOMO, addiction, and negative self-worth.
Unlike other (online) social networking products, we don't face a dilemma. We are in a crisis as the choice is clear.
For us, you're not a product; you are family!
With that ethos in mind, we are temporarily pausing MeetHub to prepare for something even more impactful. We set out to combat the major looming loneliness pandemic, and just as we started to taste success by changing the lives of people, another devastating pandemic in the form of CoVID-19 joined forces. But, like everything, this will also pass, and we will come back stronger!
By this time, I'm sure you all must have many questions in your mind.
What does "hiatus" mean?
Just as the title says, hiatus means this is not a goodbye. We will be taking some time off to think about how can we bring back the offline events to their previous best and go beyond or how to add healthy value in an online-first world? I'm betting on the latter, given that these last years have significantly changed people's behaviours. Even when this ends (very soon, I pray), the world will not be the same anymore.
As this FY is ending, we will be ceasing all operational expenses and not allow any new registrations. The current mobile and web apps will be functional for the next 30 days until 30th April, 2021. Please save any data meanwhile, including getting in touch with your friends, and getting their contact details. After this, we will slowly shut down the website in a few days.
If you need any help/support, you know where to reach us: support@meethub.com. Our lines will be operational until the end of this year, 2021 (a full circle of 2 years) to ensure this operation is graceful.
Where are we going?
Jokes apart, while we are sunsetting the platform and the live experiences to minus the operational costs of running a company! (To date, we have had 1071 paid patrons and 138 premium ticketed events out of 352 total events, but we've largely kept things free so to reach the masses!).
We will still be accessible in our Discord server, where we still have more than 15000 MeetHubsters, some lurking, many active. We will keep you company in these unprecedented times while engaging with you all as we ideate on what to do next, especially, the co-creators amongst you. If you'd like to join the fleet of co-creators, there's room now! Here's a sneak peek at what the team is up to these days!
Few parting words
We have loved having you as a part of this community we are deeply grateful to the co-creators for helping us shape this beautiful product. We want to thank you for all you have done to make MeetHub a special place. Thank you for being you
I'll leave you with a beautiful community interaction that's etched in our memories.
With love on behalf of the entire MeetHub Family, Surya Pradyumna aka SuPrMan, Co-Founder & CEO, MeetHub