Meetup ! An Ultra Speed Messaging Software

Dispatch reached a place where it would have needed an additional round to continue its efforts, but was having troubling raising from what we’ve heard. The product was struggling a bit to find a way to best incorporate itself into user workflows, as the pivot indicated. In addition, while the service, as it ended up, worked something like a group email address – like a Google Group or listserv, for example, but one allowing for more granular user controls – it didn’t offer integrations with other services where teams may have already been working on projects, like Basecamp.

This made it difficult for Dispatch to really carve out its niche, given it was light on features that would have allowed to to handle more structured tasks, timelines and deadlines, while still aiming to mirror those email-based work conversations to the web..

That being said, Dispatch did have a number of good features as well as a modern design and layout which you could easily imagine as part of a larger product, like Meetup.

Dispatch founders Jesse Lamb, Nicholas Stamas and Alex Godin are now joining Meetup, where they’ll form a new product team focused on improving communications within Meetup Groups.

For those unfamiliar with Dispatch’s focus, the startup had initially been working on building an online workspace that connected Dropbox, Google Docs, Evernote and Box, allowing teams to manage and collaborate on work projects in the cloud. But failing to gain significant traction for that product, the company pivoted this summer to shift its efforts to improving email-based collaboration.

Communications is only one area where Meetup is planning on making improvements in the months ahead. The company is also looking at other areas like payments, better international support, mobile improvements, design upgrades, and more. In some cases, these developments will be aided by future acquisitions.

But these will likely be smaller deals like this, where it’s about strategically adding smart, passionate people to the Meetup team. Heiferman insists that Meetup is focusing on staying relatively small itself – it’s 96 people today, and he wants it to continue to maintain its low profile as opposed to “flipping it” for a profit, or moving to an IPO.