Scott Heiferman, cofounder and CEO of Meetup, which runs a platform for organizing meetings, yesterday notified the company's employees that Meetup was being acquired by shared work space company WeWork, cofounded by Israeli Adam Neumann and Miguel Mckelvey, the crunchbase website has reported. Both companies declined to comment on the report at this stage.
The report said that Heiferman had mentioned the sum of $30 million at the meeting with the company's employees, but it is unclear whether he was referring to the price for the acquisition or the projected investment by WeWork. Heiferman also said that the acquisition would make it possible to double the company's size.
WeWork, with an estimated value of $20 billion, has raised half of this amount to date, including $4.4 billion announced last August from Japanese corporation Softbank and its Vision fund.
WeWork operates 255 office compounds in 58 cities worldwide. It has announced four acquisitions in the past six months: Singaporean office rental company Spacemob; Israeli startup Unomy, which founded a marketing and sales platform for businesses; Flatiron School, an academy for programmers in New York that raised $14 million before being acquired; and Fieldens, a technology company that improves communication and coordination on construction sites.
WeWork also recently made a major real estate purchase in New York. A month ago, Canadian company HBC announced that it had sold the building on Fifth Avenue that houses the flagship store of the Lord & Taylor chain for $850 million. WeWork will use the building for its headquarters.
Meetup, which operates from New York, has raised $19 million to date. Its most recent financing round was in 2014. The company runs a platform for organizing events and gatherings, mainly in high tech. 300,000 gatherings with 35 million registered participants have been organized to date through the company's platform. Crunchbase said that the official report of the deal is expected today.
WeWork has office developments in Tel Aviv and Herzliya and senior executives were here last week to examine a possible bond offering on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE).
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on November 28, 2017
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