We wanted to make spontaneous meetups happen. However, our real world is not made for spontaneous meetups. You have to spam about 70 people to find some people to meet spontaneously. And if you only have 10 friends near you, chances are not good that a spontaneous meetup will happen.
* I'm pretty sure everyone agrees that customer-driven development is key, so who were you building this for and why were they interested?
* What are they doing to solve their problem at the moment and how is your solution better?
* What evidence did you have that this was a good idea?
* What evidence do you have now that this is a bad idea?
* Why does it have to be friends - can you facilitate spontaneous meetups with strangers (ideally with similar interests and values)?
* Why does it have to be spontaneous - could it connect people who will agree to meet [sometime today/this week/by the end of month]?
* Why do you "spam" people - why not have people collectively opt-in with a "I'm free" marker (with various [free to anyone|free to friends])? Bonus points if you can align calendars to suggest a free time (why Google doesn't do this I'm not sure).
* Is "spontaneous meetups" the right way to sell the idea? What about [coffee-with-interesting-people/speed-dating-in-your-lunch-hour/try-something-new-every-week/never-eat-alone-again/get-fit-with-strangers]?
Maybe you could create a kickstarter for meetups? Someone can schedule a meetup, and depending on how many people sign up the meetup either does or doesn't happen? It's very hard for my local subreddit to schedule meetups, but if people could just throw out dates then it would be much easier. I'm not sure what the monetization strategy would be, though.
