Real Meetups in a Digital World

NEW YORK—Three years ago, Lance Somerfeld, a stay-at-home dad, set out to find some other dads like him. Lance started by posting an ad in the laundry room of his Upper East Side apartment building. No answers. He tried to connect with other dads through friends. Ditto. It wasn’t until a friend recommended he try Meetup.com that he finally found other stay-at-home dads.

Somerfeld started the New York City Dads Meetup Group (nycdadsgroup.com) in November 2008. The group has grown to 458 members since then.

“We started as a very small stay-at-home dads play group. But we’ve grown into, and it really just happened organically, a dads group that is all-inclusive,” said Somerfeld. “Any dad who enjoys spending quality time with their children is the kind of dad that joins our group.”

Meetup.com was exactly what Somerfeld was looking for: a digital meeting space that brought real people together. All kinds of fathers join his group: work from home, freelancers, journalists, and teachers among others.

“I think what makes our dads group unique from other dads groups that are probably out there is that we’re pretty tight knit,” Somerfeld said. “We run it with the notion that we’re trying to be a necessary resource for fathers to navigate parenthood.”

With that in mind, the dads took their kids on a playground tour this summer, visiting everyone’s favorite playgrounds. They go out to the Central Park Zoo when it’s warm and to the Museum of Natural History when it gets colder. They’ve rented out the skybox for the Staten Island Yankees and had a day out on Governor’s Island.

Fun isn’t the only goal of New York Dads Meetup. The group is adding meaning to its gatherings by holding parenting workshops. The trend started with mom groups, but these dads aren’t the kind to fall behind. From potty training to the pre-school admission process, from positive discipline to sleep habits, experts have come to provide training on subjects that may seem daunting to most.

“A lot of people think of a parenting group as just getting together at a park or a playground,” said Somerfeld. “We do a whole lot more than that. There’s a lot more depth to our meetup.”

The fathers met with Jim Higley, author of “Bobblehead Dad,” and Jeremy Adam Smith, author of “The Daddy Shift.” They partner with local businesses like Gymboree and Music Together. Swim classes for the kids, soccer classes for the dads—activities like these fill the group’s schedule.

“For me as a father, starting out on probably the most challenging journeys of my life—being connected and socializing and having that support of this tight knit group of fathers has made me a better dad,” said Somerfeld.

The Meetup Group is one of the reasons why Somerfeld never went back to work full time. It has allowed him to enjoy being great at the role of stay-at-home dad.

Meetup.com

Scott Heiferman founded Meetup.com in 2001. Meetup’s mission is to bring people together by making it possible for anyone to organize a meetup or join an existing group. Meetup makes money through user fees from group organizers.

At 9.8 million users in 45,000 cities, Meetup is a global entity with a local mission—to help people connect, first online and then in person.

“I’ve honestly never seen a company whose mission is so positive and so genuine and so permeated throughout everything we do,” said Kathryn Fink, community development lead at Meetup.com. “That mission is to empower people to self-organize.”

The company is based in New York, with all but one employee working at an office steps from Broadway and Houston Street. Most of the staff are born and raised New Yorkers. Heiferman couldn’t be more proud of the fact. The Meetup CEO put together a list of advantages of working at Meetup compared to Google, underlining the city’s diversity and dynamic lifestyle.

“At Google, you eat exquisite free Google Food with other Googlers at the Googleplex, prepared by Chef Googlers. It’s the best company food around,” Heiferman writes. “At Meetup, you eat at one of NYC’s 18,696 restaurants. They’re not free, but some are cheap. It’s the best cafeteria in the world.”

Next…Entrepreneurs