Grubwithus meals are hosted at restaurants and typically bring together six to 10 people who have never met each other. Everyone pays in advance for their meal on the Grubwithus site — the start-up generally takes a 20% to 30% cut of each transaction — so there's no mulling over the menu or bickering over the tab.
In L.A., there have been Grubwithus meals geared toward traveling enthusiasts, vegans, Clippers fans and music aficionados. A recent dinner at the Venice Ale House was devoted to people who love beer and the television show "Arrested Development."
Grubwithus has tripled its user base since the beginning of the year, with meal reservations growing 15% month over month; the company has more than 80,000 subscribers. It launched out of start-up accelerator program Y Combinator and has raised $7.6 million in financing from investors including Ashton Kutcher and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Since February, Self has attended nine Grubwithus meals and said he has made a handful of friends from the dinners.
"It's definitely added to my experience in this city," he said, though he added that some "can be hit or miss."
"I've been to ones before where you're sitting in between two people who are not really talking at all, or are not very interesting," he said. "And you're like, well, at least the food's good."
Grubwithus Chief Executive Eddy Lu said users like such online-offline sites because they provide a safe way for people to meet — members identify themselves through their profiles and get the chance to communicate with one another online before meeting at a business or other public place.
Another rising tech start-up is Grouper, which connects two groups of friends for face-to-face hangouts after pairing them online. Users apply for membership and are matched with someone else on the site. Each person then invites two other friends to join in for drinks; after prepaying online for the first round of drinks, the group of six meets at a bar chosen by Grouper. The setup takes away some of the awkwardness of meeting someone new alone, said Michael Waxman, Grouper's co-founder and chief executive.
Launched in New York last year, Grouper expanded to L.A. in September.
"In a lot of ways, we're the anti-Facebook," Waxman said. "One of the original things that played into the genesis of Grouper was the idea that social software didn't make a lot of sense. There's this underlying paradox: Facebook, Twitter, social products — you usually use them by yourself by the glow of your computer screen."
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