Curated Connections vs. Matcha

Meetsy (or is it Matcha now?) by Commsor (or is it Bronto now?) is a good tool built by hardworking employees.

It has a gorgeous landing page and a beautiful design. But it didn't work for me. That's why I built Curated Connections in early 2023. And based on what happened at the company soon after, I'm glad that I did.

But before I give you a history lesson, I want to compare the products on their features and tell you why Matcha didn't work for me. You, today, might be in the same spot as I was in early 2023.

Best tool for the job

Matcha requires all your community members to use Matcha's calendar scheduling and meetings software. This may be good for Matcha (more features to justify their B2B pricing) or for you (maybe you can use the data on exact minutes your members met to make a business case, somehow).

But is it good for your members?

My members preferred to use robust tools that they used every day for the rest of their meetings - like Calendly and Zoom.

That's why Curated Connections, allows your members to use their Calendly links (or anything similar) to schedule meetings with other members. Thus, reducing friction and increasing the success rate of a connection.

Scheduling nightmares

Put yourself in the shoes of your members and imagine this scenario:

• You sign up for the Matcha program and set 11am - 1pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays as your availability because that’s when you generally do random coffee chats.
• But a few weeks later, your workload increases and you are only able to block 11:30am - 12pm on Tuesdays for networking calls.
• So, you change this on your regular Calendly link. But you forget to sign into your Matcha account and update that calendar.
• And now you start receiving matches for 12pm on Thursdays - the time you’ve set up for client calls.

How annoyed will you be? How many of these networking calls will you ghost? How many weeks will it be before you unsubscribe altogether?

Curated Connections, on the other hand, gives your members complete control over their scheduling. It makes amazing introductions between your members and allows them to share their regular calendar scheduling links.

Many community builders have seen that this is what works best for busy professionals who get on multiple networking calls in a month.

History of shutting down products

This is the part that I was hesitant to put in this article. That's because I generally like the people on their team. I'm also inspired by their founder's origin story.

But I was impacted by the company's bad behaviour in the past. So I believe that it's my duty to do my part in telling you about it as it can influence your business decision.

Time for the history lesson:

Matcha is built by a VC-funded company called Commsor. They used to provide tools, education and community for community professionals. Even raised $50M for it. Commsor, Community Club, Commsaur and Meetsy (which is now rebranded to Matcha) - multiple offerings.

But in 2023, they started shutting down everything. Abruptly. One after the other. Even the tools that had 100s of paying customers.

I was one such customer - of Commsaur, their NFT-powered community school under construction. They shut it down with no notice and people like me lost 100s of dollars. Worst part? We never received any apology or even an explanation from the CEO.

This is the #1 reason why I will forever be hesitant to do any business with the company.

I say this knowing fully well that most businesses don't work out and it's natural. Even more so for VC-funded B2B SaaS businesses.

That's why, Curated Connections is structured in a way that favours the longevity of our products:

• We are bootstrapped with no plans to go the venture route. So we won't need this product to generate 10s of millions in revenue to make it worthwhile. In fact, we don't expect it to. We are in it to solve our own problems and make a comfortable living from it along the way.
• This makes me confident that we'll be around longer than most of our competition who are VC-funded, like Matcha.
• In the event of a catastrophe, we intend to keep the lights on as long as we have 1 paying customer. That is my commmitment to my customers.

Other features

• Pricing - Finally, Curated Connections is proud of offering all of our features for an easy to justify price of $29/month, which gives you access to unlimited members. Matcha on the other hand, costs $199/month for solving the same problem.