Quick Notes From a Social Networking Entrepreneur

Here are some tidbits of advice from my own experience over the last two years:

1. When you’re starting a simple social network, especially right when the industry is really blowing up and niche sites are popping up everywhere, don’t delay developing, even if you think you need more capital. My partner and I are very happy with the work our developer did. We specifically focused on scalability because we made it a priority to have the website be able to handle tens, if not hundreds of thousands of users on the site if it happens to grow quickly. However, in waiting to raise funds and develop the site, you lose valuable time you could use to get your name out there and build your brand when your idea is still fairly novel. In addition, if you have a technical co-founder (my partner is) try to develop even a bare-bones skeleton of a site first, if you can.
2. Take whatever time estimate a developer gives you, and AT LEAST double it. Again, we loved our developer and he did a great job on the site, it just took a tremendous amount of time to get everything done. Because we took time formulating the idea and raising capital, and therefore let competitors establish themselves, we felt that we had to have a very good working website, so we waited until the developer was 99% and almost all the apparent kinks were out to launch the site. Also, there is a catch-22 with regards to the contract you have with your developer. If you have a fixed contract, you know exactly what you are paying, regardless of how long it takes. If you have a pay per time contract, you can save money if your developer happens to finish quickly. In addition, with a fixed contract you can stipulate how many weeks you would like the development to take, so that if the developer takes longer, you can recover some money under breach of contract. Although my partner and I could have done this, as our developer went over the stipulated time, we thought it would be counterproductive and therefore found this provision useless. With our site 75% done and done well at that, we did not want to start fighting with our developer and create tension.
3. If you’re not technical, but have an idea for a business in a technical space, don’t worry about your lack of knowledge. I am in no way technical, and even after starting a website I still can’t code a single line. However, having technical knowledge, even without being able to actually build anything, can help when you’re evaluating different strategies, especially when you have a certain budget, because you need to know what you can and can’t do with your users and data, and how much time and money it may cost you to program certain functionalities into your site.
4. You can’t just throw a group of like-minded people into a social network, and expect them to start talking and creating things. My partner and I initially focused on marketing and outreach to recruit users, but eventually realized that although we had been successful in our efforts to get them on the site, we failed to provide much value as there was little content—just shells we had created for content to be generated in. So, my partner and I started posting articles and discussion topics, in order to one, give some content, and therefore value to our users, and two, to begin tangential discussions amongst our users.

Feedback, as always, is welcomed.