I want to create a social network

Dont call me Shirley

Right, so I think I have a great idea to create a new social network. It's not reinventing the wheel but i think there is a gap in the social network market that could potentially attract a huge amount of customers (I'm not going into detail for obvious reasons). I'm just not sure how to get a site like this up and running.

Firstly a little background. I'm in my early thirties and am half way through a skills conversion course (HDip in Software Development), prior to this I did an MSc in Music & Technology. I'm not an experienced developer but I'd consider myself a good student and have got very strong grades. As part of this semesters college work we have to create a dynamic website and the idea came to me to develop this social network site, there are three others in my assignment group for this.

We're using Visual Studio to design and code the site, with Microsoft Access storing the data. I don't think we'll have a fully functional site by the time we're finished, but we should have a nice prototype.

Where do I go from there? I realize it will take a lot of backing to get a site like this to fulfill it's potential but how do I attract this backing, should I be looking to government agencies (enterprise Ireland etc) or private investors?

Am I using the right technologies? The only reason I've chosen these is because our module for web development is being thought using them, but is there something more suitable? Also, should I be looking to get a more experienced developer on board early on, or is it realistic that a graduate could develop a site like this pretty much in it's entirety?

Is it a good career move? Should this be successful the rewards, I'd imagine, would be huge but if it fails, for whatever reason, will it affect the day job? I know I'm a late starter at development so I don't want to spend time on something that will set-back a full-time career. How much time would I have to give it? Is it something I could do on a part-time basis (given that a lot of the coding groundwork should be done in college) or would i have to commit to it full-time in the hope of making the project viable?

Final question, is there anything I need to do to protect the idea? Is it something that should/could be patented or is it a matter of trying to establish the site as a 'player' quickly to prevent competition?

Graham

There are some related threads that may be able to get you started:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056878639

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056879374

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056879023

Dont call me Shirley

Graham wrote: »

There are some related threads that may be able to get you started:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056878639

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056879374

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056879023

Hi Graham, thanks for the links. I appreciate there's a lot of these 'I'm a noob with a great idea' threads! I suppose the two most specific questions I have are:

1. The career implications for an early thirties graduate in trying to set up their own business.

2. The viability of a graduate level programmer taking a college project to the next step.

oeb

Dont call me Shirley wrote: »

2. The viability of a graduate level programmer taking a college project to the next step.

I don't work too much with the windows web stack, but from what I know you might find that access will be a problem later on for scaling. You might be better off working with sql server.

See here for some more information.

As to the age thing? With a strong interest in the subject, and a bit of a flair for it, the age you begin at is not relevant (in my opinion).

suite16

Your local County Enterprise Board will have lots of advice and possibly grants/funding for a startup. Enterprise Ireland needs to see some track record and employee numbers etc. before they will lend a hand.

Dont call me Shirley

suite16 wrote: »

Your local County Enterprise Board will have lots of advice and possibly grants/funding for a startup. Enterprise Ireland needs to see some track record and employee numbers etc. before they will lend a hand.

Do you know what exactly Enterprise Ireland would be looking for? All I have is strong college grades and a very good idea (imho ). From where I'm looking at it the biggest problem will be the funds required to grow the site, it will require advertising to get the idea/site out there and i'd need to have the resources ready to go to ramp up the server space very quickly if it did take off.

Am I looking at trying to secure private funding here?

Graham

You'd need to be able to demonstrate you had more than a good idea. How may months have you put into researching this idea so far?

Dont call me Shirley

oeb wrote: »

I don't work too much with the windows web stack, but from what I know you might find that access will be a problem later on for scaling. You might be better off working with sql server.

See here for some more information.

As to the age thing? With a strong interest in the subject, and a bit of a flair for it, the age you begin at is not relevant (in my opinion).

Cheers, I had a hunch Access wouldn't be suitable for a large scale project. I think I'll keep it for the prototype (the rest of the group wouldn't be too happy to change over to something off-course just to satisfy my future business plans I'd imagine)

We have the option to undertake either a three month college project or three months work experience as part of our course. I'm thinking of using that three months to try to develop this idea as much as I can.

I'm I on the right track to be using Visual Studio to create an asp.net website?

The age question is more to do with me wanting to get back to having a reliable income and start a family at some time in the foreseeable future. If this is something I can do outside a regular job, great, if not I don't want to commit to something that would require more than a year full-time low(no) income work. I understand that the rewards could be very worthwhile but realistically even a well-developed great idea could fail.

lemon_remon

If you are planning on using what you're developing in college, with the team, on a live site then make sure you have licence to use their code.

Graham

Dont call me Shirley wrote: »

I had a hunch Access wouldn't be suitable for a large scale project.

:eek: Access could possibly just about support a social network the size of your immediate family.

Dont call me Shirley wrote: »

We have the option to undertake either a three month college project or three months work experience as part of our course. I'm thinking of using that three months to try to develop this idea as much as I can.

Go for the work experience. The right work experience will stand to you for your career and personal project.

Dont call me Shirley

Graham wrote: »

You'd need to be able to demonstrate you had more than a good idea. How may months have you put into researching this idea so far?

Honestly, not so much we've just started working on it in the last month or two. I'm just trying to figure out at this stage is it viable to take it further, and what direction to go with it.

I have the option of spending three months over the summer developing this project further. Before I commit to that I'd like to know is it worthwhile. What is the likelihood of getting Enterprise Ireland support or private investment?

You're right to point out (which I think you're doing) that I haven't researched how strong an idea it is. Of course I could be biased and the people around me could be just giving me the feedback they think i want to hear. I understand that, but I also think the potential market share could be huge as my website would not be directly competing with any of the established social networks.

Should I be looking to do some market research now, or perhaps over the summer when i have a working prototype? Will this be enough to receive some start-up funding or what else would be required? Should I be looking to do the research myself or finding a firm that specializes (I appreciate I may need to start another thread in the entrepreneur forum!)

stevenmu

Using Visual Studio to create an ASP.Net site is perfectly fine. You should also look at ASP.Net MVC, this is a framework for writing ASP.Net applications with the MVC pattern, which will help you write efficient, scaleable, maintainable code (and will do a lot of the leg work around database access etc for you).

You could also consider using a CMS as your base platform, there are a few good ASP.Net based ones like Umbraco or DotNetNuke. I think there's a few ASP.Net social networking specific platforms too, but I don't know anything about them. Taking an existing platform and customising it to your needs could save you a hell of a lot of work.

You will need to move away from Access sooner rather than later, you probably don't need to worry hugely about being able to scale yet, but Access will cause you problems even early on. It's ok for a prototype if it's what you know, but tbh you should already be planning to get rid of it. Changing to SQL Server shouldn't be all that difficult, and would be using at least some of your Access knowledge.

For hosting, you could consider applying to Microsoft's Bizspark program, that will get you free hosting on their Azure cloud service with a good chunk of storage, bandwidth etc for a couple of years. It'll also give you free access to all of their tools.

I've never gotten to the stage of applying to Enterprise Ireland or the enterprise boards, but I'd imagine they'll want to see business plans, development plans, market research, interest from other investors etc.

Graham

You really need to have a much better idea of the product before you can market research it.

Then you can consider functional specs, wireframes, technologies, prototypes, market research (not necessarily in that order), scalability, hosting, marketing, localisation, support, security, disaster recovery, mobile strategy................

I'm not trying to be negative. You've obviously got what you consider to be a great idea. Now you have to demonstrate your faith in that idea by spending time and effort required to flesh that idea out. This should be done before you approach anyone.

Of course, none of this applies if you have 10s of thousands lying around to pay someone to do that for you.

Dont call me Shirley

Cheers guys and thanks for the help so far. This is still in it's early stages but I guess what I'm trying to do is create a roadmap for taking the project further.

I have a family member who works with small businesses so I'll be sounding them out very soon as regards what exactly is required to receive Enterprise funding. I'll also be looking at the Microsoft Bizspark program which I think could take a lot of the risk from the project.

From this feedback It looks like it's premature for me to be thinking of working on this full-time straight off but we'll see how it plays out....

stevenmu

One other thing to keep in mind if you do this as a college project is that most colleges will have some kind of clause that gives them partial ownership of any projects done if they become commercial.

Dont call me Shirley

stevenmu wrote: »

One other thing to keep in mind if you do this as a college project is that most colleges will have some kind of clause that gives them partial ownership of any projects done if they become commercial.

I'll look into that. The prototype we're developing only covers one aspect of what I'd like like the finished site to be, hopefully this won't lead to too much trouble down the line but I'll read up on the agreement I have with the college, thanks. I've just had a look at the Microsoft Bizspark site there, it looks very promising.