My little startup

First, I would like to express my attitude to startups and startups, but rather even to their number. Do not be afraid of this. At least those who make social networks. The idea may not be new but: in a rough approximation, social networks in a classic blog form are just an upgrade of the forums. Where can you find forums of a “general” orientation and who is sitting on them? No one. Thematic forums bloom wildly. By search engine optimization, by city, by interest, etc. The same is in the projection on blogsefru. My understanding of the trend is caring to standalone blogs and thematic networks. As a matter of fact, we decided to make such a network with partners.


At one time organizing the LJ community myphototravel (travel photo reports) we thought that it would not be bad to make an archive, because the old posts often disappeared, the photos disappeared from the server, etc. For half a year the thought acquired a slightly different shade and crystallized. It is necessary to give people the opportunity to write reports themselves (not only LJ). Then he thought of the rest of the functionality, which still somehow revolves around the possibility of posting, uploading photos, blogging. And all this should not be similar to www.otzyv.ru and www.ayda.ru
As a result, was born:

www.venividi.ru
Tourist soc. a network with basically a standard set: blogs, comments, polls, ratings and small features: reviews of hotels, operas, etc.

Now I would like to go back to the beginning. We decided to seek investment.
I know many people here are interested in this issue and want to write a separate detailed post later. But in brief, the results are as follows: it is almost impossible to find investments for the presentation. I met a lot of people. These were both large companies like Finam, medium-sized ventures (Russian), and completely incomprehensible guys like “Union of Business Angels of Russia”. And my advice to startups is to drive to a 100 page presentation. Do service. For a private investor, a brief of 5-10 pages will suffice. Large institutions need to paint everything. But a large investor will not give money. A private investor is possible. But this is my experience, you may have another.
')
After that, it was decided to do everything themselves. You will form your opinion on the implementation, but we managed to implement all the planned functionality.
And here came another tip: do not write everything yourself. We used framework www.drupal.org
If it were not for the drupal, we would still be writing a blog api.
Drupal is absolutely awesome thing for social networks. It has never been delved into. But then from the possibilities it becomes scary. But it also does not exclude that the engine will then become its own. I just think I should start with this.

The development eventually took about a month. I do not deny that some of the ideas were spioned by Habr. But Habr should not be afraid of this. I am sure there will be dozens of clones soon. Just a good structure. Habr from this only sweeter. In this, it will be easy to figure out what the local frequenter is about.

I am not at all sure whether such an idea and such an execution will be in demand. But I am glad that we started and that I spent my time on development. Acquired as they say invaluable experience. Now for the project begins the most difficult.

Not sure if the audience is “our clients” :) but still well-willed.
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