I can barely code, and I'm building a social network anyway

Hi, I'm paw. Self-taught, still learning, building in public.

A few months ago I could barely write a line of code. Instead of doing another tutorial, I picked the most unreasonable project I could think of: a social network. Everyone told me (correctly) that social networks are where side projects go to die.

I'm building it anyway, because it's the app I wish existed when I started: a place where people who are learning to code don't feel small, and where your profile is a page you actually code yourself.

Where I'm at, honestly:

• the app is live, invite-only, first wave of testers coming up
• the security work took me 10x longer than any feature (worth it)
• marketing is 10x harder than building. nobody warned me enough.
• revenue: $0. by design for now, but still. $0.

I'm not here to pitch it. I'm here because I've been lurking and the honesty on this forum is the closest thing to what I'm trying to build.

Question for those who launched invite-only: how did you pick your first 10 people? Friends feel too kind to give real feedback, strangers feel impossible to reach. What worked for you?