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The Social Media Dream (But how?)

Clearly some of us have a social media dream and clearly it is a market that is saturated, but it's still one many of us would like to try and enter.

This though is where my issue starts... I don't know how to code.

I've just finished off a masters... in the wrong profession, a masters in city planning and design and I've so many business ideas, none of which are related to this.

Social media, you may laugh because well we all know the markets full but I have a problem I want solved and this means creating a new social media outlet to do it, I know, selfish.

So can anyone give many tips, trick and advice? Is there any platforms out there where I can make such a thing with out having to code? Or must I learn to code?

So many questions and not enough time to get them all answered.

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    Funny how most social media websites and apps just try to follow the Facebook formula... And fail... Instead of just doing something different...

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      It's actually so true and the ones that do well do their own thing.

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    Hi Mark, i am sort off building an social platform, though the social features are limited at the moment, and more social feature might are to be released early next week. Reason is at the beginning, it was not thought as such, but the more i develop and mature the idea, the more the social component seems evident.

    Now coming back to your question (I am also a non tech guy) - but i've learned to code just enough to be able to manage a project (see point 2 below), i see two options :

    1/ You can either look into the ready-to-use subscription-based platforms out there. There is plenty. You just have to make your own due research. This page for example lists some of the existing solutions : https://www.how2shout.com/tools/top-best-open-source-social-network-platforms.html. Those are mainly paid services with monthly fee.

    2/ You can build it yourself, become effectively the project.manager / product owner / functional lead of the your project, until one day, you might become the actual CEO. It will at least take your 15-20 k€ (in my opinion - having development outsourced to low-cost regions) to have basic functionalities implemented and have back / front and mobile app (hybrid) ready. Surely about at least six month of work. Again in my opinion, before you can go down that path, you need to educate yourself in web-development : know enough in terms of technical architecture (AWS, 3 tier-structure etc.), and I highly - really - highly will recommend anyone who's taking this option #2 to learn html + css (and maybe some js) and how to set up a dev environment on their machine (that includes working with git). I will give you the basic technical chops to talk with your developers.

    Hope this helps !

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    Hey Mark! Do you mind sharing what your social media idea is? IH is home to a lot of technically gifted people and with the right idea you might be able to sell one of them on working on the project alongside yourself.

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      Yeah I am relatively happy to share the idea but its overly hard to explain it all.

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        My best advice would be, if it's overly hard to explain it all, it's not going to find product market fit. Frankly, if you can't even explain it to a group of similar-minded founders and engineers, how are you going to convince anyone to use it?
        Before thinking about coding it, I'd suggest researching on the problem you're trying to solve, and crystallizing the value proposition. If you can't explain it, maybe it doesn't solve anyone's problem yet? This may sound harsh but it's hard to do a startup successfully, especially one in the social space. Execution is the easiest part of all this.

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          Well I can explain it completely, however its sport related so an understanding of the sporting community is needed and I wasn't sure if I wanted to blurt out my idea straight away.

          You are right it is something to consider but I have heard many in the wider circle of the sport moaning about the issue. It lucky links into many other sports which is nice.

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