New website idea, just need the right team of people!!

thomas98798

Hi Everyone.

I have a question here that some of you may be able to answer.

Q) If you had to come up with a working website, similar in operation to facebook. What sort of team would you put together. (i.e. what skill sets would be required)

:further info:
* Assume that the poster has no experience in computing,
* Poster needs to assemble a team to complete this operation within 4-5 months.
* Site needs to be able to cater for at least 50,000-100,000 users initially. In order to prove the site works, model works, idea works. (A beta mode of sorts)

Hope you can humor me on this one,

p.s.Think you have what it takes to create something like this, then please feel free to pm me.

ChRoMe

Dupe of http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=82633812#post82633812

thomas98798

Thanks Chrome,
Regarding your question about how much money do I have to invest, I'd like to know first how much would you think is adequate to get something like this off the ground.

ChRoMe

thomas98798 wrote: »

Thanks Chrome,
Regarding your question about how much money do I have to invest, I'd like to know first how much would you think is adequate to get something like this off the ground.

You haven't given any details..... so its impossible to price. From what you have said I wouldn't say anything less than about 10-20k

Corkbah

thomas ... if you watch the facebook movie.

it doesn't go into detail on how facebook runs...it drags on about needing more money, needing more "interns", needing more money, needing to expand .

to create Facebook or similar you would need:

Developers
Understanding of your limits
Programmers
money
More money
Servers
more servers
yet again more money
graphic designers
multitude of databases or access to databases (which legally could be an issue)
and loads of other things I know nothing about.

I'm in a simliar position but simply cant afford to create "my vision" .... and if/when I talk to developers/programmers etc ... I dont understand if they know what I want and I dont understand what they are saying !!

Graham

A demonstrable interest in the market you're intending to enter would be a good start.

What research have you done into this business/market (or is your initial post the research)?

As ChRoMe said without more detail you are unlikely to get any reasonable answers and you're even less likely to convince someone to 'help you create something like this'.

maxmarmalade

You could look at using a social network engine to prove the concept. The leading one is Elgg (www.elgg.org). You would probably still need to hire someone to customise to a level where you have a minimum viable product. But all core feature of a social network are already there.

thomas98798

Cheers everyone just the type of responses I'm looking for.

Corkbah I can see how were both in the same boat. I have a vision for for what I want this site to do and work, but its seems like I've hit a brick wall before I started.

I suppose in terms of looking for a price for this project, I was hoping if the was someone who had previous experience here with other similar projects and could give an example case study.

Thanks Maxmarmalade and Graham I'll check out that link.

amen

OP

its not that people won't give you a concrete answers its more that your questions are very vague.

Supporting 50,000-100,000 users. That could be really simple if all the users does is login and creates a single post a day. On the other hand if they are posting 100's of times a day and servers are very busy you will need to extra hardware to support the users.

A team to support this. Hmm well assuming a team means 4-5 people who know what they are doing and that you have a well defined plan and defined deliverables/specifications and you are getting good people so you will be paying them maybe 45K a years so at 5 people for say 6 months thats approx 110K in wages alone.

I haven't included testers or a QA Team.
You will also need development PCs, Dev Servers, Test Servers etc

Don't forget you will need to pay for Bandwidth which could be 10k+ a month.
You also need to figure in redundancy so you a server dies, network goes down that you site is still accessible.

You also need to have a backup strategy.

If you have any questions fell free to send me a pm.

GreeBo

you also need a crap load of venture capital to pay for everything for the first X years until your site starts to make money somehow.

fergalr

thomas98798 wrote: »

Hi Everyone.

I have a question here that some of you may be able to answer.

Q) If you had to come up with a working website, similar in operation to facebook. What sort of team would you put together. (i.e. what skill sets would be required)

:further info:
* Assume that the poster has no experience in computing,
* Poster needs to assemble a team to complete this operation within 4-5 months.
* Site needs to be able to cater for at least 50,000-100,000 users initially. In order to prove the site works, model works, idea works. (A beta mode of sorts)

Hope you can humor me on this one,

p.s.Think you have what it takes to create something like this, then please feel free to pm me.

You should read this:
http://www.quora.com/Engineering-Management/Why-are-software-development-task-estimations-regularly-off-by-a-factor-of-2-3/answer/Michael-Wolfe



You are sending all the signals that indicate you aren't serious, and you don't know what you are doing. Hence, I'd be inclined to recommend you bias towards disregarding anyone that PMs you, as they are probably clueless too, or want to take your money.


Imagine I was asking you 'how much would it cost me to find somewhere to live'?

You are going to want to know what I mean.
Do I want to rent a room somewhere?
Or to buy somewhere?
Am I looking to buy a 1 bedroom apartment?
Or maybe I want to build a 40 room mansion?

The cost varies so much depending on what I have on mind.
You wont really be able to answer my question.

If Bill Gates walks up to you, and asks you how much it will cost him to find somewhere to live in Dublin, you are probably going to give him a very different answer, than if a poor student walks up to you and asks.

Because their requirements are so different.

Similarly, you have not provided enough information for anyone to give you a serious answer.
You've said the equivalent of 'I want somewhere to live', but people need a lot more to go on than that.


One big problem in your question, is you said 'similar to operation to facebook'.
This will confuse everyone.

Facebook have to do a lot of hard things, because they want to support so many users at once. Even if they get lots more users joining than they expect. And because they want to be able to be reliable when a lot of people are using Facebook.
They also have to worry about security and privacy and so on.
The site is a lot more complicated than it looks.

You could get someone to build you a website which is *superficially* similar to Facebook, capturing the very basic Facebook functionality, (each user gets a webpage, that shows friends, and some custom content, without being scalable, and maybe based off an existing platform) for a small amount of money. Tens of thousands of euro, probably. Someone could make you an even simpler site, that didn't really do much, for even cheaper. But it probably wouldn't be likely to support 100000 users, certainly not with a high level of activity, and it won't do whatever you have in mind sufficiency well to make your users happy.

If you wanted to build a site that has the robustness and features of Facebook, its very hard to guess how much it would cost. Millions. (and millions etc).

maxmarmalade

@fergalr

There are many social network engines. Elgg is fantastic, providing all core features such as friending, messaging, access-driven contant, for free. There is also Oxwall, which I haven't used but looks good. There is no need to build core features of social networks when open-source solutions already available.

I agree with large money regarding robustness etc.

fergalr

maxmarmalade wrote: »

@fergalr

There are many social network engines. Elgg is fantastic, providing all core features such as friending, messaging, access-driven contant, for free. There is also Oxwall, which I haven't used but looks good. There is no need to build core features of social networks when open-source solutions already available.

I agree with large money regarding robustness etc.

That looks cool.
I haven't used any of those products, but definitely, if an off-the-shelf online social network is sufficient for the OP, then that's the way to go.

The devil is in the details though - what does 'similar in operation to Facebook' mean, in the OPs post?

maxmarmalade

fergalr wrote: »

That looks cool.
I haven't used any of those products, but definitely, if an off-the-shelf online social network is sufficient for the OP, then that's the way to go.

The devil is in the details though - what does 'similar in operation to Facebook' mean, in the OPs post?

That's up to OP to clear up, it's vague alright. I always tell clients: dont build an e-commerce shop. And dont build a social network. Free open-ource solutions out there. Free open-source twitter coming soon im sure:)

The Corinthian

thomas98798 wrote: »

Q) If you had to come up with a working website, similar in operation to facebook. What sort of team would you put together. (i.e. what skill sets would be required)

:further info:
* Assume that the poster has no experience in computing,
* Poster needs to assemble a team to complete this operation within 4-5 months.
* Site needs to be able to cater for at least 50,000-100,000 users initially. In order to prove the site works, model works, idea works. (A beta mode of sorts)

It is very difficult to tell as you've simply asked a very generic "what do I need to build/run a Web portal/solution". Some resources (e.g. design) could probably be outsourced, at least to begin with, but others (e.g. development), you'd probably need at one or perhaps two of, if you want to get it up and running within five months.

Then you need to have requirements that can be pinned down into a technical specification. If you're lucky you'll get an experienced developer who can do this. Then there's formal testing (getting your mates to do this for you is not the same thing). And then there's moderation and customer support.

Marketing is another area you've not really considered. The 'if you build it, they will come' model doesn't work on the Web, so if you want to get 50,000 to 100,000 users initially, you are going to be putting a fair bit of resources on doing so, and that will cost money - one rule of thumb I've heard is whatever your development budget is, your marketing budget is probably going to be double that.

Even at that there's no guarantee you'll ever get that number of users; if your site caters to any specific group or demographic (e.g. Ireland), those sort of figures can be difficult to come by.

Then there's hosting (a poor hosting strategy can either result in you throwing a lot of money away or your site collapsing).

I won't go into what business plan, if any, you might have. Or how long you'll need to be operating before you become self sufficient financially; thus requiring that you go in with a war chest. Or if your team is going to be composed of employees, contractors/consultants or business partners - if the last, I suggest you read this post here.

Honestly, the development is going to be the least of your worries. For something as ambitious as you appear to be suggesting, you won't be spending less than about €20k, for development and design alone. Then there's testing, hosting, marketing, changes (which in turn will come from ongoing market research), and so on. And you'll have to do this for a while before you can generate enough revenue to pay for it all; over €200k is my guess, to cover this and keep you going for a year to 18 months.

Evil Phil

... similar in operation to facebook.

And that's where you lost pretty much everybody. Social media has been done, in fact the bubble burst when instagram sold for $1 billion. That doesn't mean there isn't money in it, just not the ridiculous money that was handed out like candy as angel funding because somebody said "Social Media" and/or "Disruption". Imho anway.

However, perhaps you're different. The Corinthian's post is spot on. To add my own two cent: technical details aren't that important at this stage - you can hire those skills in when you have seed capital. What you need to know is if there is a market for this offering of yours, how are you going to monetize your offering, and how you're going to fund your company and your life until you start making that money.

thomas98798

Thanks guys. Yes I am being very vague but I'm sure that you can understand why. There's no point sticking an idea, which is still just an idea up on a site like boards.
To be honest I came up with this idea about 3 days ago, drew some diagrams, outlining how I envisage users to use the site, and then posted the question to see who I would need to turn my vision into a usable site.

When I say similar to Facebook, I really mean that it will be a platform that will allow users to connect in a similar way. Probably should have just said social network and not mentioned the word facebook. I guess I lost 100% credibility using that word, but let me try and redeem myself.

The original question, really is asking, what skill sets do I need to employ.
Imagine when Faceboook started first. It was just one school (Harvard 14-15k students) so facebook was probably allot different to how it looks today, I read somewhere that none of the original code from Zuckerberg is currently being used on the site. What was important about Zuckerberg's original platform was that it allowed users the needed functionality, and was also capable of demonstrating to VCs that with investment they could hold on to these users and increase numbers.

I don't image I'm going to knock on a developers door and say build this, the brief being....make it similar to facebook but add ........

The responses guys have been great. some fantastic links there, even the one to the previous question posted on boards.

I'm very serious about this, and I'm not here to waste anyone's time. If any of you can recommend any articles/websites that cover this, or even case studies/business plans. I really appreciate all of the responses so far, great to see it.

Graham

If your own research tells you the initial maximum size for Facebook was circa 14k users why are you targeting a site to support 50k-100k users?

Decide what is the minimum feature set your site can launch with, build it, launch it and go from there if it gains any traction. That way you haven't blown a six figure sum to find out if its a runner.

conor.hogan.2

So you think you can build something bigger and better than Google+ or with more press and support than Diaspora?

The idea is not good enough imo, the research is 100% lacking if you think you can even somewhat do it for that sort of money and timeframe.

jimmycrackcorm

You'll also need an architect. To support any growth in users then your system needs to be scalable which means designing around something like Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure. You can start small and grow as required provided your design facilitates growth.

I'd also caution about using an open source solution as people mention. Not that they aren't good but that if you need to significantly deviate from their design and model then it will be very difficult. But as a proof of concept to get up and running it would be fine.

thomas98798

Conor thanks for your comments. I have a vision for what I want, and I really do believe others will buy into it. The research is ongoing, so I would agree with you that the research is not complete.

You'll also need an architect. To support any growth in users then your system needs to be scalable which means designing around something like Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure. You can start small and grow as required provided your design facilitates growth.

Jimmy thanks for the tip re architect, I can see a picture beginning to build up here as to what sort of team I'm going to require.

As I have many ideas as to what I want this site to do, who would be the best person to speak with regarding this i.e. should i speak with a IT manager, software engineer, software architect ??

amen

To support any growth in users then your system needs to be scalable which means designing around something like Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure

Sorry but why ? There are other ways to tackle the scalability and reliability issues. Allowing a third party vendor to manage this may not be the way to go.

Colonel Panic

Using AWS or Azure is a pretty compelling alternative to your own data centre not that you especially need to design around them, unless you plan to leverage some of their more interesting features.

They don't manage anything, they just offer metered services that you do what you want with.

fergalr

thomas98798 wrote: »

Thanks guys. Yes I am being very vague but I'm sure that you can understand why. There's no point sticking an idea, which is still just an idea up on a site like boards.
To be honest I came up with this idea about 3 days ago, drew some diagrams, outlining how I envisage users to use the site, and then posted the question to see who I would need to turn my vision into a usable site.

You are much too early to be at the stage when you are trying to find someone who wants to turn your vision into a usable site.

I would recommend you spend a lot more than 3 days work thinking about this idea, researching it, talking to potential users, finding out what the users currently do, etc, before you even think about trying to find someone to implement it.

Maybe try write down answers to some of these questions (particularly the earlier ones):
http://startupwiki.ie/wiki/Questions_that_investors_can_ask

Find some startup accelerator application forms, and start filling them out.
Not to apply - but because they'll help you see what you need to be thinking about.

thomas98798 wrote: »

When I say similar to Facebook, I really mean that it will be a platform that will allow users to connect in a similar way. Probably should have just said social network and not mentioned the word facebook. I guess I lost 100% credibility using that word, but let me try and redeem myself.

Here's the question - would existing software, that had the same functionality as a social network, be suitable for your needs?
Could you go with off the shelf software, or do you need custom software written?

thomas98798 wrote: »

The original question, really is asking, what skill sets do I need to employ.

That question is irrelevant, unless you are hugely personally wealthy, and have money to waste.
You can't employ a team people to build this for you, unless you are rich.

It is too expensive, and no one will give you money with your current level of expertise (both technical+domain).

What you really need is a technical co-founder.
However, you won't find anyone competent with your current understanding of what you want to build, so what you need to do is loads of homework.

thomas98798 wrote: »

Imagine when Faceboook started first. It was just one school (Harvard 14-15k students) so facebook was probably allot different to how it looks today, I read somewhere that none of the original code from Zuckerberg is currently being used on the site. What was important about Zuckerberg's original platform was that it allowed users the needed functionality, and was also capable of demonstrating to VCs that with investment they could hold on to these users and increase numbers.

Right; you always try build the simplest possible version first, that creates real value for the users - the minimal viable product - and take it from there.

thomas98798 wrote: »

I don't image I'm going to knock on a developers door and say build this, the brief being....make it similar to facebook but add ........

The responses guys have been great. some fantastic links there, even the one to the previous question posted on boards.

I'm very serious about this, and I'm not here to waste anyone's time. If any of you can recommend any articles/websites that cover this, or even case studies/business plans. I really appreciate all of the responses so far, great to see it.

You don't seem like you are serious; but giving you the benefit of the doubt:

Start reading lots about the process of building tech companies:
http://www.fortunepick.com/blog-article/a-list-of-must-read-books-for-startups-and-entrepreneurs


Learn everything you can about the people whose problem you want to solve.
Talk to them, spend time with them, get a job as one of them.

Do the things that you'll need to do to get a decent technical co-founder to partner with you (learn the space, learn the problem, get to know your potential customers/users, learn about the process of building startups etc)
Expect it to take a while.
Consider it a good indicator that you've done enough work for other people to think you are serious.

The Corinthian

thomas98798 wrote: »

As I have many ideas as to what I want this site to do, who would be the best person to speak with regarding this i.e. should i speak with a IT manager, software engineer, software architect ??

Unless you're willing to pay for such advice, why would they want to speak with you?

If you know someone with the technical knowledge who's willing to go for a couple of pints to chew the fat on this idea of yours, well and good, however you're not going to get anything more than very superficial, concept-level, advice.

For anything more, would require that the technical person would actually spend additional time and resources researching the idea and what is feasible, and unless they're a really, really good friend, they won't. Indeed, unless they're a friend in the first place, they probably won't bother even go as far as chew the fat with you.

After all, it appears you have close to zero research, how can you expect someone to work on an idea that you've not even been bothered to put any effort into?

If you're serious about this idea, do a lot of research on it before you approach anyone. Otherwise everyone's time is going to be wasted.

IrishExpat

First, apologies for this short reply. using the iPhone, but will give a longer response tomorrow.

I would 'highly' recommend looking up any number of blog posts on the subject of the MVP (minimal viable product) and similar lean-startup methodologies.

For a social network there is no need to create or develop from scratch, as there as so many open-source platforms (Elgg etc) which can be tailored to your concept.

I have a lot of advice to offer in this space from my time helping past clients develop from ideation to validation and onto action steps and launch strategies.

As I said, taking far too long to type on this phone, so thread followed and will come back to it tomorrow.

The best of luck in your endeavour.

awec

Surprised the cloud hasn't been mentioned yet. Cloud hosting solves your infrastructure problem.

ChRoMe

awec wrote: »

Surprised the cloud hasn't been mentioned yet. Cloud hosting solves your infrastructure problem.

Its no where near that simple.........

IrishExpat

ChRoMe wrote: »

Its no where near that simple.........

I wish I could thank twice. All of this talk around 'the cloud', yet it's been reduced to a buzz-word with the lack of knowledge on the topic.

The Corinthian

IrishExpat wrote: »

I wish I could thank twice. All of this talk around 'the cloud', yet it's been reduced to a buzz-word with the lack of knowledge on the topic.

There's a lot of Web 'professionals' who don't seem to have a bog of a notion what the 'Cloud' is, in reality. Hardly surprising, as there's a frightening number of same who still don't seem to have grasped the basic client-server paradigm.

awec

ChRoMe wrote: »

Its no where near that simple.........

It is that simple.

That's part of the point of it, simple scalability.

Can you explain what isn't simple about it?