How would you design a social / career networking website for entrepreneurs?

Photo by Merakist on Unsplash

Okay this is a simple structure we will follow:
1. Identify the Users
2. Identify the Use Cases
3. Is there any existing product? What are the shortcomings of the same?
4. How are we going to address those short comings?
5. The Design

So let’s start with the users:

• Entrepreneurs (obviously)
• Venture Capitalists (would be willing to invest in startups doing well)
• Big Tech (would be interested in acquiring companies)

Coming to use cases:

• Entrepreneurs would be interested in finding new opportunities to collaborate with other companies.
• Entrepreneurs would be interested to know if they can enter a new market or create one.
• Entrepreneurs would be interested to get funding for their startups.
• Entrepreneurs would like to share status on their company and professional updates.
• VCs and Big Tech would like to know profitable/valuable startups they can invest in.

Existing Product and Shortcomings:

We do have LinkedIn as the most widely used professional network but it has a few issues for our use cases:

• It’s too crowded with almost everyone
• Lately it has become an influencer platform.
• There is nothing exclusive for entrepreneurs
• It’s more of a job search portal than a networking website.

Improvements and Design:

• We would make the new website only for specific audience (users mentioned initially).
• We would not have any job postings here as it would attract job seekers more and would eventually become another LinkedIn.
• Similar to LinkedIn Company page we would have company pages here but with Vital stats that would help VCs/BigTech to make an investment decision like Quarterly Revenue, Profits and instead of having a timeline of the latest company updates we would have a timeline focused on the key achievements from the company like some revolutionary tech.
• VCs and BigTech would have the option to ask for a meeting with the Company via the Company page or through C-Level Executive’s profiles.
• Finally we would have 2 different timelines with the option to make anyone as default.
• The first timeline would be a regular one wherein users can post their updates and view others along with interacting with updates posted by companies.
• The second timeline would be focused to say “Breaking News” sort of a timeline wherein companies or entrepreneurs would post significant key milestones only. This would be helpful for other users to learn about a new technology, find partners to collaborate or get attention from VCs. To avoid misuse of this timeline we can also make all the posts in this timeline chargeable.