I did something very similar - left my job a bunch of years back to create a social network for angel investors. I wrote up some lessons from my failure here: h

I did something very similar - left my job a bunch of years back to create a social network for angel investors. I wrote up some lessons from my failure here: https://github.com/rshekhtm/VentureTap https://github.com/rshekhtm/VentureTap, with this paragraph most relevant to this discussion: "The biggest non-technical takeaway for me was that development in a vacuum can sink a project that may have otherwise stood a chance. Confusing secrecy for competitive advantage, I was very guarded about sharing my thoughts with other people and in fact did not solicit feedback until after the first cut of the code was released. Having read books on angel investing, I thought I understood the space - if only I had been aware of the concepts of lean software development! If nothing else, I gained appreciation for transparency and communication, albeit too late to make a difference for VentureTap." Oops :)