Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Background information:
I am a university student building a social networking platform to help people build new connections and friends, it is similar to platforms such as Meetup. I have been trying to get a this up and running for about 19 months now but I’ve had little luck. In the beginning I made every possible mistake. I had an idea, I didn’t really validate and just got to building it. While building it I added way more features than necessary hence I spent way more time than I should have. It launched in July of this year and we had a bit of traction(got our first few customers and so on) at first but it fell off pretty soon. At this point we started talking to customers to validate the idea, get to know the problem better, see how we can pivot…etc. Talking to the them I validated the problem and figured out a way pivot. While I was working on the changes a large a large university showed great interest in the product but they haven’t responded to any of my recent emails so I think they are ghosting. Anyway the the new version launched in early November. The customer acquisition strategies I had in mind didn’t work. So I have been resorting to paid advertising to get my first few customers and feedback. This also isn’t working, I have been sending surveys and emails to them but I haven’t gotten any responses. Overall Im having a lot of trouble building an audience on the platform and I have maybe one more idea left to try.
Question:
Things are looking bleak and I’m questioning wether I should persevere or keep going? Are these the signs that I should stop and pursue something else or is this normal?
Edit: When I say social networking platform we are not at all similar to platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram... etc. We are most like platforms such as Meetup.
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