By the way, if anyone is interested in joining me, please drop me a line at c dot ciocov at iu-bremen dot de.
I'd envisioned roughly this feature set:
1.) Forums
2.) Startup profiles - list your logo, demo URL, description, launch status (pre-launch/launched), and maybe a few other fields. Linked to the user profiles of each founder.
3.) "Demo groups" of 10-12 startups, randomly assigned but ideally with a preference for placing startups in the same city together. Each demo group has a private forum and an area for news, feature releases, announcements, etc.. Each feature release has threaded comments for discussion and rapid feedback. Demo groups are expected to be each other's support mechanism, and give each other rapid feedback on new changes. For startups that are pre-launch, only people in the same demo group can see what you're up to. (If you want nobody to see what you're doing, perhaps you shouldn't register it on a website...)
4.) Karma, based on how many feature releases a team has put out lately and how many people click through to their startup based on that. This encourages people to "release early, release often", while the weighting based on clickthroughs prevents people from adding bullshit feature releases.
5.) Location-based meetups and events. We wouldn't organize them ourselves, but we'd have a place for people to announce their formal or informal gatherings.
I'd like to move fast on this, because I still view it as a distraction from our main business idea. I'd like to use it, but am willing to cut every corner in the book to build it. Ideally we'd have something up & launched by the end of this weekend, even if that something is nothing but a forum with profile fields for startup info.
It would be hard to attract users if the site does not look busy.