The Decent Planet - A Social Network to Make New Friends and Have Engaging Discussions

Who are we?

The team currently comprises of Piyush Grover and Piyush Pandey, who are our co-founders.

With degrees in Engineering, as well as an MBA, we feel very strongly about entrepreneurship, but suck at spelling that word correctly. We also have a friend, Ganesh Gurav, who helpd us out with his coding expertise.

We're trying to ‘Decentify’ the social networking space through our social network ‘The Decent Planet’ which lets its users make new friends and have engaging discussions in an obscenity-free environment.

Whom do we cater to?

Our Target User-base:

1. Anyone who wishes to make new friends within a decent environment.
2. Anyone who wishes to be a part of thought provoking and intellectually stimulating discussions.
3. Anyone who feels strongly against fake profiles, trolling, spamming and obscenity.

What do we offer to our consumers?

Let me begin by stating that, there is no way that The Decent Planet is competing with the likes (no pun intended) of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, or Google+. Because none of them cater to the social networking space where people can make new friends.

Some of the websites in this space are: Badoo, Fropper, Stepout.

What differentiates us from the rest, is the fact that we rely predominantly on a pro-active approach of not letting potential trouble-makers to even pass through the entry barrier. None of our competitors use this approach, giving a free-run to trolls, spammers, obscenity lovers and people who look like Selena Gomez except for the fact that they're men (read fake profiles).

This decent environment is extremely conducive for thought provoking and intellectually stimulating discussions, mature/rational arguments. And none of this takes away any of the fun elements of the website.

What motivated us to start up?

We've known each other for more than 8 years and have always wanted to get into the entrepreneurship mode, but we didn't know when and how.

So, one fine day, we were out having dinner and talking about how the internet has become a playground for fake profiles, spammers and trolls. The discussion continued till the wee hours of the morning, and by that time, we had concurred to launch a platform that addresses these key issues.

Having realized the seriousness of this problem, and how (in a broader sense) it impedes the flow of intellectually stimulating discussions, and the fact that we couldn't find a solution anywhere, we thought of coming up with a solution ourselves.

We're pursuing this as this affects a significant number of people (read everybody). And solving this problem can bring in a cultural improvement (culture of decency) on the internet and its impact could be humongous in all kinds of sectors, from social networking to dating, matrimony, employment filters, and real- estate(renting houses).

What's in a name?

Ever since I was a kid, I've always wanted a planet of my own. :-P

On a more serious note, while we observed the start up naming trend to be such where two words are combined to make them sound weird and ‘cool’, we wanted a name that’s simple, unpretentious and represents our broad vision.

How do we see Social Media?

It’s an extremely powerful medium that holds great potential to influence people in a positive way, and as a result help foster meaningful discussions.

However, of the focus on quantity has led to a lot of noise in terms of the content floating around. This can be set right with building a culture that encourages positivity, which is what we're trying to achieve.

Currently we are....

In terms of the user-base, we've got 184 applications (with minimal marketing efforts) so far, out of which 103 have been approved.

Our biggest challenge was..

Our biggest challenge has been matching the conceptualization with the technical implementation. However, now we've got a friend helping us out for the last couple of months, and ever since, this has not been much of a problem but it was incredibly tough in the initial phase.

We want to dominate the world by..

We believe 'Culture' is the single most important contributor to the dynamics of a place.

Why is it that Yahoo Answers is mostly at the receiving end of trolling, while Quora is not?

And why is it that a person who can spit gutka anytime he wishes to, on the backside of the lane next to the tin factory where he works, will refrain from committing that act on the corridors of a posh mall?

Culture!

Despite this being a non-quantifiable term, we consider it to be paramount. Hence, we're trying to build a culture of decency, initially by applying a manual filtration process, which will eventually run in parallel to core users acting as recruiters, and finally more automation merging with the existing setup.

Our target is to get 1 million users in 15 months. This will include concepts like 'Decency Quotient', Reference/ Bypass code (which are somewhat exhaustive to be explained here).

Future Plans

We intend to integrate 'Gravity' which will be a clean, non-intrusive, curated dating application which will take into account Decency Quotient while addressing the problem of approaching the potential 'SO' (significant other).

We are also planning to bring in an online debate platform, 3rd party apps and social gaming, astronomy themed design, 'The Best Of The Internet' and a mobile app.

We’re making moolah by...

Primarily it’d be Display Advertising and possible exploration of the Freemium Model.

Our What The **** Moment

A few days ago, we told one of our close friends about our start up, expecting a string of congratulatory sentences filled with best wishes, what we got instead was a disappointed tone of how he hasn't done anything like this yet. In hindsight, this seems strangely funny.

Industry as we foresee

The focus, we believe, is going to gradually shift to quality from quantity.

There will be more personalization and more physical world activities being imitated in the virtual world.

Lastly, Are you hiring?

We’re looking for PHP experts, however we can offer equity and not a fixed remuneration, at least not until we get investors on board.