Excellent reflection on message boards. You are the second person to mention this "joining something that has a friend-making purpose immediately makes it a bit awkward and makes interactions somewhat forced". If I understand correctly, you're saying it's important for people to feel like a friendship can happen naturally, they wouldn't want to feel like the situation was awkward. It's better if things could flow naturally with no pressure.
Thanks for the feedback. I never considered the "trying too hard" aspect. If I understand you correctly, it might be hard for people to broadcast the fact that they are having trouble making friends. Sorry to hear that the friends from the MMORPG days were temporary. Thanks again for the advice.
Great point I've been thinking about this. I'm thinking that people would only interact in groups of 3 or more maybe that will help. But I will definitely keep this in mind.
You mentioned a sequence of steps, it's pretty good but I would always say start with the customer and their needs not your idea. Put the customer at the center.
As you probably know most businesses operate off of this structure. Customer wants a result so they use a mechanism(your idea or business).
Focus on the finding a result that a customer wants that you can offer. Another way to look at it is customer, problem, solution, offer.
Also you don't have to raise capital if you don't want to. You could have customers pre-pay for your MVP before it's finished this also helps validate if people will buy your product/service.