My MVP is TOO good and out of money to make it bad.

When building an MVP the trick is to get to simplest possible version of your product that people want to use. People will judge your social network by what it is today, not by your vision of what it could be -- even in the best case -- several years from now.

Putting a big banner on every page "this is just a shitty representation" doesn't fix the problem. Which is that your product -- as it exists today -- just isn't good enough. That isn't your fault necessarily, some MVPs take very little effort to build, and MVPs of other products can take years and tens of millions of dollars.

It's also very easy to make strategic mistakes when building an MVP. It's tempting to build half-assed versions of 50% of all the functionality you want, instead of a solid version of the 10% that's most critical. It's pretty hard to get people enthusiastic about a half-assed product, after all. You sound a little defensive/hurt about this. People are not picking apart your product because they hate you, but because they're struggling to figure out why you've made the choices you've made.

At this point your best course of action is to find a job just so you can get back on your feet. Then cut out 90% of the functionality in the MVP and get the remaining 10% to be really good. Then focus on growth. When you've got a rapidly growing userbase the investors will throw money at you. They don't care how long it took you to get the MVP going, or how many mistakes you made along the way. If they believe your social network might be the next big thing nothing else matters. When you've secured an investment you can think about quitting your day job.

So to reiterate: get a job, polish your MVP, get users, raise money, win.

Did you outsource all of the coding, or are you able to do some yourself?

I'm going to tell you what you probably don't want to hear but I'm only doing that because I've been down your path.

Your idea requires too much investment to get to the MVP as in minimum VIABLE product (like you said, data mining, NLP etc). Sometimes these can be done by connected people who have a track record, but if you're coming from left field, your MVP must be minimalistic, then later on you can add complexity as it scales.

Think of Facebook. When it first started, it was just a stupid wall with pictures. That was an MVP, it was minimal AND useful. Now Facebook needs data mining etc because the feeds are too noisy and they need to figure out which posts to show you. This is incredibly complex, but it wasn't required when Facebook started.

Secondly your feedback is not great. Unique means nothing. Someone could sell a laptop made of wood. Its unique but doesn't mean anyone would want it. And "very interesting" is the WORST feedback ever. It literally means they think your idea is a POS but they don't want to heard your feelings. Don't you recall tasting aunt Sally's soup and thinking its horrible but since you don't want to lie and say its delicious - what do you say? Yup. Its interesting.

The feedback you WANT is this. "When can I start using it?" or "I really want this". Anything else is pablum.

I truly hope I'm wrong and that in a year you'll be back and telling us you've gotten it off the ground and is gaining tons of users. But as I said I've travelled down your path in idealistic optimism and ended up wasting 10 years and about 100K.

OP, if you don't wish to expound further on this I understand - curious what is so special about your product, as a 'bunch' of people (according to you) have told you they ‘...can’t believe this doesn’t exist’?

I'd start by asking yourself where you may be falling short in messaging and the selling of your MVP. Product is almost never 100% the answer (we seem to forget that in our current code-the-world environment). If someone isn't getting the message that's not their fault, you need to adapt your approach to each audience. A founder/CEO's job is to successfully get others to buy into his vision, often for intangible things (ideas, unbuilt products, etc).