Website: www.x3mpeople.com

Interview With: Oleg Gustol

How many founders does have X3M people have and what are their names?

There are two – Oleg Gutsol and Ruslan Doroshenko.

What made you start X3M?

X3M People started from my idea that there are many people sharing the same passion for a particular sport or activity but they are disconnected, and they would like to connect to similar-minded people. Then, in February of 2007 I joined forces with Ruslan Doroshenko to launch x3mpeople.com site.

Ruslan is everything to do with technology on this start-up – setting up servers, dealing with hosting companies, providing guidance in terms of development.

I set the direction in which we are going and also do coding, mainly due to the lack of human resources at this stage.

What are the founders background and qualifications?

I am a former developer and integration department lead of Instaclick. This is where I met Ruslan Doroshenko, who is currently a senior systems architect there. I have quit my fulltime job at Instaclick to dedicate myself fully to X3M People.

What does your website do?

X3M People serves as a connection with the people who enjoy certain sports and activities, who like to travel and discover the world, and those who simply would like to know what is out there that they can do. X3M People offers user profiles, picture galleries, personal messaging, people search, activities, locations and adventures search. It aims to be the social network and the information resource for active people and thrill seekers.

Last week we rolled out a Facebook application – X3M People which offers x3mpeople.com functionality over the popular social network and in the future will be enhanced with all the new features of X3M People website.

When did you launch?

We launched a private beta in May 2007 and a public beta in September 2007.

Has it been easy or difficult to build your community?

Building a community always takes time. So far we had some challenges in terms of getting our message out there, mostly due to limited budget for marketing. At a certain point – once the service we offer gets viral, these will diminish.

What types of marketing have you done?

We leveraged some existing social networks out there, SEO, paid advertisement.

Do you have any revenue streams besides advertisement? Who is your ad provider?

At this point – no.

There are no plans to having paid subscriptions in the future – we believe that the service should be free for everyone to use. The main goal is to make it useful for people.

Our ads are AdSense at this moment.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

X3M People was self funded from the start, but we are looking for investors now – both angels and venture capital.

What is your favorite feature on your site?

The favorite, the main, and the most useful is the search by activities and locations. What cool stuff you have done, want to do, or can do and where you can do it.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

The site is built using PHP/MySQL, hosted on a mac server.

Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?

This is an interesting one. I see internet technology blending seamlessly with every aspect of our lives in the next 10 years. Just take a look at how things like iPhone, free wifi networks, Open Social, Facebook, RSS and many others transform our perception of what is possible. Our lifes and our activities, including sports, will be reflected online – it will be quite transparent.

Any advice for a young entrepreneur looking to start his own website?

If you think you got a great idea, a killer app in mind, the next big thing – just sit down and do it! You will need some technical background of course, but this is just the base – the rest is your creativity, your ability to challenge the ordinary, your hard work and passion for what you are doing.

STN’s Take:

X3M is a very easy to use site.  The design is nothing to write home about but it is extremely simple and we can navigate through the network pretty easily.  Like 99% of the social networks startups out there though, there needs to be more people and content.  We really like the “Adventures” part.  It shows cool new stuff or trips that people have done.  As more people get on there it will be a great tool for people looking for new adventures to do.

My only suggestion for X3M is to try and form strategic partnerships.  It is nearly impossible to start a social network without an underlying base of people.  Maybe if X3M had some type of partnership with a rock climbing association or snowboard association that could help their membership a great deal.  Waiting on your network to go viral is not a good business plan.