New Canadian site, need to turn it into a business

I have developed some technologies that make it possible for me to run a site that safely allows a lot more publishing methods than existing sites like MySpace or Facebook. It's really geared more toward letting people build homepages, blogs and publishing media and HTML safely than it is toward meeting people and communicating privately, although those features are included as well. Another big attraction will be access and aggregation of many forms of data from the server itself as well as other sites into a kind of "meta-newsfeed".

I think I have a really good and secure framework developed now and I want to go to the next stage with it. I need to add a bunch of features, buy a domain name and go to beta testing.

I have invested years of my own time into this project and I can no longer afford to do it without some kind of financial backing. I am talking about the kind of money it takes to survive while I tweak the code to the users' liking and to advertise enough to get a bunch of people onboard the beta version.

Potential investors would be given a clear roadmap of when key features should be appearing on the site, access to a bugzilla database to watch as the development happens and basically the whole development would be transparent. I do however understand bankers are not interested in source code or whether the website has feature X.

I also am not very business oriented and would rather work in a partnership with someone who understands the business and legal ins and outs of running a site that hosts third-party content. There must even be Canadian companies that are solely focused on developing these types of start-up businesses somewhere.

Does anyone have suggestions on where I should start?

Sounds like a large undertaking but it will take more than HTML skills to get that venture moving. Honestly, by the time you have all your stuff together I would imagine the Social Networking market will be too saturated.

Your idea seems like a mesh of many areas that I'm loss on the idea, if I'm lost on your idea, it would come off as an unstable business plan when seeking financial backing. My advice would be to continue to develop your skills while developing a perfect business plan. During this time you may encounter the assistance of those sharing equal skills related to your project and therefore a fair and equal business partnership which should be chosen very wisely.