Don't pitch the value of your product with "We have a very high tech algorithm" until it works. Invoking the "secret sauce" when your basic functionality doesn't work is amateur-hour stuff, and degrades the benefit of the doubt that people otherwise give a new product.

This project feels like it's about halfway to MVP. This is more akin to a tech demo.

All that said, equating inbound connections with programmer ability is an inherently flawed metric for measuring how hireable a person is.