About the Project

This project was inspired by the common challenges startup founders face in managing a large and diverse network of contacts — including investors, mentors, volunteers, and team members — while also keeping track of critical follow-ups and daily tasks. Founders often get overwhelmed juggling these relationships alongside building their product, which can lead to missed opportunities and inefficiencies.

To address this, we created Startup Assistant, an AI-powered web app that automates contact management, task prioritization, and follow-up communication. Our goal is to help founders stay organized, productive, and proactive in nurturing their network and managing their workload.

What We Learned

• How to integrate advanced AI capabilities using Google’s Gemini API for natural language processing and content generation.
• Building a scalable backend with Express.js and Supabase (a Postgres-based backend-as-a-service) to manage real-time data storage and user authentication.
• Using middleware like CORS and body-parser to ensure smooth communication between frontend and backend.
• Designing a user-friendly interface that supports multiple workflows like AI chat, categorized contacts, task tracking with priority and notifications, and automated email generation.
• The importance of security and privacy when handling sensitive contact and communication data.

How We Built It

• The backend server is built using Express.js, handling API requests and connecting with AI services and the database.
• Supabase serves as our backend database, providing a reliable and real-time PostgreSQL-powered storage solution.
• We use Google Gemini API (gemini-2.0-flash model) for AI-driven features like generating contact summaries, task recommendations, and personalized follow-up emails.
• The frontend is a modern React-based web application with a sidebar for navigation between AI Chat, Dashboard (with prioritized to-dos), and Contacts pages.
• Real-time notifications and task management are integrated to keep users updated on follow-ups and deadlines.

Challenges Faced

• Coordinating AI-generated insights with dynamic data storage and UI updates required careful planning to maintain responsiveness and accuracy.
• Designing a clean, intuitive dashboard that categorizes contacts and prioritizes tasks based on urgency and importance took several iterations.
• Ensuring data security and privacy, especially given the sensitive nature of contact information and communications, was a key consideration throughout development.

This MVP is a first step toward a comprehensive productivity assistant tailored for startup founders, helping them transform complex relationship management into an automated, streamlined process — freeing their time and energy to focus on building their vision.

Built With

• cors
• dotenv
• express.js
• gemini
• genai
• javascript
• supabase