Bickqr

Inspiration

When texting with my friends, I've always wanted to reply to certain messages with meme sounds or audio reactions featuring viral sounds, but there was no mainstream platform that suited my needs. The few I found were lacking in audio library or functionality, so I knew something better could be built. I've always felt that there was a gap on the internet for a platform focused on giving audio-creation powers and tools to users. We have Instagram for photos, YouTube for videos, Twitter for text, GIPHY for GIFs, and now Bickqr is here for short audio memes.

What It Does

Think of it as the GIPHY for audio. Bickqr helps you share audio memes. It enables you to create audio memes from videos or popular sounds by extracting and trimming them, then making them accessible on the platform for anyone to share and use. It makes the entire process as easy as possible—from creation to sharing—so that you can send whatever sound you want when texting.

How We Built It

It was built primarily in Bolt; all functionality was handled by Bolt. I used Supabase for the backend and storage, and I also set up a Render worker that processes audio files automatically on upload. Then I used ElevenLabs to create a watermark that is added to the shareable audio.

Challenges We Ran Into

Some audio tools/libraries did not work in the Bolt environment, such as FFmpeg, so I had to find workarounds using other tools and push those functionalities to the backend Render worker.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

I'm proud I was able to make the entire project work end-to-end and see people share bicks. I'm particularly happy that I made the MP4 conversion feature work with a visual watermark.

What We Learned

This idea has been on my mind since 2020; I've been waiting for the “right time,” “right tools,” and “right team” to execute. Building it in this hackathon taught me to just start building. I was waiting for perfect conditions. Although I knew this lesson intellectually, the project has given me the momentum to pursue any idea I have in mind. I never thought I could get an MVP out, but here we are—even building more features than expected.

What's Next for Bickqr

I will focus on making the platform more scalable, increasing the audio library, and working on adoption. It has the potential to become as big as GIPHY, and I will work on scaling it to that point.