bigmeup

Put your best self forward for promotions, reviews, new jobs.

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Inspiration

Most people don't do a good job of selling themselves. The people who contributed the most don't always get rewarded for it.

What it does

I created AI reps who support people in their career journeys. Right now, they get people the bonuses and promotions that they deserve by writing their performance reviews.

How I built it

First, I researched and understood the potential users and the problem space. I ran the project by experienced managers to understand how ICs might be underselling themselves and what managers were looking for when they received performance reviews. I thought back to my own experiences both as an IC and manager.

Bolt.new was instrumental in creating this project. I chose Bolt because it was more robust than other low code tools that I'd tried. I liked the way it integrated with github and Netlify and setting up a domain with entri was way less hassle than I'd experienced before. I used Gemini as the AI because it is relatively generous with free limits, fast, and I found the output to be very good for this use case.

When I reached the limits of Bolt, I used Cursor to fiddle around with things further.

I went through more UI iterations than I probably needed but playing around with it and having people use real prototypes was really useful. For example, people weren't giving the reps enough info initially so I had them ask more questions, which suited the shorter responses people were giving.

Challenges we ran into

I'm not a developer at all! A few months ago, this would have been impossible for me to build. There were lots of small challenges, each of which took time to work and think through. I probably found Firebase the fiddliest and I still need to make sure permissions are correct!

Design I went back over my initial ideas and rebuilt the onboarding flow to make it easier for users. I removed two steps entirely that I didn't think were adding value.

Code I found the backend relatively straightforward because I am a product analyst by trade. The front end was much more finickity and that's where being able to prompt made the biggest difference.

Permissions As an example of a small thing that I got stuck on, when I published to the domain, my authentication broke. I tried to get it to work with the domain directly but have had to stick with the firebase authentication domain showing in google auth. It's not ideal but it wasn't worth spending longer on and it isn't going to be the thing that makes or breaks it as it finds PMF.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The front end experience I am proud of the product overall. It feels way smoother and I held myself to a high bar with the front end (where I have zero experience). I particularly like the video animation where you meet the reps for the first time.

The reps personality A little secret - they're based off people I know. The Dr Becks rep is hilariously dry and I wish there were more humour in more serious products.

Pippa is completely bonkers in her enthusiasm but is an accurate reflection of a former boss.

The CV upload feature I can't believe how fast this is. It's right at the start of the user experience and it's a real moment of joy for me to see how quickly it parses a CV and populates the onboarding fields.

What we learned

I think the biggest learning for me was about just getting out there and building. This build was so much faster than another project I worked on this year. The way we build now is different - it is very easy to get to a working prototype and the cost of iteration is much lower. So just by getting started, you can get way closer to the actual solution than ages of planning, coordinating teams and begging engineers to help.

Bolt and this hackathon has fundamentally changed the way I understand building. I was a senior director in product at a French unicorn, I've been in a startup in London and I worked for years at Meta - but now I don't want to go back to a corporate job. I feel like I can build and get my ideas out into the world directly. #vibecoding !

What's next for bigmeup

Paul Graham always says to ship before you're ready and I feel like that with bigmeup. I can still improve so much of what you see today.

Activation I'd like to improve the speed to value and make sure it's really easy to give the rep your career and project history. Importing github or calendars could be a nice way of doing this.

Acquisition I'd love to get real users to it, perhaps through marketing and ideally some PR from Bolt! I have an idea I'd love to jam on where you can create a 'bigmeup' video with Tavus. Can you imagine that taking over TikTok - having a rep big you up and tell your career story better than you can?!

Referral There's a viral vector with the "ask my colleague" button. I especially like this because your colleagues will be writing their reviews at the same time as you! The feature's built out but needs their feedback integrating into the reviews and the option promoting more prominently.

Retention There's potential for longer-term retention with ongoing conversations with your reps - wouldn't it be awesome if your review was already written beforehand because you've been emailing back and forth with you rep and they know what projects you've been working on throughout the quarter?

Revenue - shorter term I think there's a way to monetise it today that is fair to users. If they get a review that's just 10% better, that could make them a lot of money!

Revenue - longer term In the longer term, if I'm able to matchmake candidates and jobs, then this project has the legs to become a unicorn.

With all the info about the projects people have been working on, the reps will have a better picture of the user than Linkedin does.

They can start matching people with jobs: pitching the jobs perfectly to the candidate and the perfect candidates to the companies hiring.

This is really exciting.

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