HERLINK

Connect. Collaborate. Lead.

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Inspiration

We were inspired by a simple problem: having a goal, skill, or project idea is not always enough if you cannot find the right person to connect with. Many university students and early-career women may need mentors, teammates, or collaborators while also having valuable skills they can offer. This led us to create HERLINK around two simple questions: “What do I need?” and “What can I offer?”

What it does

HERLINK is a networking platform designed for women to connect, collaborate, and grow. Users create profiles with their skills, interests, goals, needs, offers, and networking preferences. HERLINK helps them discover potentially relevant connections based on these factors and explains why they match. After connecting, users can privately message each other and move from networking to creating or joining projects and developing leadership experience.

How we built it

We built HERLINK as a full-stack web application using Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and Supabase, with GenSpark used for AI-assisted development. Our team designed the problem, user journey, features, matching logic, privacy requirements, and overall product direction. The matching system uses an explainable rule-based approach that considers goals, skills, interests, I NEED/I CAN compatibility, and networking preferences.

Challenges we ran into

One of our main challenges was creating meaningful matches instead of simply matching users through keywords. We addressed this by considering multiple factors and providing a “Why You Match” explanation. Privacy was another important challenge, so we avoided collecting unnecessary personal information and limited private messaging to accepted connections. We also had limited time and were working as a beginner team, so we focused on making the core journey functional rather than trying to build too many features.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we turned our idea into a working MVP with a complete networking journey. HERLINK includes profile creation, I NEED/I CAN matching, explainable match results, connection requests, private messaging, project creation and joining, leadership progress, responsive design, and editable profile and branding images. Most importantly, we created a pathway where a connection can become a real collaboration.

What we learned

Through this project, we learned that building a useful product is not only about adding features. We learned to start with a specific problem, keep the user journey simple, design features around real needs, consider privacy from the beginning, test functionality carefully, and use AI development tools while still understanding and controlling what we build.

What's next for HERLINK

Our next step is to expand HERLINK from a networking MVP into a broader collaboration and leadership platform. We envision more personalized mentorship matching, networking events, stronger collaboration tools, project matching, leadership development pathways, and more personalized recommendations. Our long-term vision is simple: Need → Connect → Collaborate → Lead.

Built With

  • ai
  • artificial
  • assisted
  • digital
  • education
  • innovation
  • intelligence
  • leadership
  • networking
  • professional-growth
  • skill-matching
  • skill-sharing
  • social-impact
  • supabase
  • technology
  • web-application
  • women-empowerment
  • women-in-tech
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