PitchMate

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  User Flow Diagram

Finding the right co-founder is a major challenge for student entrepreneurs. Within environments like Monash University, students often have strong ideas but lack access to collaborators with complementary skills. Existing platforms are either too broad or not designed for early-stage idea discovery, leading to missed opportunities and underdeveloped ideas.

PitchMate is a university-focused platform that connects students with startup ideas, MVPs, and already functional businesses to potential collaborators. Users can post ideas, explore others through a swipe-based interface, express interest, and match with founders. Once matched, they can chat and begin collaborating within a trusted, verified ecosystem.

PitchMate is built using Next.js for the frontend and Supabase as the backend. Supabase handled authentication, database management, and real-time messaging. Features such as profiles, idea posting, matching logic, and chat were integrated efficiently.

Designing a reliable matching system while avoiding duplicate interactions required careful structuring. Real-time chat introduced synchronization challenges, especially ensuring messages were displayed correctly. Implementing secure email restrictions for a university-only system also required balancing simplicity with effectiveness in a hackathon setting.

We successfully built a fully functional MVP within 48 hours, including authentication, swipe-based discovery, matching, and chat. The platform delivers a clean, intuitive user experience and demonstrates a complete end-to-end collaboration flow.

We learned the importance of prioritization, rapid prototyping, and clear team coordination. Leveraging backend-as-a-service tools significantly accelerated development while maintaining scalability.

Future improvements include smarter matching algorithms, multi-university expansion, social media sharing, enhanced filtering, and deeper integrations to support real-world startup collaboration.

Built With

• next.js
• supabase
• vercel