SkillHatch

Personalized Startup Ideas Generator

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🚀 Inspiration

As student founders, we constantly faced a challenge — coming up with viable, startup-worthy ideas that matched our skills and interests. Most online tools felt generic, or too advanced for beginners. We wanted to create something smart, inspiring, and tailored to people like us: students, hustlers, and first-time founders looking for personalized entrepreneurial guidance.

That led to the birth of SkillHatch — an intelligent startup idea generator designed to empower students to turn their skills into startup opportunities.

💡 What it does

SkillHatch generates personalized startup ideas based on a user’s:

  • Key Skills
  • Experience Level
  • Interest Domains (e.g., HealthTech, FinTech, Education)

Users receive:

  • Realistic startup ideas with market size, revenue model, competitive edge, and difficulty
  • Audio overview of the idea using ElevenLabs text-to-speech
  • Favorites system with sign-in
  • Progress Tracker to build their idea step-by-step
  • Premium users can download market analysis reports, startup toolkits, and more

🛠️ How we built it

  • Frontend: React + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS
  • Backend: Supabase (Auth, PostgreSQL, Edge Functions)
  • Payments: Stripe (sandbox) integrated via Bolt
  • Text-to-Speech: ElevenLabs API
  • PDF Reports: jsPDF
  • Icons: Lucide React

The app was scaffolded and iterated entirely in Bolt.new, allowing us to build fast, test rapidly, and ship with confidence.

⚔️ Challenges we ran into

  • API Reliability: Early API failures from Dappier led us to implement fallback logic—using a local Supabase database for idea generation while retaining ElevenLabs for text-to-speech functionality
  • Stripe Sandbox Testing: Setting up dummy subscriptions while maintaining real logic
  • Progress Tracker UX: Designing a visual builder experience for startup steps
  • Supabase RLS: Ensuring data security and authenticated user experience

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a production-ready SaaS in under a week
  • Seamlessly connected Supabase, Stripe, and ElevenLabs
  • Created a beautiful, responsive, and accessible user interface
  • Enabled premium features and monetization flow
  • Designed a tool that’s actually useful for students like us

📚 What we learned

  • Advanced usage of Supabase: Row-level security, auth hooks, edge functions
  • How to integrate ElevenLabs and Stripe into a React app
  • Designing for accessibility and mobile-first users
  • Project management under tight deadlines

🔮 What's next for SkillHatch

  • Add AI scoring for pitch quality and business potential
  • Build a community space for students to collaborate on ideas
  • Launch the mobile version
  • Expand the idea bank and add localization support
  • Integrate with investor platforms and mentorship networks

SkillHatch is more than just an idea generator — it’s a launchpad for student entrepreneurs. 🚀

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