Nexus

Inspiration

LinkedIn has become more of a social media platform where people chase connection counts rather than meaningful relationships. It doesn't help you understand who you actually know, how you know them, or how your network connects to the people you want to meet. We wanted to build something that makes networking at events intentional and visual, not transactional.

What it does

Nexus lets users build a live mind map of the people they meet at conferences and events. Every connection you make appears as a node on an interactive graph, and the app calculates the shortest path to anyone in the broader event network by traversing through your connections and theirs. You can see at a glance who to ask for an introduction and how your network grows in real time.

How we built it

We used Next.js with TypeScript for the full stack, Supabase for the database and real-time subscriptions, and Auth0 for authentication. The network graph is rendered using a force-directed layout, and shortest path calculations run a breadth-first search algorithm on the client side. We also integrated the Gemini API for networking insights and ElevenLabs for voice introductions.

Challenges we ran into

Frontend design was a constant battle, especially getting the graph to feel responsive and intuitive on mobile. Implementing the graph features themselves took several iterations to get right. We also spent significant time building the ability to import attendees from Cvent, which required digging into their data format and handling edge cases.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The core functionality works as intended and serves as a solid MVP for the larger vision. I could genuinely see myself using this tool at an event, which feels like the right bar for something built over a weekend.

What we learned

I discovered that Gemini is a significantly weaker coding assistant compared to Opus, which shaped how I split tasks between AI tools. I learned about breadth-first search, the algorithm powering our shortest path feature. I also spent time exploring various company APIs, which opened my eyes to how many interesting integrations are possible when you start thinking about what data is already out there.

What's next for Nexus

The roadmap includes building out a mobile-native version, integrating LinkedIn to make profiles richer without manual input, reducing onboarding friction, adding tap-to-connect functionality similar to how Apple handles contact sharing, and reworking the UI and graph visualization to create a smoother user flow.

Built With

• auth0
• css
• gemini
• next.js
• supabase
• tailwind
• typescript