PREVC

A platform that tells founders the brutal truth about their startups before they waste years of their lives.

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PREVC

Inspiration

This hackathon itself was the inspiration. Hackathons are where thousands of aspiring founders are born - people with ideas but no filter for what's actually viable. I realized this hackathon would spawn hundreds of new founder journeys. They deserve brutal honesty from day one, not after they've burned through savings and relationships. PREVC exists to be the harsh reality check every hackathon project needs before becoming a startup.

What it does

PREVC evaluates startup ideas with the same harsh criteria VCs use behind closed doors. Users input their startup details, and our AI (trained on real VC evaluation frameworks) scores them 1-10 across problem validation, market opportunity, team fit, business model, and timing. Free users get quick assessment. Pro users ($22/month) get unlimted evaluations, customer acquisition strategies, and an AI advisor. The system is deliberately brutal - most ideas score 3-5/10.

How we built it

React + TypeScript frontend with Supabase for auth/database. Google Gemini 2.5 for AI evaluations with custom prompts based on actual VC rubrics. RevenueCat handles subscriptions. Quick assessments use Gemini Flash for speed; detailed evaluations use Gemini Pro. Implemented structured output to ensure consistent JSON responses. Added social sharing to track virality. Built in 4 weeks with extensive prompt engineering to achieve appropriate harshness levels. Elevenlabs for voicing of VCs

Challenges we ran into

Getting the AI to be genuinely brutal took 20+ prompt iterations - it kept being too nice. Database schema mismatches between form fields and Supabase tables caused 400 errors that took hours to debug. RevenueCat Web SDK documentation was sparse. Gemini would occasionally return malformed JSON despite structured output. Quick assessments were initially redirecting instead of showing inline results, breaking the user flow.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The AI consistently delivers harsh but fair evaluations - tested with 100+ real startup ideas and achieved appropriate score distribution (most fail). Quick assessment modal keeps users engaged without navigation. Successfully integrated 5 different services (Supabase, Gemini, RevenueCat, Tavus, ElevenLabs) without major conflicts. The UI genuinely looks professional despite being built quickly.

What we learned

Founders desperately want honest feedback but rarely get it. Gemini 2.5's structured output is reliable but not perfect - always need fallbacks. Web monetization is harder than mobile - RevenueCat's web SDK has limitations. Users engage more with brutal honesty than encouragement. Quick assessments drive conversions better than forcing signups upfront.

What's next for PREVC

Marketing push: Launch on Product Hunt, Reddit's r/startups, and Hacker News. Create viral "Roast My Startup" campaigns where founders publicly share their brutal scores. Partner with accelerators and hackathons as their official pre-screening tool.

Voice-activated VC: Already built ElevenLabs integration - next is polishing the UX for voice consultations. Imagine pitching your idea verbally and getting interrupted with harsh questions in real-time, just like a real VC meeting.

Feature expansion:

  • Pitch deck analysis using Gemini's multimodal capabilities
  • Competitor deep-dives with web search grounding
  • Anonymous benchmark database showing score distributions by industry
  • API access for accelerators to bulk-evaluate applicants
  • "Where are they now" tracking - follow up on evaluated startups after 6 months

The goal: Become the standard first stop for every hackathon project and startup idea. Save founders years of wasted effort with 2 minutes of brutal honesty.

Built With

  • bolt
  • netlify
  • revenuecat
  • supabase
  • vite
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