Once upon a boring day, while endlessly scrolling through reels on Instagram, I suddenly got bored and opened ChatGPT — not for fun this time, but to do something useful. I asked it to suggest an AI tool for building beautiful UI, and also wanted to do some “vibe coding.”
That’s when it introduced me to Bolt.new and Lovable.so.
🤯 Bolt Blew My Mind
I already had Lovable premium and free trial credits for Bolt. So, just for fun, I gave the same landing page prompt to both tools.
Lovable gave me a cute, emoji-filled UI.
But Bolt? Bolt went beyond my imagination — animations, clean UI, a whole vibe. My mind = blown 🤯
While admiring my creation, I saw this glowing gold theme banner on Bolt:
“Register for the World’s Largest Hackathon”
I had no clue what it meant, but curiosity (and ChatGPT’s help again) pushed me to register.
💌 Surprise in My Inbox
Some hours (or maybe a day?) later, I got an email from “no-reply”.
I opened it, confused and nervous… and BOOM 💥
150,000 credits + Bolt Premium! Just like that. Free!
No second thought — I jumped in and started building my startup idea:
🎯 CreatorCircle – an app that connects like-minded people in college.
This was my second time “vibe coding” using AI tools, and easily the best.
⛔ Roadblocks & Rollercoasters
I even bunked college for 2 days to focus on my project. But… things didn’t go smoothly forever:
My project size exceeded limits
My credits were over
I found a coupon code and randomly tried it on a $50 plan…
✨ Magically got 26 MILLION credits (don’t ask how 😅)
Still, I started doubting myself:
“There are 1,00,000+ devs in this. They’re smarter. More experienced. Can I even win?”
But I pushed on, even though I didn’t use other tools in the Bolt pack (because I wasn’t sure how 😔).
🔄 Auth Bug & Missed Opportunity
The day of project submission came.
I checked Supabase and found that many users were stuck after verifying email — being redirected to localhost instead of login.
Big mistake. Huge impact. But I couldn’t fix it in time.
Still, I submitted the video demo of the app UI — no voice, no edits. Just raw.
Days later, I saw someone else's YouTube submission… with full voiceover 😓
That hit hard.
But I still had hope — and 19 days left in the hackathon.
So I told my friends to join too. We made a fun Instagram reel — and that reel BLEW UP:
🔥 190K+ views and 1000+ comments!
Thanks to an automation I built, everyone got the registration link instantly.
"If there was a referral prize, I’d be #1" 😆
🥺 D-Day: July 26 — The Results
It was my friend's birthday. We ate biryani, went on a walk — and suddenly, YouTube pinged:
Bolt.live starting in 30 mins!
Only 5% battery. Outside. Far from home.
I borrowed my friend’s phone and joined the live… nervous, excited, praying.
But my name didn’t come up.
Not even mentioned. 😔
I felt crushed. Not because I lost, but because I believed in my idea.
A social app like Instagram + LinkedIn for creators — CreatorCircle could’ve been big.
Still, I have zero regrets.
Because this journey — from reels to real dreams — taught me more than any class or book.
❤️ Final Words
Dear Bolt team,
I may not have won, but your platform helped me start. It helped me dream bigger.
And that’s worth more than a prize.
So here's my success story, raw and real.
— Yasmanth Vemala
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