Kiku

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  We won the impact and fan favorite awards

Inspiration

Small businesses struggle to grow through influencer marketing. Tools are built for enterprises and cost too much. Finding influencers takes hours. Outreach is manual and inefficient. We wanted to give small businesses an affordable AI engine that does the heavy lifting for them.

What it does

Kiku finds relevant influencers, writes personalized outreach, and manages partnerships in one place. It helps small businesses match with creators based on audience data, content style, interests, and brand fit. It automates the first 10 hours of outreach. It gives SMBs a simple workflow to scale partnerships without needing a marketing team.

How we built it

We used AI to automate influencer discovery and outreach. We built a scraper to scan public creator data and match it with brand inputs. We built a workflow engine that drafts personalized emails, organizes conversations, and tracks replies. Everything was built with small business speed and simplicity in mind.

Challenges we ran into

Influencer data is fragmented across platforms and not easy to access. Matching creators to brand goals requires more than follower count. Small businesses need a tool that works out of the box. We spent time refining the AI prompts and matching logic.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We created an affordable alternative to enterprise tools. We reduced the outreach workload from 10 hours to minutes. We built a matching flow that is easy for small businesses to understand. We validated demand with real SMB conversations during the build.

What we learned

Small businesses want clarity and speed. Most tools overwhelm users. Influencer outreach fails because brands contact the wrong creators. AI can remove 80 percent of the manual work. Simple interfaces outperform complex dashboards.

What’s next for Kiku

Build two sided features for creators. Launch automated follow up sequences. Add performance data and conversion estimates for each creator. Release a lightweight CRM for partnerships. Expand matching to include TikTok and Instagram. Grow with small businesses and help them scale faster.

Built With

• cloudflare)
• express)
• openai)
• react)
• render)
• supabase)