VentureReel 🎥

A curated, high-performance directory for founder stories, startup pitches, and tech insights.

Live Demo

VentureReel - Live Deployment (Deployment pending on Railway)

Tech Stack

VentureReel is a modern server-rendered application built for speed, SEO, and robust data management.

• Core Framework: Laravel (PHP)
• Database: MySQL
• Frontend templating: Blade
• Reactivity: AlpineJS
• Styling: Tailwind CSS
• External APIs: YouTube Data API v3
• Transactional Email: Resend emails

Key Features

• YouTube Hybrid Search with One-Click Import: Search for any founder or company. Our engine checks the local database first and gracefully falls back to a live YouTube API search. Import any public video directly into the platform with full metadata ingestion in a single click.
• Founder Collections: Curate groups of related videos (e.g., "Y Combinator 2024", "Fintech Disruptors") with an integrated follow/subscription system.
• Personalized Recommendations: We track authenticated user search histories and dynamically render a tailored "Based on your searches" feed.
• Email Verification via Resend: Secure user accounts via strict RFC email validation and automated verification emails dispatched via the Resend API.
• Glassmorphism UI & Dark Mode: A stunning, CSS-native frosted glass aesthetic mapped perfectly across both light and dark native OS modes natively integrated using Tailwind.
• Admin Analytics Dashboard: A protected administrative command center highlighting Daily Active Users (DAU), top trending videos, platform aggregates, and collection management via intuitive internal REST controllers.

Architecture

VentureReel operates on a clean, scalable Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture ensuring strong separation of concerns: Routes → Middleware → Controller → Service → Model → Blade View

• Routing & Middleware: Web and Auth routes dictate access, firmly protected by rate limiters (Throttle), Content Security Policies, and Auth/Admin verification middleware.
• Controllers: Lean, single-responsibility PHP classes that orchestrate data gathering and parameter sanitation.
• Services: Heavy external logic (e.g., executing YouTube API fetches or image caching logic) is abstracted directly into dedicated service classes like YouTubeService.php.
• Models: Eloquent ORM bindings defining relationships between Users, Videos, and pivoting polymorphic Collections.
• Views: Server-rendered HTML utilizing Blade templating tightly coupled with scoped AlpineJS states for rapid browser interactions without heavy client-side Javascript frameworks.

Local Setup

Get VentureReel running locally in a few minutes.

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/shash-hq/VentureReel.git
cd VentureReel

2. Install Dependencies

composer install
npm install

3. Configure Environment Copy the standard environment variables template:

cp .env.example .env

Generate your application key:

php artisan key:generate

Open the .env file and configure your local database credentials (DB_DATABASE, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD), mailer credentials (RESEND_KEY), and your Google Cloud project's API key (YOUTUBE_API_KEY).

4. Run Migrations & Seeders Bootstrap the database schema and populate the platform with initial foundational data:

php artisan migrate:fresh --seed

5. Start the Server Launch the local PHP server and Vite hot module replacement (HMR) for frontend assets. (Run these in separate terminal windows).

php artisan serve
npm run dev

Navigate to http://localhost:8000 or http://127.0.0.1:8000 to view the application.

Screenshots

(Application UI Screenshots — Space reserved for post-deployment production captures)

Author

Built by Shashank Ranjan.