How to build a startup directory website with Lovable

Rule of thumb: if you want a directory this week and do not care whose software it runs on, rent one. Brilliant Directories or eDirectory will have you live before this guide is finished. If the directory is the product, or the thing that brings people to your newsletter, your fund or your community, the shelf is worth owning, because the meters above are exactly where a growing directory pays and a curated list of companies with their rounds is an asset you should be able to move, export and redesign at will. The honest middle case is a directory whose value is somebody else’s data. There the answer is a subscription, because you may read Dealroom’s rounds and you may not republish them.

* On this template the free-tier lines to watch are images and the pause. The free plan includes 1 GB of file storage, and a cover or gallery image may be up to 10 MB, so a directory with a few hundred companies and their pictures reaches it. It also pauses a project after a week without activity, and a directory nobody edits for a week is normal. Pro, from $25/mo, lifts storage to 100 GB, ends the pause and keeps a daily backup for 7 days, with spend caps on by default.

Prices and rates from supabase.com, developex.com and docs.lovable.dev, checked September 2026.

Only the first three are needed to start, and none of it touches your computer. From here, you describe what you want and Lovable builds it in the browser.

1. 01

   Set the ground rules, connect Supabase, and design the tables

   The directory cannot show anything without a database, so the database comes first here, together with the rule that decides what a stranger can see.

   PromptSet the rules, connect the backend, design the tablesCopy

   Before we build anything else, note the ground rules for this project: it is a startup directory with news and a funding tracker, the vocabulary throughout is startups, funding rounds, categories, tags, articles and admins, nothing is public until its status is published and the database enforces that rather than the screen, and only an admin may add, change or delete anything. Now connect this project to Supabase, and once it is linked design the tables. Categories and tags with a name and slug. Startups with name, slug, short and long descriptions, a category, a funding stage from a fixed list (Seed, Series A through Series E+, IPO, Grant, Acquisition), a published or unpublished status defaulting to unpublished, an archived flag, logo and cover addresses, a gallery, team size, city and country, links, and total and latest funding columns. A startup_tags join table and a social links table. Funding rounds with stage, amount, date, lead investor, co-investors, valuations and notes, and a trigger that recalculates the startup’s total and latest raise on every change. Articles with title, slug, body, featured image, category, author, status and published date, and a news_tags join table. Turn on row-level security everywhere with the public half of the rules: anyone may read categories and tags, a published and unarchived startup with its rounds and links, and a published article, and nothing else yet. Seed three companies with a round each, one unpublished.

   Say the publish rule in the first message. Left unsaid, an assistant will reasonably filter drafts in the screen, and then a draft is one forgotten filter away from the public.

2. 02

   Get the directory filtering in the preview

   The screen visitors live on. Cards, filters, a sort menu, a count and a view per company with its rounds, all reading real rows. Check it signed out.

   PromptBuild the directory and the funding pageCopy

   Build the public directory page: a grid of company cards with the logo, name, one-line description, category, stage and total raised. Add a filter sidebar with search over name and description, categories, funding stages, a minimum and maximum amount raised and a location field, a sort menu (newest, oldest, most funded, least funded, A to Z) and a live result count with a clear-all button. A card opens a detail view with the full description, links and the rounds in date order, at an address of its own so a link can be shared. Then build the funding page: every round with its company, stage, amount, date and investors, filterable by stage and by amount, sorted by amount. Read only published, unarchived companies on both.

   The preview shows two companies, not three, if the rule from step 01 holds. If it shows three, send a follow-up about the access rules before building anything else on top.

3. 03

   Add logins, roles and the admin gate, then check them with the audit prompt

   Accounts for the people who edit, a roles table of their own, the admin half of every rule, and a back office door that only admins get through. No sign-up screen, because visitors never need an account.

   PromptAdd logins, roles and the admin rulesCopy

   Add authentication with email and password: a sign-in screen, logout and a persisted session, and no public sign-up screen. Add a user_roles table with admin and viewer roles, a database function that checks a role, and a trigger that gives every new account a profile row and the viewer role. Write the admin half of every access rule so an admin may read, add, change and delete every row in every table, drafts included. Build an admin layout that sends anyone without the admin role back to sign-in. Then tell me how to promote my own account to admin, and show me that a viewer account sees exactly what a signed-out visitor sees.

4. 04

   Bookmark, then ask for the admin and the image storage

   The back office is the largest screen set in the build and the one you will iterate on most. Bookmark first so a bad direction is one click back.

   PromptBuild the admin and the image storageCopy

   Bookmark the current version first. Then build the admin behind the admin layout: a dashboard with counts of startups, articles and accounts, a startups screen with add and edit dialogs, add a funding round, publish or unpublish, archive, and delete a company together with its rounds, links and tags, then screens for articles, categories, tags, and users where a role is switched between admin and viewer. Create four storage buckets (logos up to 5 MB, covers, gallery and article images up to 10 MB, image types only), readable by anyone and writable only by admins. Add a server-side function for logo uploads that checks the caller is a signed-in admin, checks the startup exists and the file is under 5 MB, then stores the image and writes its address to the startup. Other images upload directly from the admin under the bucket rules.

   Expect several follow-up messages on the startups screen. Select the element in the preview to point at what should move rather than describing where it sits.

5. 05

   Add the news section

   Articles with a page each on the public side, reading only published rows, and the articles screen you built in step 04 filling them.

   PromptBuild the news sectionCopy

   Build the news section: a list of published articles with the featured image, title, category and date, and a page per article at /news/its-slug showing the featured image and the body with its line breaks kept. Write a draft article in the admin, confirm it is invisible on the news page, publish it, and confirm it appears.

   That last sentence is the whole publish rule tested once more, on the other table. Cheap to ask for and worth having watched.

6. 06
   Destination

   Add the landing page and the meta, try it signed out, and publish

   Finish with the marketing page and the titles and share cards, look at the site as a stranger in the preview, then publish from the same tab.

   PromptAdd the landing page, demo mode, and publishCopy

   Add a marketing landing page with a hero, a sector section, a funding section, a trends section and a closing call to action, written as copy I can edit rather than pulled from the database. Give every public page a title and description and the card that shows when the link is shared. Add a demo mode switch on the sign-in screen that opens the admin with every write intercepted in the browser and a banner saying changes are not saved. Then walk me through the whole thing in the preview signed out: confirm the unpublished company is nowhere, confirm an article address opens directly, confirm the admin sends me to sign-in. When it holds up, publish it.

Review the access rules (row-level security policies) on every table. For each one, tell me in simple terms who can view, add, edit, and delete records, confirm that people can only reach their own data while the right roles can reach more, and flag anything left open that shouldn’t be.

One rule outranks everything above it: your database service key belongs on the server only, never in the app a visitor downloads and never in a repository. The publishable key is meant to be public and the access rules are what protect the data behind it, so if the service key escapes, treat it as compromised and replace it the same day.

One button, and the app you have been previewing is live.

Add a server-side function called ai that calls my AI provider with the key held in function secrets, never in the browser. It accepts a task name and the text or fields for that task, refuses any caller who is not a signed-in admin, records every call in an ai_calls table (who, which task, tokens in and out, a cost estimate, success or failure), and returns the model’s answer as structured fields the admin screens can fill in. Add a small usage panel to the admin dashboard showing calls and estimated spend this month.

In the add-startup dialog, add a “Draft from website” button that sends the company’s homepage text to the ai function and gets back a one-line and a paragraph description, a suggested category from my categories table, up to five tags, the city and country, and any social links it found. Fill the form with the results for the admin to edit, and never publish anything automatically.

Add a “From announcement” action on the news screen that sends pasted text to the ai function and gets back a draft article (title, slug, body) and, if the text describes a raise, a funding round (stage from my stage list, amount, date, lead investor, co-investors). Show both as prefilled forms for the admin to confirm, match the article to a startup by name with a confirmation step, and leave both unpublished until the admin publishes them.

When an admin saves a startup or an article without tags, call the ai function with the description and get back a suggested category from my table and up to five tags, preferring tags that already exist. Show them as chips the admin accepts or removes before saving, and add a “Suggest tags” button on existing records so the back catalogue can be tidied a page at a time.

Add a “Weekly digest” button on the admin dashboard that gathers the startups, rounds and articles published in the last seven days and asks the ai function for a short digest with a headline, one paragraph, and a bullet per raise with the amount and stage. Save it as an unpublished article and offer a copy-as-text button, since this site does not send email.

You bring no key and pick no provider: Lovable manages an API key per project, and if you do not name a model it chooses one from what you describe. Match the model to the job: fast and cheap for anything that runs on every record, stronger only where the reasoning matters. Send every feature above through that one integration.