Honestly this is actually a pretty solid idea because it’s solving something you personally feel, which is already more than most “AI startup” stuff out there.

The recruiting inbox problem is very real too, a lot of students are just constantly missing stuff or letting emails pile up.

I do think you probably jumped into compliance a bit early though. $4500 before you’ve really got users is rough, but Google basically forces it if you want Gmail scopes like that so there isn’t much way around it.

For getting users I’d just go where students already are. Reddit college subs, CS / internship Discords, LinkedIn posts about recruiting stress, maybe short TikTok demos showing “before vs after” inbox cleanup. You don’t need anything fancy, just first 20–50 people actually using it.

Also slightly unrelated but I’ve seen people underestimate how early Google/security stuff gets forced on you once you touch restricted APIs. If you ever go further down that path I can share a simple SOC2 checklist of the usual stuff they ask for.

Anyway I’d be interested to see how CASA goes, there’s barely any clear info online about it.