Contra has been a great tool this year

That's great result man! For a new comer to the platform - what are your top 3 recs to focus on, ideally increasing the chance of the inbound?

My Experience with the Contra × Lovable Challenge 🚀

I joined the Contra × Lovable “Built It for Small Business” Challenge.

The idea sounded simple: join the challenge, receive 200 Lovable credits, build a working product, and submit it.

Here is how it actually went for me. 🙂

🎟️ Joined the challenge

Registration completed. Challenge code received.

I already had a paid Lovable Pro account, but I couldn't find anywhere to redeem the code and receive the promised 200 credits.

🤔 Where do I enter the code?

I checked my account. Nothing.

I contacted support.

📩 Contra. 📩 Lovable.

Lovable replied and asked me to send my challenge code for verification.

I sent it.

⏳

The deadline was getting closer.

The challenge credits still weren't available.

So I stopped waiting and started building with my own paid Lovable credits.

🚀 And then the interesting part began

We built ONLINEDelux Automotive.

Not another booking form.

It is a privacy-first B2B interactive experience for automotive businesses.

A business owner can explore AI video services, keep only what fits, automatically create a private project brief, receive a Project ID and continue directly to a Private Project Review booking.

Explore → Keep → Brief → Book → You’re Booked.

No sales form first. No unnecessary identity data. No repeating the brief.

✨ The product worked.

Published. Tested. Booking completed.

That was the best moment of the challenge.

📤 Time to submit

Back to Contra.

Project information — added. Public Lovable project — added. Media — uploaded. Required social post — published. Social-post link — added.

Finally:

Complete submission.

Done! 🎉

Or… was it?

🤔 How do I know my entry was actually received?

No confirmation email arrived.

I checked my Contra account.

No submission receipt.

No visible entry ID.

No clear “Your submission has been successfully received.”

I checked the challenge page.

Submissions are now closed.

So once again:

📩 Email to Contra: Can you confirm that my submission was received?

📩 Email to Lovable: Can you see whether my project is registered as a challenge entry? Is there an entry ID?

⏳ Waiting again.

And this is where my challenge experience stands today.

Two things came out of this challenge

The first is a real product:

ONLINEDelux Automotive — a working privacy-first journey from exploring a service to a completed booking.

The second is a question:

Why is it so difficult for a participant to see the status of their own challenge journey?

Credits promised → Where are they? 🤔 Support request → Waiting. ⏳ Submission completed → Was it received? 🤔 Entry ID → Where can I find it? 🔎

None of these questions needs a complicated solution.

A participant dashboard showing:

Joined → Credits activated → Entry submitted → Submission ID → Eligible / Under review

would answer almost everything.

For now, I have the most important result:

The product exists. It works. And it is ours. 🚀

Now I'm waiting to find out whether the challenge knows that too. 🙂

Dr. Yulia B. · Founder, Onlinedelux