diff --git a/start-server.sh b/start-server.sh
index a250a3c3..4e143f37 100755
--- a/start-server.sh
+++ b/start-server.sh
@@ -1 +1,3 @@
+. venv/bin/activate
+
 lightrag-ollama --llm-binding openai --llm-model deepseek-chat --embedding-model "bge-m3:latest" --embedding-dim 1024