Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as shocking as Noam Shazeer (the AI legend) leaving Google to join OpenAI 🤯
In today's edition:
💡 An idea to take on a cartel (of sorts)
🔋 PhD-level Claude research, a $200k launch playbook, a $22B exit + more
🔍 Seven-figure YC startups, SpaceX decoded, a climb-in ultrasound + more
🍻 Eating utensils for the next generation
Let's goooo 🚀
P.S: Welcome to the new Half Baked brand. We’ve grown up a bit, and decided to say farewell to our beloved unicorn mascot. Reply to this with any feedback on the new brand, we’ll read through every email.
📹 Zero-Fee Ticketing Platform
That’s the ticket
Available Domain: AdmitOne.ai
👤 Source: A Request for Startup from Macy Mills (Partner at a16z), who put out the call for someone to finally take on the broken, overpriced ticketing industry. Consider it answered, Macy.
❌ Problem:
The World Cup is in full flight right now, and if you've tried to actually go you'll know it's quietly become the most expensive in history. FIFA switched on "dynamic" pricing for the first time ever and watched final tickets balloon from $6,730 to $10,990.
But this isn't a FIFA problem, it's a ticketing problem, and the ugly truth is the whole industry runs like a cartel: a US jury just ruled Ticketmaster and Live Nation an illegal monopoly sat on roughly 80% of the market, propped up by exclusive venue deals that mean the fan never really had a choice. It’s time to change things. Here's the idea.
✅ Solution:
An AI-native, zero-fee ticketing platform for independent events that charges fans next to nothing and makes its money like a fintech
Describe your event in a sentence (or snap a photo of the poster) and it spins up the whole thing in two minutes - branded ticket page, pricing tiers, seating map, on-sale schedule and launch emails - with one honest all-in price and identity-bound tickets that lock the bots and touts out.
The company earns revenue like a fintech through payment processing, merchant financing, FX margin etc.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Google AI Studio Demo | Remix this Build
💡The Half Baked Take: 10 years ago YC funded a fee-free ticketing platform which went on to get acquired by…you guessed it…Ticketmaster. You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain I guess. Great time to build an AI-native business in this market.
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💰 Every Business Payment Should be Earning You Rewards
With Melio, they can. Pay any vendor - even those who only accept checks or wires - using your credit card. Earn miles, cashback, or points on every payment. Keep cash in your business up to 45 days longer.
No hidden fees, just smarter payments that work harder for you.
⛽ Fuel for Taking Action
⚒️ Founder Tutorial: How to Make Claude Research Like a PhD in 5 Minutes
Paste in the first prompt and ask Claude to simulate five experts on your topic - the practitioner, the academic, the skeptic, the economist, the historian. Each one sees what the others miss.
Then run three follow-ups in sequence: map the contradictions, synthesise into a CEO-ready briefing, and make Claude peer-review its own work with confidence scores. Five minutes, start to finish.
🆓 Playbook: Here’s how to engineer a viral X launch with zero luck involved, from an operator who charges $200k to do it.
🤑 Money Shot: Netflix handed this founder a hardware project it expected to fail, then wrote a $6M cheque to make it go away. It was just acquired for $22 billion. Here's how.
P.S. Our Half Baked Founder Toolkit has playbooks, deals, exclusive offers and much more for founders looking to take action and start or scale their business. 100% free.
🎁 Small Business Month: Get $1,500 Back for Switching to SuperMobile
It's Small Business Month, and T-Mobile for Business is putting $100 back per line in founders' pockets.
Activate 15+ voice lines on SuperMobile, pocket $1,500+ in bill credits, and get unlimited premium data plus a 5-Year Price Guarantee. No contest, no lottery, just money back for switching.
🔍️ Everything Else from Today
🛠️ AI Tool: Granola captures action summaries for every meeting. They're giving Half Baked readers 100% off their first month. Claim the deal.
📈 Trends with Benefits: YC startups are now hitting seven figures three months after launch, thanks to this one thing.
📚 Must-Read: Marc Andreessen and Michael McGuinness from a16z just co-wrote a piece on why SpaceX isn't a rocket company at all.
📺 Must-Watch: YC’s Jon Xu just broke down how to choose what startup idea to build. Great advice in here.
🔮 Future Tech: Midjourney just announced a full-body ultrasound scanner you climb inside. Literally no-one saw that coming, but I back it!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Smart Chopsticks
Enjoy showing off the fact that you can eat with chopsticks? Wish your chopsticks could tell you more about what you’re eating?
Introducing ChopStix™, the world's first pair of smart chopsticks that scan every bite for dodgy oil, pH, sodium and calories, then ping the full report to your phone over Bluetooth. Auto-syncs to your fitness app and, in Premium mode, your health insurer.
ChopStix™ - Sticks don't lie.
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👋 That’s All Folks
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