Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as generous as OpenAI offering the US government a 5% stake 👀
In today's edition:
💡 A billion-dollar-idea from a +$50M founder you can steal
🔋 Selling without ads, a $260m exit + more
🔍 Too old for YC, synthetic cells + more
🍻 An idea with some bite to it
Let's goooo 🚀
P.S. On 7 July, we're running a free, invite-only 30-day programme for anyone with the itch to build. No idea or experience required. You'll get the tools, the playbooks and, for the ones we believe in, cash prizes to back what you create. Applications close 4 July. Keep an eye on your inboxes in the coming days.
Apply here to secure your spot
📊 AI Attribution Platform
It All Ads Up
Available Domain: Adtribution.com
👤 Source: Zach Yadegari, who sold Cal AI to MyFitnessPal at 18, believes there’s a billion-dollar idea opportunity in the ad space after describing how he measured the return on a $500K MrBeast sponsorship. He makes cool YouTube videos too by the way…
❌ Problem:
Every business spending on ads has the same question: which ones actually make me money? Since Apple and Google killed tracking, nobody can answer it, with 75% of marketers saying their measurement tools have stopped working.
Even Cal AI, doing $50M ARR, measures influencer deals by eyeballing revenue spikes, applying made-up multiples to promo codes, and manually switching channels off to see what happens. Here's the idea.
✅ Solution:
An AI tool that connects to your company's data and does proper cross-channel attribution - tracking every euro of ad spend to the revenue it actually drove.
Connect your ad accounts, sales data and influencer campaigns, and it does the detective work for you - spotting revenue spikes, running the on/off channel tests, and cross-checking every signal until the estimates agree.
Crucially, it covers the channels the dashboards can't see: influencer posts, podcast reads, UGC, that $500K YouTube integration. If it moved revenue, it gets measured.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Google AI Studio Demo | Remix this Build
💡 The Half Baked Take: When a founder doing $50M a year tells you his attribution method is vibes plus some spreadsheets, there’s probably something there.
Rate this idea
📈 You’re Scaling Faster Than Your Carrier Can Keep Up
You hired 15 people this year. You'll hire 20 more next year. Every carrier quote comes with a new "promotional rate" that expires the second you sign. T-Mobile for Business does it differently.
Why founders switch:
5-Year Price Guarantee on talk, text, and 5G data
No annual contracts, scale lines up or down as you go
Exceptional 24/7/365 customer support when something breaks
America's best network, according to Ookla. US businesses only.
⛽ Fuel for Taking Action
💡 Idea Inspiration: Ever think we need to bring back the morning papers? One founder built exactly that with AI.
⚒️ Founder Tutorial: This guy managed to sell to 280,000 strangers without spending a penny on ads. Here’s how.
🆓 Playbook: How to actually kill churn, from a founder who took VEED to $50M ARR and learned it the hard way.
🤑 Money Shot: This guy sold a kids' vitamin brand for a cool $260m. Here's how he did it.
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.
💳️ Business Owners: Earn Unlimited Cash Back and a $1000 Welcome Bonus
Every month you put business expenses on a card with no cash back, that's money left on the table.
This card flips that script — apply and if you get approved, hit a spending threshold within the set timeframe, and earn a $1000 welcome bonus on top of unlimited cash back on everything you buy, no caps, no categories to track.
Throw in a $0 annual fee and free cards for your employees, and it's one less thing costing you money without you realizing it.
FinanceBuzz experts pointed this one out for exactly that reason.
🔍️ Everything Else from Today
🛠️ AI Tool: Wispr Flow is the most-used AI tool at Half Baked. Get a 45-day free trial on us.
📚 Must-Read: Everyone told him he was too old for Y Combinator: average founder age 24, a teenager in his batch calling him "uncle." He got in at 30 anyway. Here's how he did it.
📈 Trends-with-Benefits: Turns out the firms going hardest on AI are hiring faster, not slower, with a 12% bump in entry-level roles. So much for AI taking everyone’s job…
✖️ Trending Tweet: Peter Diamandis is handing out $2 million to founders who use AI to solve a real problem for 100,000+ people. Top five finalists get flown to LA.
🧬 Science Corner: Meet the SpudCell: a synthetic cell built from 36 genes and a bag of chemicals that can grow, split and fight its siblings for food. This is one of the wildest biology milestones of the year.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Nail-Biting Robot
Still biting your nails like a stressed teenager? Tried everything to kick the habit?
Introducing Chompanion™, the palm-sized robot beaver that nibbles your nails for you. Insert a finger, its tiny sensors find the nail edge, and it trims away with gentle little bites. Available in Hamster and Piranha form too (for overgrown situations).
Chompanion™ - Bite the habit.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks
Before you go, just a few public service announcements:
Looking to sponsor Half Baked? Just fill out this form and we’ll get back to you asap.
See you soon,
