Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as big as Coca-Cola unveiling a new global brand identity 🥤
In today's edition:
💡 An idea that turns one phone call into $999
⛽️ Air quality, first AI agents, selling 290 million units + more
🔍 Hermes agent, billionaire advice, age-reversed skin + more
🍻 An idea that speaks for itself (silently)
Let's goooo 🚀
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🔍 AI Audits-as-a-Service
Prompt Payment
Available Domain: Audited.ai
👤 Source: Corey Ganim published an entire playbook on this idea. So we're just passing it on.
❌ Problem:
Every small business is thinking about AI right now. Goldman Sachs found 76% of them use it and 93% say it helps - but only 14% have actually built it into how the business runs. Mostly they're paying $20/month to draft LinkedIn posts nobody reads.
The blocker isn't cost, it's translation. Just 27% of small businesses feel confident adopting AI, versus 82% of mid-sized firms. They don't need a developer, they need someone to look at their week and say "this tool, this process, start here". Here's the idea.
✅ Solution:
A productised $999 AI audit for small business owners that identifies places where they can leverage AI in their business processes.
You complete a 45-minute discovery call, record it, feed the transcript into Claude and it maps their time drains to specific tools and hours saved.
You then create a report with 3-7 tool recommendations, and a 30-minute walkthrough on how to implement these. Guarantee 5+ hours back per week or full refund, then quote the implementation work the audit uncovers at $3-10K.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Google AI Studio Demo | Remix this Build
💡 The Half Baked Take: This is a huge opportunity to build an agency business right now. This won’t ever be a world-changing unicorn, but it could change your life if you do it right.
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📱 Your Phone Bill Shouldn’t Need Its Own Spreadsheet
Running an 11 to 99 person business usually means someone's already doing IT on the side, so the last thing you need is a phone plan with hidden fees and price creep.
CoreMobile from T-Mobile for Business guarantees your rate for 5 years on talk, text and 5G data - no annual contract needed.
Get $20 per line when you switch 10 or more lines to the T-Mobile for Business CoreMobile plan. Plus, you can bring your current devices, keep your current numbers.*
*5-Year Price Guarantee applies to monthly price on-network talk, text, and 5G data. Exclusions like taxes & fees apply. *10 lines for $200/mo; each additional line $20/mo./line with Autopay; plus taxes & $35 device connection charge. $150/line credit via one-time bill credits.
⛽ Fuel for Taking Action
💡 Idea Inspiration: What if air quality was measured in cigarettes? That's what this index does. What else could this be applied to?
⚒️ Founder Tutorial: Here’s how you can build your first team of 5 AI agents, one per business function, wired into a self-improving loop.
🆓 Playbook: Getting nowhere on LinkedIn? This 10-step teardown of the 2026 algorithm covers hooks that still work, the first-60-minutes reply rule, and why your links belong in the comments. Go grow!
💰 Deal of the Day: Open a Mercury account and pocket up to $250 cash in your first 90 days. Nice.
🤑 Money Shot: After his house burned down this founder spent the insurance money to make a phone gadget nobody asked for. It's now sold 290 million units. 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.
💸 Stop Paying For Five Tools You Could Build In One Afternoon
Devs.ai's App Builder turns a plain English description into a working business app, connected to your real data, no code and no dev hire required.
Founders are using it to replace redundant SaaS subscriptions with tools built for exactly what they need.
🔍️ Everything Else from Today
🛠️ AI Tool: Hermes is a free, open-source AI agent designed for autonomous task execution and long-term learning. Worth trying out if you want to up your agent game.
📈 Trends-with-Benefits: It feels like AI is everywhere right now, but only a tiny percentage of people are actually paying for it today. This market is only just getting started…
📚 Must-Read: WIRED co-founder Kevin Kelly just broke down how to differentiate in the age of AI. Written in 2008 about the internet, updated for 2026 about AI, it’s somehow more relevant today.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Graham Stephan sat down with a liquid billionaire and he gave him one piece of advice he recommends to every business owner. Super interesting.
🧬 Science Corner: This guy just used Claude Fable to disprove the Jacobian conjecture, one of the hardest problems in mathematics that was first posed in 1939.
⭐ Reader’s Pick (most popular link from Friday’s edition): Apple quietly opened up the iPhone alarm. Four months later this solo founder was doing $50K/month. Here's how.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Microphone Mask
Wear a mask out and about to avoid getting sick? Wish you could make calls or dictate while you wear it?
Introducing Masked™, the world's first face mask with an internal mic so you can talk to a loved one or to your favorite AI while you stay safe. Whisper a whole meeting recap into the fabric while the bloke beside you hears nothing but a faint, unsettling hum.
Masked™ - Mask and you shall receive.
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