Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as surprising as Jack Dorsey launching Buzz to take on Slack 🐝
In today's edition:
💡 An idea to serve the world’s authors
⛽️ AI workouts, content machine, AEO Playbook + more
🔍 Vibe-coding, woolly mammoths, YC RFS + more
🍻 An idea that’ll blow you away
Let's goooo 🚀
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📚 Shopify for Authors
Author-ized Sellers
Available Domain: Bookstand.ai
👤 Source: Jay Yang (author of bestseller You Can Just Do Things, with his new book available for pre-order) fired a list of ideas into our DMs this week. This was our favorite.
❌ Problem:
1.4 million titles hit Amazon every year, and I manage to read about two of them if I’m lucky. But discovery isn't even the authors' biggest problem…Amazon is. It takes up to 65% of every sale, owns the algorithm, and never tells you who bought your book.
Selling direct fixes this: a $4.99 ebook nets $4.64 direct vs $3.49 on Amazon, and superfans pay $35-50 for special editions. But going direct today means duct-taping together Shopify, BookFunnel, print-on-demand, and Klaviyo. It’s time to build a unified solution for this. Here's the idea.
✅ Solution:
Build the Shopify-for-authors, one storefront for selling ebooks, print (fulfilled via print-on-demand partners), audiobooks and signed special editions, with every reader's email, location and purchase history in a single dashboard.
The platform has built-in email blasts and a reader CRM, plus one-click affiliate links so superfans earn a cut every time they share your book with a friend.
Start with the authors who already have an audience (newsletters, BookTok, podcast guests). They keep Amazon for discovery and own the relationship everywhere else.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Google AI Studio Demo | Remix this Build
💡 The Half Baked Take: Substack proved writers will fight to own their audience. It’s time for authors to do the same.
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🎧 Turn Every Sales Call Into a Coaching Session
Founders juggling calls, texts and video across five different apps lose the details that actually close deals.
Dialpad on T-Mobile for Business puts it all in one app, then uses AI to do the work you don't have time for: it transcribes and summarizes every call automatically, scores sentiment and CSAT in real time, and flags the exact moment a prospect objected so you know what to fix next time.
Plans start at $25 a user a month, backed by a 100% uptime SLA.
⛽ Fuel for Taking Action
💡 Idea Inspiration: BodyPark just launched ATOM, a pocket-sized AI camera that coaches your workouts. Tracks your form, counts your reps, and talks you through it, all for $219.
⚒️ Founder Tutorial: How to build an AI content machine that drafts social posts sounding like you, the full build here.
🆓 Playbook: AEO is doing for LLMs what SEO did for Google. HubSpot's 5-minute playbook for ranking in ChatGPT covers four plays for getting cited.
💰 Deal of the Day: Shopify is the fastest way to get a real store live, no code needed. 3 days free, then 3 months for $1/month. Start selling today.
🤑 Money Shot: This indie hacker made $100 in seven years. Now his business is doing $7K per month. 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.
👀 80% Of Your Team Is Using AI You Haven’t Approved
That’s the Reco.ai stat, and it’s probably true at your company too.
Devs.ai gives every team a governed workspace with full audit trails and IT approval built in, so shadow AI stops being a risk you are managing blind.
🔍️ Everything Else from Today
🛠️ AI Tool: Canva Code 2.0 lets you vibe code websites and apps, then edit them like any Canva design. Now free for everyone. Check it out!
💰 Funding Alert: Colossal Biosciences, the startup trying to bring back the woolly mammoth, is in talks to raise at a $20-30bn valuation. Jurassic Park coming soon?
📚 Must-Read: YC just dropped its Fall 2026 Requests for Startups, the list of ideas they’re actively looking to fund. Go get ‘em…
📺 Must-Watch: Replit CEO Amjad Masad went from crippling stage fright to become one of the most famous CEOs on X. Here’s how he did it.
⭐ Reader’s Pick: Here’s how to make your app look and feel 10x better without adding a single feature, from a team that's designed hundreds of them. (from Tuesday’s edition)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Helicopter Fan
Does your ceiling fan look a little boring? Wish it was a little more exciting to look at?
Introducing the Helifan™, the world's first ceiling fan that looks exactly like a helicopter gunship. Runs at three speeds - Patrol, Assault, and Full Combat Rotation, complete with a working door gunner who never gets to land.
Helifan™ - Semper fan.
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👋 That’s All Folks
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