Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as amazing as Leopold’s bounceback today 🚀
In today's edition:
💡 Turning scrolling into a spectator sport
⛽️ 5 ideas, a $10m seed, Shark Tank to $100m + more
🔍 Gemini Robotics 2, mega trends, $5K-$10K side hustles + more
🍻 An idea with a bit of fizz
Let's goooo 🚀
🎲 Short-Form Video Predictions App
Scroll the dice
Available Domain: Scrollcall.co
👤 Source: Jacob Rodri pitched this as a $100K app idea. Super interesting concept.
❌ Problem:
Two of the biggest behavior shifts we’ve seen in society over the last few years are short-form video consumption and the rise of prediction markets…and both are enormous.
YouTube Shorts averages 200 billion daily views and TikTok reaches 1.59 billion people. Kalshi and Polymarket did a combined $44.8 billion in June alone, up from under $5 billion a month last September.
Which begs the obvious question…what would happen if you put both of these together? Here's the idea.
✅ Solution:
A short-form video app where users can wager on what happens next in a short-form video they watch, winning real money as they do.
A user scrolls the app as usual, but just before a pivotal moment in a clip a popup stops the video and asks a user to predict what happens next. Then the clip plays out and you find out immediately.
Creators get paid on prediction volume instead of views, which quietly rewires the incentives. Suddenly the money is in a genuine unknown at the halfway mark rather than a bait thumbnail.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Google AI Studio Demo | Remix this Build
💡 The Half Baked Take: Full disclosure, I don't use TikTok and I've never placed a bet on a prediction market (not a big fan of either). I’m totally the wrong guy for this idea, but I could see someone else making it work!
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😖 Feeling Frustrated With Money?
What if reading about money was the easiest part of making it? The Average Joe strips markets down to what matters and gives you financial insights you’ll actually use.
It’s read by more than 200K people - and roughly one in five are millionaires.
Do they read it because they’re rich, or are they rich because they read it?
We don’t run those studies.
⛽ Fuel for Taking Action
💡 Idea Inspiration: We've published 650+ ideas, and these 5 were given to us by some incredible founders. 100% free to steal.
⚒️ Founder Tutorial: You can build a full outbound campaign in four Claude Code prompts, from blank terminal to live sequence in minutes. This is the way.
🆓 Playbook: Here's how to raise a $10m seed round, from the team who skipped the deck and posted their story for everyone to read.
🤑 Money Shot: He was laughed out of Shark Tank. His business is now worth $100m. This is 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.
📞 One App for Calls, Texts and Meetings
Dialpad on T-Mobile for Business replaces the call, text and meeting apps your team juggles today, with AI summaries after every call.
Plans start at $25 a user a month.
🔍️ Everything Else from Today
🛠️ AI Tool: Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics 2 dropped yesterday. The future is truly here.
📈 Trends-with-Benefits: Four Google Trends lines have gone near vertical since 2019, and Greg Isenberg thinks they're the next biggest opportunities out there.
📚 Must-Read: How to go from wiped out to back in the game, in four simple moves borrowed from game theory.
📺 Must-Watch: Been sitting on an idea? Patrick Collison just showed a room of founders why waiting is a giant mistake.
⭐️ Reader’s Pick: These 4 AI side hustles pay $5K - $10K per month. Here’s the playbook. (Top pick from yesterday’s edition)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Pepsi Body Wash
Tired of stepping out of the shower smelling like a spa instead of your favorite drink? Wish your body wash had a bit more fizz to it?
Introducing Pepsi Body Wash™, the world's first carbonated shower gel. 500ml of pressurised syrup that foams on contact, crackles for a full 40 seconds, and leaves you smelling like…eh…Pepsi, I guess?
Pepsi Body Wash™ - “Is Pepsi okay?” In the shower, apparently.
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👋 That’s All Folks
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