Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as surprising as Jeff Bezos buying a stake in Liverpool FC? ⚽
In today's edition:
💡 An idea to make childhood gaming safe
⛽️ Reselling returns, $10M playbook, $17m ARR bootstrapped + more
🔍️ ChatGPT update, Brex founder, $90k/mo app + more
🍻 An idea to take the pain out of cooking
Let's goooo 🚀
🎮 Private Gaming Network for Kids
Play It Safe
Available Domain: FriendPass.co
👤 Source: Adam Lyttle (indie app developer) vibecoded a safer Roblox-style game for his son, replacing unknown players with recorded play throughs and AI characters. His experiment inspired this idea…
❌ Problem:
Growing up, I played a lot of video games. Kids today are no different, except now they’re playing social games like Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft with people from all over the world.
The problem is that parents never really know who their kids are playing with. Turning off multiplayer removes much of the fun, while leaving it on could expose children to anyone. So…what if kids could play online, but only with friends approved by their parents? Here’s the idea.
✅ Solution:
A private gaming platform where children can only play age-appropriate games with people their parents approve.
Build original versions of the formats kids already love, from Roblox-style obstacle courses to Minecraft-style building worlds. When friends are offline, recorded play throughs and clearly labelled AI characters keep the games feeling alive.
Charge families a monthly subscription with no advertising, loot boxes or in-game purchases. One account covers the whole family, and parents can invite other families into their child’s private network.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Google AI Studio Demo | Remix this Build
💡 The Half Baked Take: The biggest challenge here is making the games good enough that kids choose them when Roblox is one tap away.
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💡 Build the Idea, Not the Bookkeeping
If you go build today's idea, here's a prediction: within three months you'll be drowning in receipts, invoices and a bank feed you haven't reconciled since launch week. Skip that phase.
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⛽ Fuel for Taking Action
💡 Idea Inspiration:
Software: This guy made millions by reselling returned items. Could you build a platform out of this?
Mobile: 85% of people who pick up an instrument quit within a year. We pitched the fix back in January and it's still sitting there.
E-commerce: We called for someone to build Canva for home renovations back in April 2025. A $400bn market, and still nobody has claimed it.
⚒️ Founder Tutorial: Reverse prompting is one of the best skills you can learn in AI right now. Here’s how to master it.
🆓 Playbook: Finn Mallery just broke down the new playbook for building a $10M+ startup in five lines. Very cool.
🤑 Money Shot: This startup went from one customer paying $139/month to $17M ARR in three years, with zero outside capital. Here's how.
☕ The Coffee Stock The Fuel Crisis Can't Touch
Between commodity price swings and the fuel crisis, the supply chains of major coffee companies are getting hit hard. Not Green Coffee Company. As a vertically integrated coffee grower in Colombia, they’re protected because their cost of goods don't move with commodity markets.
While competitors absorb rising input costs, GCC’s expanding across a $100B coffee market.
Green Coffee Company is offering securities through the use of an Offering Statement that has been qualified by the Securities and Exchange Commission under Tier II of Regulation A. A copy of the Final Offering Circular that forms a part of the Offering Statement may be obtained from: https://invest.greencoffeecompany.com/
🔍️ Everything Else from Today
🛠️ AI Tool: ChatGPT can now watch what you do across every app on your desktop and remember it. Handy or unnerving, depending on your mood.
📚 Must-Read: Josh Kushner has never written an investor letter in Thrive's 15 years. He just wrote one, and it's a rare look at what a $65bn firm is actually seeing right now.
📺 Must-Watch: Pedro Franceschi (Brex founder) asked Paul Graham how to scale his business past $100m in revenue. His reply is not what you’d expect.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Harry Stebbings, founder of 20VC, reckons 99% of startups can't do this one thing right now. Uncomfortable, and probably right.
⭐️ Reader’s Pick: This offline games app pulls in $90k a month from ad revenue alone, and anyone could ship something similar in a few hours. (Top pick from yesterday’s edition)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Nutrition Loaf
Sick of cooking three meals a day to hit your macros? Wish you could fit your entire nutritional intake into a single tray?
Introducing MealLoaf™, the world's first 24-hour macro brick. One bake delivers 153g of protein, 2,500 calories and 15g of fibre for just $5 a serving. Available in Vanilla, Cinnamon and Unseasoned.
MealLoaf™ - All you need is loaf.
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👋 That’s All Folks
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