Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as Stripe acquiring OpenRouter for $7B+ 🤑
In today's edition:
💡 An idea inspired by a trip to Paris + more
⛽ Claude Cowork, six-figure MRR, OpenRouter story + more
🔍 $280M raise, Travis Kalanick, Sam Altman + more
🍻 Making doomscrolling more sleep-friendly
Let's goooo 🚀
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🤝 Recommendations Marketplace
Recs Appeal
Available Domain: Getrecs.com
👤 Source: While in Paris (nice for some), Kenny Hanson, founder of Mentorpass, came up with a pretty cool idea.
❌ Problem:
Everybody loves to travel - escaping the day-to-day, exploring new places, trying new cuisines. The problem? We’re all experiencing the exact same holidays. We Google “Things to do in X” and get fed the same spots that spent the most on SEO.
What if instead you could ask for recommendations from a local, someone who knows the hidden gems and can point out the tourist traps to avoid? Here's the idea.
✅ Solution:
A marketplace of vetted locals you can text in particular locations to get specific recommendations while you travel.
You browse by persona rather than city ranking, with Instagram-style profile grids so you can see how someone actually lives before you pick them. Text them what you're after, get an answer back instantly.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Google AI Studio Demo | Remix this Build
💡 The Half Baked Take: The hard part isn't finding people with good recommendations, it's keeping them interested once the novelty wears off and the messages keep coming. AI could help here we think.
Rate this idea
📱 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.
💡 Ideas to Inspire You
💻 SaaS: This guy has a great (if a little unethical) idea for a software business. It would print to be fair…
📱 Mobile App: 90% of Gen Z say social decides what they buy, yet finding that jacket from TikTok is still impossible. We think this could solve it.
🛍 E-commerce: Nearly 30% of shoppers who wanted to return something just kept it because the process was too much hassle. All that stuff needs somewhere local to go.
🤖 Hardware: Cardiac arrest survival drops 7-10% for every minute without care. Here’s an idea to get it to people faster.
💵 Side Hustle: Sahil Bloom reckons this is a $100K per month side hustle.
⛽ Fuel for Taking Action
🎓 Founder Tutorial: If you’re not using Claude Cowork, then you should be. Here’s how to learn 80% of Claude Cowork in under 20 minutes.
🛠️ AI Tool: Rork is a super powerful tool to build mobile apps in minutes.
📘 Playbook: This playbook is how you can scale an app to six-figures in MRR with organic distribution.
💸 Founder Deal: Get $100,000 in AWS credits for free with Amazon's AWS Activate Startup Program.
🤑 Money Shot: OpenRouter just got acquired for $7B+. Here’s how Alex built his second billion-dollar business.
🧠 Test Your Startup Idea Before You Bet Your Career On It
If you go build today's idea, a year from now you'll finally have your answer: if it can be a real company, or not. Skip that year and get the answer in five weeks instead.
The Foundry is Forum Ventures' studio sprint designed to help founders find out if they should take the leap and build that idea they’ve not been able to shake. You work directly with their Venture Studio team to run real customer conversations and test market demand. No cost to participate, and if it's real, a shot at $250K to build it with them.
Half Baked readers: applications for the next cohort close September 2nd.
🔍️ Everything Else from Today
💰 Bag Secured: Our friends at Wispr Flow just raised $280M at a $2B valuation. Great product, great team.
📚 Must-Read: Ordinary Abundance is a truly brilliant essay that shows the decades of innovation that sit in a normal room. Beautiful writing.
🎧️ Must-Listen: David Senra finally got Travis Kalanick on the show to break down Uber, Atoms and how he actually builds. TK is a legend.
📺 Must-Watch: Sam Altman broke down how to get your first 100 users in 90 seconds a while back. Still relevant today.
⭐️ Reader's Pick: We called for someone to build Canva for home renovations back in April 2025. A $400B market is waiting. (Friday’s top link)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Paper Doomscrolling
Love lying in bed at 1am with your face six inches from a glowing rectangle? Wish it didn’t disrupt your sleep so much?
Introducing SleepScroll™, a phone-shaped paper booklet containing rolls of memes you can scroll through endlessly. Zero blue light, zero notifications, zero algorithm.
SleepScroll™ - Read 'em and sleep.
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👋 That’s All Folks
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