Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as important as OpenAI's Astra model launch (seems pretty powerful) 🚀
In today's edition:
💡 An idea for the overthinkers out there
⛽️ A 51-minute Grok build, $4M from vibe-coded apps, a $14.8B takeover + more
🔍 $1B raise, Astra's scorecard, driverless cabs + more
🍻 An idea you can squeeze every last drop out of
Let's goooo 🚀
🧠 AI Journalling App
Talk is Cheap
Name.com Domain: loose-ends.ai
👤 Source: Rowan Cheung (founder of The Rundown AI, an AI newsletter with 2M+ readers) shared a personal workflow that turns unstructured voice rambles into organised ideas, follow-ups and calendar blocks while he sleeps. Great product idea.
❌ Problem:
Inspiration can strike at any moment - in the shower, on a walk, leaving a meeting that 100% could have been an email (that’s most meetings to be fair). But 99% of our thoughts get lost in the aether.
Rowan Cheung has a solution to this very problem - but it involves using Apple Notes, Claude, Wispr Flow…the list goes on. Why not create a productized version of this for the masses? Here’s the idea.
✅ Solution:
A voice-first AI journalling app that turns everything rattling around your head into structured memory and action. Hold one button, ramble freely and close the app.
Overnight, the AI separates each recording into ideas, decisions, commitments, people mentioned and unresolved questions. Every morning you get a five-minute briefing where you can approve follow-up messages, send tasks to your to-do list and drop suggested deep-work blocks into your calendar.
Start with founders, consultants and other people whose work produces lots of loose commitments. Charge around $20 per month for unlimited capture, integrations and a searchable “second brain”, then expand into weekly reviews, relationship reminders and team knowledge capture.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Product Demo
💡 The Half Baked Take: The company is only interesting if it becomes the trusted system that remembers your life and closes loops without creating another inbox to manage. Nobody has time for another inbox let’s be real…
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Most SMB phone plans creep up every year until you're paying double for the same coverage. We worked with T-Mobile for Business to get Half Baked readers a straight-up deal: switch 10 or more lines to the CoreMobile plan and pay $20 a line a month.
Switch to the T-Mobile for Business CoreMobile plan and get an extra $150 back per line too, no cap on how many lines qualify. Same numbers, same devices, just a lower bill.*
*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 credit.
💡 Ideas to Inspire You
💻️ SaaS: Astra dropped yesterday and people are already shipping with it. This idea (and this one too) were some of our favorites!
📱 Mobile App: This app turns real pets and people into Pokémon cards. Very cool. You could apply this mechanic to a lot of ideas…
🛍️ E-commerce: We ran this idea back in 2024 - a curated feed of cheap products worth owning, monetised by affiliate links. We’d love if someone built this!
💵 Side Hustle: Here’s a full guide on how to make $$$ hosting in-person AI workshops. Huge opportunity in this space.
⛽️ Fuel for Taking Action
🎓 Founder Tutorial: Here’s how to go from creating your first Grok Bot to a 24/7 automated system in 51 minutes, start to finish.
💬 AI Prompt: Just got your hands on Astra? Riley Brown has a prompt worth stealing to get you started.
📘 Playbook: Connor makes $4M a year from vibe-coded apps with no marketing spend. He walks through his whole process here.
🤑 Money Shot: This company went from a 30% one-day crash to a $14.8B Uber takeover. Here's how.
📊 Your Next Growth Bet Does Not Have To Be a Bet
Most founders pick a channel on instinct and spend the next quarter finding out. Semrush shows what your market is already searching for, how much of it there is, and which of those searches are quietly sending people to somebody else.
Free for 14 days, so no bet there either.
🔍️ Everything Else from Today
📰 Breaking News: Thinking Machines is in talks to raise $1B at a $40B valuation, reportedly with Accel leading. That's a 400x revenue multiple - wild.
📚 Must-Read: GPT-6 Astra has landed. OpenAI has laid out every score and comparison, and the numbers are doing a lot of talking.
📺 Must-Watch: Tesla's Cybercab is now on public roads in Austin, with no steering wheel or pedals. This really feels like the future…
✖️ Trending Tweet: All-In host Chamath turned 50 and wrote a letter to his kids: refugee, welfare, Burger King wages at 14. A nice injection of inspiration on a Friday.
⭐️ Reader's Pick: Chasing a side hustle? Here's an idea from the archives that gets you paid while you hunt. (Top link from yesterday’s edition)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Sauce Caulking Gun
Tired of hammering the bottom of a glass bottle while your fries go cold? Wish condiment delivery came with a trigger?
Introducing Caulk-Up™, the world's first trigger-operated sauce gun. Takes any 14-ounce condiment cartridge (ketchup, mayo, garlic aioli, mustard for the brave) and lays a perfect quarter-inch bead at 40 PSI. Swappable nozzles for hot dogs and burgers. Use responsibly.
Caulk-Up™ - Fill your buns.
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👋 That’s All Folks
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