Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as unstoppable as an OpenAI agent breaking into Australia's health website 🤖
In today’s edition:
💡 An idea to fact-check your calls as they happen
⛽️ Ogilvy's writing rules, TikTok demand + more
🔍 Mastering Meta Muse, viral Lego build + more
🍻 An idea to drink your mac & cheese
Let’s goooo 🚀
FYI: We've just opened applications for START, a free 30-day programme that gets you from no idea to a launched business. Playbooks, live sessions, a founder cohort and cash prizes included. The cohort kicks off 5 October and spots are limited. Go go go!
💡 Live Meeting Fact Checker
Fact cheque
Name.com Domain: callref.io
👤 Source: Sam Lessin (GP at Slow Ventures) just showcased a demo an app that listens to Zoom calls, suggests questions and checks claims against his CRM, knowledge base and the web. Sick product idea Sam!
❌ Problem:
I feel like my mind isn’t what it used to be. Maybe it’s a natural part of getting older, more likely it’s the chronic lack of sleep from running a business. Regardless, this gets a bit awkward on important calls.
I find myself halfway through a customer call when someone quotes a contract term, mentions a delivery date or says, “we agreed this last time” and by the time I piece it all together from previous emails or notes, the meeting’s over. It’s time to surface all of that info live, just like Sam did above. Here’s the idea.
✅ Solution:
Create a live copilot for customer-facing teams to help them fact check what they or others are saying in real time. As a call unfolds, it surfaces relevant commitments, past objections and figures, each linked to its source.
When something conflicts with the record, it suggests a tactful question: “Can we clarify the launch date? The signed plan says October.”
After the call, it drafts a recap of decisions and open questions for a human to check, then updates the CRM.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Product Demo
💡 The Half Baked Take: The meeting transcription market is a bit of a bloodbath right now (literally anytime I join a call around 10 different apps fight to take notes). But for this reason if you can gain any meaningful traction there’s a good shot that one of these would acquire you. Nice.
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📋 Your Sales Process Can’t Live in Your Head Forever
Who wanted a demo? Who’s waiting on pricing? What did that promising prospect say last Tuesday?
When you’re doing the selling yourself, it’s easy to become the filing system.
Pipedrive gives your prospects and deals a home in an easy-to-use CRM. Its AI-powered Meeting Intelligence briefs you before calls, records them, produces summaries and transcripts, and updates the CRM afterwards.
So picking up a conversation doesn’t start with searching your memory.
Now included in all plans, at no additional cost. Get 30 days free, plus 20% off.
💡 Ideas to Inspire You
💻 SaaS: A self-confessed Pokénerd used Jev to build a slick visual search for every Pokémon. Now swap the Pokémon for trainers, wines or vintage watches. There's a niche SaaS hiding in here somewhere.
📱 Mobile: Deedy gave Opus 5.5 an IKEA manual and one simple prompt. The result is genuinely brilliant. Flatpack furniture may never defeat us again.
🛍️ E-commerce: Brayden Flack sells food on TikTok Live from his living room, and last month it brought in $63,729 at a 50% margin. He started the year with no power, heat or internet. Now he posts the real numbers every month, flops included.
💵 Side Hustle: Chris Koerner reckons sport courts are the new pools, at a fraction of the cost. He's shared his full cost breakdown, line by line. There’s a fantastic opportunity here.
⛽️ Fuel for Taking Action
🎓 Founder Tutorial: It's a few months old but still gold. Here’s how to turn David Ogilvy's 10 writing rules into a Claude Skill that audits your emails, landing pages and memos.
🛠️ AI Tool: Higgsfield is the all-in-one AI video studio that DTC brands can't get enough of, and it's now pacing for a $1bn run rate. Not bad for a company that launched in March 2025.
📘 Playbook: After studying 438,122 apps doing $10k/mo+, this guy lays out how to spot demand on TikTok, build a consumer app in a day and charge for it from version one.
🤑 Money Shot: From a $7M recruiting tool to a $4B AI data company in under two years. Here's how.
P.S. Got an idea you're ready to take seriously? Our Founder pack has the deals, playbooks and exclusive content to get you moving, and it's 100% free.
📊 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: Higgsfield AI just achieved an ARR of $1B faster than either OpenAI or Anthropic. Crazy.
📚 Must-Read: Here’s a fantastic guide on how to build an agentic harness using Jev. Check it out.
🎧️ Must-Listen: Alex Finn has pulled together a great 24-minute video on how to master Meta Muse. Fantastic stuff.
📺 Must-Watch: This Opus 5.5 Lego build is going viral at the moment. We love it!
⭐️ Reader's Pick: How one founder built a $300K ARR consumer app in 8 months, mostly solo with AI, and the exact steps to copy it. (Top link from yesterday’s edition)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Mac & Cheese Pop
Love Kraft Dinner but can't be bothered boiling the kettle? Wish your mac & cheese came with a ring pull?
Introducing Cheddar Pop™, the world's first mac & cheese cream soda. All the neon orange cheese powder flavour of your childhood, carbonated and sealed in a 355ml can the exact colour of the sauce. Your dentist and your cardiologist have both been cc'd.
Cheddar Pop™ - Grate expectations.
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👋 That’s All Folks
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