Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as audacious as the CIA officer who approved his own $190m heist 🕵️
In today's edition:
💡 An idea to build a different type of Amazon
⛽️ Claude Haiku 5.5 lands 75% cheaper, a $20m+ gated audience + more
🔍 Startups testing ideas on fake customers, episode 3 of our podcast + more
🍻 An idea to turn your phone case into something useful
Let's goooo 🚀
💡 Agentic Amazon
Retail bot therapy
Name.com Domain: AutoAisle.ai
👤 Source: Amazon just blocked outside shopping agents. Paul Graham reckons this creates a huge opportunity in the space. We tend to agree.
❌ Problem:
“Find me a decent coffee machine under £200 and have it here by Friday.” That’s the kind of job you’d happily hand to an AI agent. Comparing products, checking delivery dates and reading 47 reviews isn’t exactly how anyone dreams of spending their evening.
But an agent is only useful if retailers let it finish the job. PG’s argument is simple: customers won’t necessarily want a different shopping assistant for every store. They’ll want the agent they already use to buy wherever it finds the best option. Here’s the idea.
✅ Solution:
Build an online marketplace designed for AI agents to shop on. Independent retailers connect their catalogues, giving agents accurate product details, stock levels, delivery dates and a straightforward way to place orders.
Customers give their existing agent a shopping brief and a budget. Order tracking and returns work through the same connection.
Start with one category, like household essentials, where repeat purchases give customers a reason to return. Retailers fulfil the orders, and the marketplace takes a commission on completed sales. Expand the catalogue once you can reliably deliver the basics.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Demo
💡 The Half Baked Take: Welcoming agents gets you through the door. Reliable stock, competitive prices and painless returns keep you there. Start by becoming the best place for agents to buy one category, then earn the right to sell everything.
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🚀 How to Build a Website Around Your Offer
Still explaining your business in three paragraphs? Try this in Hostinger Agent:
Step 1: Tell Business Advisor what you sell. Ask: “Help me explain who this is for and why they’d buy.”
Step 2: Give Agent the refined offer. Ask it to create your website through its AI Builder connection.
Step 3: Preview it inside Agent. Ask: “What could make this offer clearer?” Then ask Agent to apply supported changes.
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💡 Ideas to Inspire You
💻 SaaS: A well-known investor just publicly begged someone to build this product, and promised to back whoever does. Consider this your sign.
📱 Mobile App: This CEO shared 50 ideas that will make you healthier, wealthier, and wiser. Could you poll a bunch of CEOs and turn it into an app?
🤖 Hardware: Forget smart fridges. This is what your kitchen has actually been missing. Very cool.
💵 Side Hustle: The 3.6M-view thread on the side hustle you should be starting in 2026 reckons the next big opportunity is hiding inside boring businesses. Read it before everyone else does.
⛽️ Fuel for Taking Action
🎓 Founder Tutorial: The marketer behind Cal AI's $50M run rate shares how to build an AI UGC army that finds your winning videos on autopilot.
🛠️ AI Tool: Anthropic just dropped Claude Haiku 5.5, which runs around 75% cheaper than the last version while being faster and smarter.
📘 Playbook: The step-by-step playbook for running your marketing team with AI agents, where an idea from a meeting gets built and shipped before anyone's written up the notes.
💸 Founder Deal: When a convincing phishing email costs pennies to make, being small won't protect you. Claim 60% off Bitdefender, courtesy of Half Baked.
🤑 Money Shot: From $10-a-head subscribers to a gated audience worth $20M+ a year. Here's how.
🎩 Founder. CEO. Office Supplies Manager.
The job titles keep coming. Make the buying part easier with Amazon Business pricing and buying tools. Create your free Amazon Business account and get 35% off your first order, up to $125, until Oct 12, 2026. Terms and conditions apply.
🔍 Everything Else from Today
📈 Trends-with-Benefits: Startups are now testing product ideas on AI-simulated customers before a single real one sees them. One player just raised $200M at a $2B valuation.
📚 Must-Read: The essay founders keep sending each other, on the one idea that might matter more than any other this century. Read it before your competitors do.
🎧 Must-Listen: Episode 3 of our podcast just dropped, and it's five startup ideas sitting there waiting for a founder.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Paul Graham on why you shouldn't wait to start the thing you keep putting off. Read it, then go build.
⭐️ Reader's Pick: 13 businesses worth building when agents do all the work. A few on the list will surprise you. (Top link from yesterday’s edition)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Scale Phone Case
Ever been stood at a market stall wondering if that's really 500g of olives? Wish your phone would finally pull its weight?
Introducing Grammophone™, the world's first phone case with a built-in precision scale. Pop anything on the screen and weigh up to 5kg, accurate to 0.1g: parcels, produce, hand luggage, the hamster. Cracked screens not covered.
Grammophone™ - Weigh to go.
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👋 That’s All Folks
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