Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas so good, someone bugged our office too 🪳
A massive welcome to our 555 new readers who joined since yesterday. In today's edition we’ll be covering:
💡 An idea to turn a cheap photo frame into a family dashboard
🛠️ How to build a landing page in minutes
⛽️ micro1’s $1bn data spend, Google for AI agents at $100m ARR + more
🔍 Gemini 4 Argon lands, Bumble’s fall from $14.8bn + more
🍻 An idea to eat chips without touching them
Let's goooo 🚀
💡 Customisable Home Displays
Frame of mind
Name.com Domain: Mantel.news
👤 Source: Wes Bos reckons $50 digital photo frames make perfect home displays once modified to run a modern browser. With Apple announcing HomeView yesterday, there’s an interesting business hiding in the cheaper end of the market…
❌ Problem:
Your household runs on information scattered across phones: calendars, shopping lists, weather forecasts and reminders. Meanwhile, the screen sitting on your shelf is showing the same holiday photos from 2019.
Apple’s new HomeView brings a shared screen into the home. But what if you just want a simple, affordable display that shows exactly what your family needs? Wes has demonstrated a possible starting point. Here’s the idea.
✅ Solution:
Launch Mantel: a platform that turns compatible digital photo frames into customisable home dashboards. Connect your calendars, choose your widgets and put tomorrow’s appointments, the shopping list and the weather on one screen.
Start with one tested frame model and sell it ready to use. Customers configure it from their phone, choosing layouts for the kitchen, hallway or bedside table. No rooting tutorials required.
Make money on the configured hardware, with an optional subscription for shared lists, extra integrations and multiple screens. Expand support to other devices once setup and updates work reliably.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Demo
💡 The Half Baked Take: The opportunity is making cheap hardware useful without making the customer become Wes Bos. Start with a family calendar people can set up in five minutes, then earn your place on the kitchen counter.
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🛠️ How to Build a Landing Page in Minutes
The Tutorial: You’ve picked your idea and scoped your MVP. Now it’s time to see if anyone actually wants it, and a simple landing page with an email signup is the quickest way to find out. Here’s how to build one in minutes.
Step-by-step:
Open an AI chatbot and explain your idea in plain English, then ask it to write you a prompt for building a landing page with an email signup.
Give it more to work with: paste in the feature list from your MVP scoping, describe the look you want (e.g. “minimal and slick”).
Paste the prompt into Lovable, approve the plan and watch your landing page build itself.
📇 Make The Introduction. Leave Something Behind.
Thank you for supporting our sponsors, they keep this newsletter free!
Meeting potential customers? Give them something better than a promise to connect on LinkedIn.
MOO’s Business Cards put your name, brand and details in their hand, with a choice of papers and finishes. You’ve started the conversation. Now leave something that doesn’t require spelling your email three times.
⛽️ Fuel for Taking Action
💡 Extra Startup Idea: AG1 has turned green powder into a billion-dollar habit for humans. So what about a premium superfood powder for dogs, delivered monthly by subscription? Greens pawder, anyone?
💸 Side Hustle Idea: micro1 is spending $1B licensing operational data from real businesses, and it’s paying referrers a flat $50K for every company that signs. This is a huge opportunity.
📘 Playbook: The guy behind 3B organic views shares his three-phase playbook for scaling from 0 to 100M views a month, team structures included. A 10-minute read that skips five years of trial and error.
🤑 Money Shot: From a seven-person team to $100M ARR in under three years, by building Google for AI agents. 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.
🔍 Everything Else from Today
🛠️ AI Tool: Google has just dropped Gemini 4 Argon, battle-tested by over 100,000 Googlers and capable of 1M token outputs. Time to put it to work.
📈 Trends-with-Benefits: Bumble has crashed from $14.8b to around $900m as dating culture moves on. The swipe era is ending. What replaces it?
📚 Must-Read: Everyone says we’re “not ambitious enough” with AI. Anthropic’s Felix Rieseberg actually shows you how, with a practical 8-minute tutorial on getting more out of your models, prompts included. Bookmark-worthy.
📺 Must-Watch: If AI makes intelligence abundant, what becomes scarce? Alexandr Wang has a surprising answer in this 80-second clip with Garry Tan. Worth every second.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Customers not buying? Paul Graham has a one-line fix that surprisingly few founders ever try. Obvious once you see it.
⭐️ Reader’s Pick: $8 of ink, an $800 invoice. Chris Koerner reckons wall printers are the new pressure washing, and he’s shared the full blueprint.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Finger Chopsticks
Tired of Cheeto dust on your keyboard, controller and phone screen? Wish you could snack without ever taking your eyes off the spreadsheet?
Introducing ChopStyx™, the world’s first chopsticks you wear between your fingers. These patented rubber grips sit on your hand so you can pinch crisps from bowl to mouth without breaking your flow. Beautiful.
ChopStyx™ - Hands off.
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👋 That’s All Folks
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