Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as high-flying as Tesla’s new Roadster doing a midair flip 🚀
A massive welcome to our 432 new readers who joined since yesterday. In today's edition we’re cbe covering:
💡 A second chance for abandoned startup ideas
🛠️ Connect your Grok Bot to WhatsApp
⛽️ A side hustle that runs itself
🔍 Bulk-buying club for AI tools
🍻 Your dog’s first job: powering the house
Let's goooo 🚀
💡 Startup Idea Marketplace
Second thoughts.
Name.com Domain: refound.io
👤 Source: Sridhar, General Partner at 16VC, wondered whether he should buy an idea from a startup that had since pivoted. There could be a business in picking up where someone else left off…
❌ Problem:
Every founder has a graveyard of abandoned ideas, something we know all too well. Some never got past the idea stage, others have prototypes, maybe even some users.
Meanwhile, someone else is starting from scratch on exactly the same problem. They’d happily pay for a head start, but the useful work is gathering dust in a stranger’s Google Drive. Here’s the idea.
✅ Solution:
Launch ReFound, a marketplace for unfinished startup projects. Founders package up their research, domain, designs and prototype so someone else can take over.
Buyers browse by industry, price and stage. Each listing shows what was tested, what happened and why the founder stopped. Include the agreed assets, transferable rights and a handover call.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Demo
💡 The Half Baked Take: The most valuable thing in the listing might be the intel on why the idea failed. Knowing what didn’t work could save the next founder more time than the prototype itself.
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📈 Find Security That Fits Your Next Stage
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🛠️ How to Connect Your Grok Bot to WhatsApp
The Tutorial: Your WhatsApp chats are full of unanswered questions and forgotten commitments. Ole Lehmann shared how to connect your Grok Bot to help keep on top of them.
Step-by-step:
Ask your Grok Bot to open web.whatsapp.com, choose “Link with phone number” and show you the pairing code.
On your phone, go to WhatsApp → Settings → Linked Devices → Link a Device → Link with phone number instead. Enter the code.
Ask your bot to flag unanswered messages, track commitments and draft replies for you to approve.
🔧 No IT Team? No Problem.
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⛽️ Fuel for Taking Action
💡 Extra Startup Idea: Most of us forget up to 90% of our dreams within minutes of waking. Here’s our idea for an AI dream journal that records, decodes and spots patterns in your dreams before they slip away. Sweet dreams are made of this.
💸 Side Hustle Idea: Want a side hustle that runs itself? Alex Finn’s free Grok Bot template interviews you, pitches three microbusinesses and launches one autonomously. His made $1,800 in a week. Worth a spin.
📘 Playbook: How Polsia’s founder went from idea to 25,000+ paying customers, in seven simple steps you can steal today.
🤑 Money Shot: From $120K in year one to $300M+ a year, without a single shop shelf. 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: Flovia is a Costco-style buying club for APIs that pools startups together to get bulk deals on OpenAI, Exa, Firecrawl and more. Right now it’s free while they launch. Get on the waitlist.
📈 Trends-with-Benefits: Data brokering is one of the hottest trends around right now, and we’ve covered it a few times already. Here’s a step-by-step guide to cashing in on it, from finding the right businesses to making the intro. Bookmark this one.
📚 Must-Read: Former OpenAI researcher Nick Cammarata was once a pessimist about understanding how AI really works. Now he reckons we’re far closer to cracking AI interpretability than anyone thought. Big if true.
📺 Must-Watch: airSlate’s CEO sits down for his first ever public interview, covering everything from SEO and M&A to fundraising and building a $200m ARR business. Well worth your time.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Everyone’s buzzing about Amazon’s Bee Frontier, a wristband that turns your chats into notes and reminders. See what the fuss is about.
⭐️ Reader’s Pick: Founders and execs need a personal brand but have zero time to write. Here’s why premium ghostwriting pays $5K-$15K a project and how to start. (Top link from yesterday’s edition)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea
Electricity bills getting ridiculous? Is your dog still living rent-free despite having the energy of a small power station?
Introducing WoofWheel™, an oversized hamster wheel that turns your dog’s zoomies into electricity. Connect it to a home battery and let your Labrador finally contribute to the household. Who’s a good little renewable energy source?
WoofWheel™ - Power to the paw.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks
We hope you enjoyed today’s edition, shoot us a reply if you have any feedback. We read every single one!
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