October 23, 2026 | Read online | Listen to our podcast
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as crazy as raising $300M to create genetically engineered war dogs 🐶
Welcome to the 378 new readers who joined yesterday. In today's edition we’re covering:
💡 An idea for the founders we never hear from
🛠️ How to fire your video editor (nicely)
⛽️ An 18-year-old making $55k a month scanning abs + more
🔍 Stolen AI keys are the new stolen cards + more
🍻 An idea for a monitor that won’t take the hint
Let's goooo 🚀
💵 Half Baked x T-Mobile: This week we’re teaming up with T-Mobile to give away a MacBook Neo to help one of our readers to build their business. In order to enter simply:
Click here and fill out the form (it takes 2 seconds)
Reply to this email with what color computer you’d like
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💡 Former Founder Podcast
Unfinished Business
Name.com Domain: unfinishedbusiness.fm
👤 Source: Adam Delehanty, founder of ghostwriting studio Ghost, recently pointed out that we rarely hear from founders who didn’t make it. What if we gave them the microphone?
❌ Problem:
Every business podcast seems to feature someone who sold their company for a billion dollars. Wake up early. Hire great people. Never give up. Apparently that’s all there is to it.
But plenty of founders followed the same advice and still closed their companies. Their stories could teach us just as much, yet they rarely get told. Especially when there isn’t a triumphant comeback at the end. Here’s the idea.
✅ Solution:
Launch Unfinished Business, a podcast interviewing founders whose companies didn’t work out. Explore what they built, why it failed and what happened afterwards.
Each episode unpacks the decisions, missed signals and realities of shutting down. Keep it thoughtful and specific, giving guests room to reflect without forcing a happy ending.
Start with weekly interviews, repurpose the best moments into clips and a companion newsletter, then monetise through relevant sponsors.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Demo
💡 The Half Baked Take: “Never give up” sounds different when you’re personally guaranteeing the office lease. Honest conversations about when to stop could make this essential listening for people deciding whether to keep going.
Rate this idea
🔑 Renewing The Lease? Review More Than The Rent.
Thank you for supporting our sponsors, they keep this newsletter free!
A lease renewal is a good reminder that yesterday's business setup isn't automatically right for today's business. The landlord has probably noticed.
While you're reviewing costs, check your team's mobile plan too. T-Mobile for Business CoreMobile offers 10 lines for $150/mo with Autopay, plus taxes and a $35 device connection charge. Compare the terms before carrying the same setup into another year.
🛠️ How to Edit Videos With Codex or Claude Code
The Tutorial: “Goodbye Davinci, goodbye Premiere.” Matthew Berman’s editor Alex reckons you should be editing entirely with an AI agent, and he’s just posted a 16-minute walkthrough showing exactly how. Here’s the gist.
Step-by-step:
Connect your AI agent to your editing software. DaVinci Resolve Studio now has a built-in MCP connection, so Codex or Claude Code can control your timeline directly.
Write a proper editing brief: what the video’s about, who it’s for, what to cut and the tone you want. Ask the agent for an edit plan before it touches anything.
Let it build the first cut, then give notes one at a time until it’s right. You’re still the editor. The AI just does the grunt work.
⛽️ Fuel for Taking Action
📱 Mobile App Idea: Find a city short on a service, buy an $11 domain, let AI build the site. That’s how one founder generated $35K in crane leads in a month. Someone should productise this.
🗞️ Media Idea: Local newsletters are printing money. Here’s a five-step plan to a $100K/month city newsletter, with SMS doing the heavy lifting on offers. Steal this.
💸 Side Hustle Idea: Know your city better than the tour guides? Turn it into self-guided AI walking tours tourists pay for, no umbrella or group of 30 required. Low cost, very doable.
📘 Playbook: Can build it but can’t sell it? This founder’s $25K/month playbook for “boring” products is five simple steps.
🤑 Money Shot: In February, this 18-year-old had never written a line of code. Now his ab-scanning app makes $55K a month. 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 To-Do List Could Use A Funding Plan.
More stock. Better equipment. Another pair of hands. Different business problems, potentially the same missing piece.
Explore small-business loan options from multiple lenders with one NerdWallet Small Business application.
🔍 Everything Else from Today
🛠️ AI Tool: Grok just launched a startup programme with 6-12 months of free credits across its whole stack, plus every dollar you spend matched 1:1 for six months. Free compute is free compute.
📈 Trends-with-Benefits: The Railway breach just exposed a new gold rush: stolen AI keys are the new stolen cards. Greg Isenberg reckons a key-guarding tool at $99/month sells itself. We agree.
📺 Must-Watch: Marc Andreessen reckons employees are quietly using AI behind their bosses’ backs, and that’s why startup formation is about to skyrocket. 42 seconds well spent.
🧬 Science Corner: Scientists have found a way to power-wash the brain without sleeping, using a single radio frequency to clear Alzheimer’s plaque in mice. Wild.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Corey Ganim reckons AI music is 1000x better than real music, and he’s binned Spotify to prove it. What do you think?
⭐️ Reader’s Pick: Two guys sold 200 websites in 12 months with no agency, no designers and a stack anyone can copy. The trick isn’t the build, it’s how they find the clients. Very clever. (Top link from yesterday’s edition)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Smart Monitor
Sick of hunching over a monitor that won’t meet you halfway? Wish your screen cared about your posture as much as your physio does?
Introducing CyboPal™, the world’s first monitor on a six-axis robotic arm that physically follows you around your desk. It locks onto your face in under 4 seconds, takes voice commands to split windows and write your emails, and swings a 27-inch 4K screen wherever you slouch.
CyboPal™ - face time, all the time.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks
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