November 5, 2026 | Read online | Listen to our podcast
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as advanced as OpenAI’s brand new cyber model 🛡
Welcome to the 298 new readers who joined yesterday. In today's edition we’re covering:
💡 An idea for coders who’d rather die than cold call
🛠️ 21 ways to find someone to use your product
🤑 He bought a stranger a pint and got 100 customers
⛽️ Four more 8-figure AI plays, no coding required + more
🍻 An idea to let the bin take itself out
Let's goooo 🚀
💡 Matchmaking Marketplace
A match made in revenue
Name.com domain: Dealship.sale
👤 Source: Corey Ganim shared five AI business opportunities he thinks have eight-figure potential. His favourite was also the one that caught our eye…
❌ Problem:
Batman has Robin. Mario has Luigi. Shrek has Donkey (what a movie). Great partnerships work because each brings something different. Sometimes that’s saving the kingdom. Sometimes it’s being willing to pick up the phone.
The world is full of coders who can build but struggle to sell, and salespeople who could sell all day if they had the right product. Seems like these people should meet. So why not build a marketplace that makes the introduction? Here’s the idea.
✅ Solution:
Launch Dealship, a marketplace where developers with products to sell can find salespeople to help sell them. Developers list what they’ve built, who it’s for and the commission they’re willing to offer.
Salespeople browse products that fit their experience and contacts, try the demos and apply to represent them. Both sides agree the terms, then the developer handles the product while the salesperson brings in customers.
🧪 How to Validate: Find five developers with working products and manually match them with experienced salespeople. See if one pairing can land a paying customer.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Demo
💡 The Half Baked Take: Plenty of people have half the skills needed to run a business. Help them find the other half and you could have a very good one yourself.
Rate this idea
💬 Ask Your Product A Question
Thank you for supporting our sponsors, they keep this newsletter free!
You opened your editor to ship a feature. Somehow you're now hunting for a chart in another tab. A classic founder side quest.
PostHog MCP lets your AI agent query analytics, investigate errors and manage feature flags from where you already work. Ask in plain English, get product context, and keep the investigation alongside the code.
🛠️ 21 Ways to Get Your First 100 Users
The Tutorial: You’ve built something, but nobody’s using it yet. John Rush has launched dozens of SaaS tools, directories and AI agents, and he’s shared the 21 methods he keeps going back to. Here are three to start with.
Step-by-step:
Send cold emails to 20 people, leading with the outcome rather than the product (e.g. “100 backlinks from relevant directories in one click”). No replies? Rewrite it and send to another 20 until you get 2.
Offer a free pilot: a year’s plan in exchange for feedback. Start by explaining why you picked them, because people like being chosen.
Sponsor small newsletters with under 10k subscribers. They cost a few hundred dollars and often get better returns than the big ones.
🤑 One Pint Got Him His First 100 Customers
The Idea: In January 2021, John Larkin was stuck in lockdown waiting on soap samples from overseas factories that never shipped. So he taught himself to make soap in his kitchen, and a batch brewed with Guinness turned into The Black Stuff, a natural handmade soap brand for men.
The Execution:
He made every bar himself for the first 18 months, 54 at a time, and turned over about €35,000 in year one.
His first 100 customers came from one conversation over a pint with a stranger, and most of them are still buying five years later.
Today 50+ staff make a million bars a year by hand, and the brand has just opened its first shop in Dublin.
John has shared the growth playbook behind it all, including the €30,000 hole he dug before earning a euro back, the market that surprised him and why he’s happy to advertise so much.
⛽️ Fuel for Taking Action
💡 Software Idea: Today’s idea came from Corey Ganim’s list of 8-figure AI plays. There are four more where that came from, and none of them need you to write code. Take your pick.
📱 Mobile App Idea: Spin the rack, pull a card, flip it over. This guy has built a travel journal that feels like a seaside gift shop, and it’s oddly satisfying to watch. Gorgeous.
🦾 Hardware Idea: The classroom of the future might already exist. This smart blackboard from Shanghai’s big AI conference does something no teacher can.
💸 Side Hustle Idea: Got a full-time job and 15 spare hours a week? Luke Pierce has laid out exactly how he’d start an AI agency on nights and weekends.
P.S. Our Founder Pack has free deals, playbooks and exclusive content.
🎁 Your Logo Has Plans Beyond Your Pitch Deck
Another year, another gift-buying spreadsheet. The people behind your business deserve more than a last-minute “thanks!” on Slack.
Put your brand on MOO’s Notebooks, Water Bottles and Pens, and give your team or clients something they can use beyond the unboxing. Choose your gifts, add your logo and get one more thing off the founder to-do list.
🔍 Everything Else from Today
📚 Must-Read: Tibo has written the 6-month plan to rule Reddit and get your product cited by AI. Full system, tools and four copy-paste prompts included. Bookmark this one.
🎧️ Must-Listen: The creator behind 1B+ views has boiled viral storytelling down to four steps. Simple enough to use on your next post. Worth every second.
📺 Must-Watch: Dario Amodei was asked what a kid finishing school should do right now. His answer is a bit unsettling, and it’s worth hearing in full.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Paul Gotea reckons five unglamorous problems could get you to $15k/mo before Christmas. None of them are what you’d guess.
⭐️ Reader's Pick: Everyone’s worried about microplastics and air quality, but almost nobody knows what’s in their own home. Here’s a boring side hustle that could do millions a year. Low startup costs, too. (Top link from yesterday’s edition)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Automatic Wheelie Bin
Forgot bin day again? Sick of shuffling down the drive in your dressing gown at 6am while the whole street watches?
Introducing BinBot™, the world’s first bolt-on engine that turns any wheelie bin into a self-driving one. Clamps onto any 240L bin, syncs with your city’s collection calendar and trundles itself to the kerb at a blistering 4mph. Wheels itself back once emptied.
BinBot™ - The Fast and the Refuse.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks
We read every reply. Let us know what you think!
Before you go:
Looking to sponsor Half Baked? Just fill out this form and we’ll get back to you asap.
We also have the Half Baked Podcast. Give it a listen!
See you soon,
