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Business Ideas #278: Faith Tracking, AI SEO...
Plus The Founder Who Started Three Unicorns (Part 3)
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up business ideas as game-changing as OpenAI releasing their first AI agent š
Hereās what weāve got for you today:
Business Ideaš”: An idea we have massive faith in
Drunk Business Idea š»: A product for all the Dads out there
Just The Tip š: WTF is LLMO and why does it matter?
The Moneyshot š¤: The founder who started three unicorns (part 3)
P.S: If you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked you can on our website and if you were forwarded this email you can subscribe here.
P.P.S: Half Baked is free. Half Baked will always be free. Thatās thanks to the support of our sponsors. Weād love if you could take a moment to check them out.
Letās get into it.
BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP
Strava for Faith āļø
Pray hard, play hard
Available Domain: Soulsyncs.io
š” TLDR: A platform for people of faith to track and share their faith-based activities
1. Problem/Opportunityā
The Problem/Opportunity: Faith is making a bit of a comeback. A biblical scholar went on Joe Rogan recently. Bible sales are up 22% in the US, which is likely leading to some interesting realisationsā¦

But as more and more people are turning to faith why not help them on their journey? Hereās what we have in mind.
Market Size: The religious and spiritual apps market size was valued at approximately $11.5 billion in 2023.
2. Solution ā
The Idea: A platform for people of faith to track and share their faith-based activities
How it Works:
A user signs up to the platform and gives some details on what they want to achieve from using the platform
They can then track different faith-based activities that they complete like prayer, meditation, scripture reading etc.
Users can also share spiritual milestones such as baptisms
They can also use the platform to create reading plans to follow of religious texts, set goals around prayer or other activities and they can complete challenges all in the name of deepening their faith
Go-to-market: Start by building a product for a single faith, say Christianity, then expand into other religions
Business Model: Monthly subscription fee
Startup Costs: You could spin up an app here for a few thousand dollars
3. How Youāll Get Rich š°
Exit Multiple: Your exit multiple here would likely be 5x - 8x revenue
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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA
The Ultimate Dad Shoe
Are you a Dad struggling to find the perfect shoe that meets all of your needs?
Introducing the CrocBalance Ultrasā¢ļø, where comfort meets peak dad energy. This revolutionary footwear combines New Balance's signature chunky athletic sole with Crocs' ventilated style, creating the ultimate hybrid dad shoe. The built-in fanny pack also provides quick access storage for essentials like car keys, a wallet thatās way too thick, and receipts from the local hardware store.
Each pair comes with a complimentary pair of baggy cargo shorts too. Get them while theyāre hot!

JUST THE TIP
Trend š: AI SEO
Earlier this week a chart went viral on Twitter showing how Hubspotās organic traffic has tanked in recent months. The cause? Some say itās a bug. Others say itās down to an algorithm change. The other big culprit being cited is that no-oneās searching Google anymore instead of LLMs. Ultimately we donāt know the exact cause here, but we do know that search is moving away from Google and towards LLMs, which opens up a whole new field. AI SEO, LLM Optimization (LLMO), AI Content Optimization (AICO). Whatever you want to call it content needs to be optimized for both search engines and AI language models so they can cite them. And where a new field emerges so too does opportunity.

Business Ideas
LLM Content Optimization Platform: Build tools to make content more retrievable by LLMs through semantic structuring and metadata enhancement
Competitor Analysis Service: Use AI to track competitors' content strategies, identify gaps, and provide actionable insights for clients to improve their rankings
THE MONEYSHOT
The Founder Who Started Three Unicorns (Part 3)
Freelancing. Dropshipping. Tutoring. Everyone loves a good side hustle.
But while Rich Barton was building Zillow into a multi-billion dollar business he had his own side hustleā¦which went on to get acquired for +$1bn.
Hereās how.

It was 2007 and Rich (right) was in the middle of scaling Zillow into the tech giant it is today.
But while working at Zillow Rich made a huge mistake. He accidentally printed out sensitive salary and stock data related to employees on a printer, meaning his assistant had to rush out and retrieve the documents before they could be seen by anyone. Luckily she did, because if she didnāt it would have been a disaster. Or would it?
Rich wondered why it would have been such a disaster? Why wasnāt salary information more readily available to everyone? By democratising access to travel and real estate information Rich had built two billion dollar businesses. So why not try to go for a third?
Rich pitched this concept to Robert Hohman (left) and Tim Besse (middle), who were both early employees at Expedia. They loved the idea.
After several months of development in March 2008, just before launch, Rich, Robert and Tim raised $3 million in funding from Benchmark Capital to build their product.
They founded Glassdoor.

Glassdoor officially launched its website in June 2008, featuring over 3,300 reviews across 250 companies. And it got off to a strong start. On its launch day, the site received over 1.2 million views, demonstrating immediate interest and traffic.
The company built on this early growth with hacks like entering users who shared reviews anonymously on the platform into raffles.
The platform gained early traction due to its unique data, but just like Expedia and Zillow, over time the platform expanded to other areas including job listings, recruitment tools and much more.
This gave Glassdoor a path to monetization and today the business earns most of its revenue from job advertising, employer branding services and subscription plans from employers. Quickly the business scaled to million of dollars of revenue per year and became an acquisition target.
By 2018, Glassdoor had amassed over 10 million job listings and more than 60 million reviews and Recruit Holdings wanted to acquire the business. So that year Glassdoor was acquired by Recruit Holdings for $1.2 billion. Rich had hit his third home run.
Three businesses. Three unicorns. Rich is clearly one of the greatest founders of our time. So what can we take from his story?
Itās time to think bigger. Much bigger. There are people like Rich out in the world building billion dollar businesses like itās going out of fashion.
So think bigger, move quicker and donāt give up until you make it.
1 - 1 FOUNDER FEEDBACK
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