Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as bold as Dario Amodei's AI predictions at Davos 🔮 😱
In today’s edition:
💡 A hardware device for the book worms out there
🛠 Using Google Trends' new features to find startup ideas
🔋 From a dorm room to a $32B gaming empire + more
🔍 Google launch, AGI interview, 50 scaling lessons + more
🍻 A gaming idea that has a whiff of success about it
Let’s goooo 🚀
💻 MacBook Giveaway: We're teaming up with Wispr Flow (the incredible voice dictation product) this week to give away a MacBook to one of our readers.
In order to enter simply:
Download Wispr Flow for free (if you're already a user, let us know!)
Reply to this email with what you're building right now
Good luck this week!
📖 Reading Companion Hardware Device
A novel approach
Available Domain: Bookmarkr.co
The Problem: A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned my New Year's resolution to read 50 books this year. How’s it going you ask? Eh…ok, I guess? You see I, like 65% of readers out there, prefer reading physical books. But I don’t love how hard it is to track anything. I underline passages, scribble in margins, maybe dog-ear a page or two - but I know I’ll never look at those notes again. Meanwhile, when I read a book on a Kindle or online, I can highlight notes, do extra research on ideas or sections that grab me, the list goes on. There has to be a way to bring this kind of functionality to physical books…and I think there is. Here's what we're thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A clip-on hardware device that transforms any physical book into an interactive, voice-powered reading companion.
🛠️ Product:
Clip the device onto your book's back cover or spine - it doubles as a smart bookmark that remembers your page and syncs progress to an app.
Speak your thoughts aloud as you read - the device captures voice notes, tags them to specific pages, and transcribes everything into a searchable library.
You can also ask questions about the book, get AI-powered context on characters, themes, or author background, and receive personalized reading recommendations based on your highlights.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Check out the landing page | Get the landing page prompt
💼 Business Model: Hardware sold at $79-99 with a freemium app. Premium subscription ($9.99/month) unlocks AI features, unlimited cloud storage, and cross-device sync.
⭐ End Goal: Acquisition by a major publisher looking to bridge physical and digital reading. 3-5x revenue multiple.
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📧 Your Inbox is (Probably) a Disaster. Let’s Fix That.
You've got 43 unread emails. Half need real replies. Typing them all out? That's your whole morning gone.
Wispr Flow lets you:
Dictate replies in Gmail - just hold space and speak
Auto-format for professional tone, filler words removed
Blast through your inbox in half the time
Get back to people faster. Get back to building sooner.
🔍 Using Google Trends' New Features to Find Startup Ideas
The Context: Google just dropped a major upgrade to Google Trends - now powered by Gemini. Instead of staring at line graphs trying to figure out what's trending and why, you can now get AI-generated insights that explain the context behind search spikes. For founders hunting for ideas, this is a game-changer. Here's how to use it.
Step-by-step:
Head to Google Trends and search for a topic in your space - the new Gemini-powered summaries will automatically surface context on why searches are trending.
Use the "Related queries" section to find rising breakout terms - these are searches growing by 5,000%+ and often signal emerging problems people are trying to solve.
Compare multiple terms side-by-side to validate which angle has more sustained interest versus a one-time spike.
Export the data and cross-reference with Reddit or Twitter to understand the pain points behind the search volume.
🌐 Chrome wasn't built for how you actually work
Neo is. It's the world's first safe AI-native browser - instant summaries, tabs that organize themselves, and a Magic Bar that merges search, chat, and action into one.
Zero prompts. Zero clutter. Just smarter browsing with privacy baked in.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 The Money Shot: This college dropout built a $32B gaming empire from his bedroom. Here's how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: Context graphs are emerging as AI's trillion-dollar opportunity. This thread breaks it down.
💬 Prompt Drop: Google just dropped a comprehensive prompting handbook covering everything from admin support to marketing to sales. Practical templates you can steal today.
🆓 Free Resource: Get the “Complete Guide to SEO with Lovable” if you want to make your AI-built apps rank on Google.
💵 Deal of the Day: Get $20 off a design competition on 99Designs until the 31st of January. Learn more.
🔍 Founder Finds
🤖 Google just launched full-length SAT practice exams in Gemini completely free. This probably killed a lot of startups…
🎙️ Dario Amodei & Demis Hassabis sat down together at Davos to discuss the path to AGI. Two rivals, same stage, surprisingly similar timelines. Must-watch.
📚 Brian Halligan shares 50+ lessons from scaling HubSpot from $0 to $25 billion.
🚀 Elon Musk's management style is legendary. Here it gets decoded by former employees.
🛡️ Elad Gil breaks down 15 sources of competitive defensibility, from network effects to regulatory moats. Great read.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Gaming Accessory
Ever felt like your gaming experience was missing something? Like maybe you needed to smell that battlefield?
Introducing GameScent™, the world's first AI-powered scent device that releases odors based on what's happening in your game. Gunfire? Here's some smoke. Exploring a forest? Enjoy that fresh pine. Racing game? Burning rubber, baby.
GameScent™ - he who smelt it, felt it.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
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