Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as often as xAI is shedding co-founders 👋
In today’s edition:
💡 An idea to solve a major EV problem
🛠 Backend basics with Base44 (day 3)
🔋 Turning a weekend project into a $2.5B exit + more
🔍 Seedance 2.0, $220M raise, Lindy Assistant, + more
🍻 A bin that really sucks (in a good way)
Let’s goooo 🚀
💸 The Baked44 Challenge: We've teamed up with Base44 to give away $5K to one founder who ships their product this February. More details here and later in the newsletter. Happy building!
🔌 Peer-to-Peer EV Charging Network
Socket to 'em.
Available domain: Wattspot.com
The Problem: There are over 20 million EVs on the road globally, and that number is projected to hit 50 million by 2030. But here's the catch - 83% of EV owners prefer to charge at home, and roughly a third of Americans live in apartments or multifamily housing where charging infrastructure barely exists. Renters are 6x less likely to own an EV than homeowners, not because they don't want one, but because they literally can't charge it. Meanwhile, millions of home chargers sit idle 94% of the time. The infrastructure is there - it's just locked behind the wrong driveways. But what if you could unlock all that latent charging power? Here's what we're thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A peer-to-peer marketplace where homeowners rent out their private EV chargers to nearby drivers who don't have access to home charging.
🛠️ Product:
List your home charger in under 2 minutes - set your price, availability windows, and charger specs. Nearby EV drivers search by location, connector type, and time slot, then book and pay through the app.
Smart scheduling handles everything - drivers get the exact address after booking, activate the charger via the app, and payments auto-process based on electricity used plus an access fee set by the host.
Built-in trust layer with verified profiles, two-way reviews, and host insurance coverage - plus a "neighbourhood network" feature that lets apartment complexes partner with nearby homeowners for dedicated charging slots.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Try the demo | Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: 15-20% platform fee on each charging session. Premium tier for hosts ($9.99/month) with analytics, dynamic pricing, and priority listing. Enterprise tier for property managers who want to partner with nearby hosts for their tenants.
⭐ End Goal: Acquired by ChargePoint, Tesla, or an energy company looking to build distributed charging infrastructure. 10-15x revenue multiple.
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💻 Backend Basics with Base44 (5-Day Mini Course)
The Context: On Day 1 you learned the basics. On Day 2 you built a polished landing page. Today we're tackling the backend - databases, authentication, and user roles. We're building an internal team tool where admins can manage everything, but regular users can only see their own stuff. This is the foundation for any serious app.
Step-by-step:
Start a new project: "Build a team project tracker where users can create projects with a name, description, status, and deadline. Each project belongs to the user who created it."
Add authentication: "Add user login and signup. Users should only see projects they created. Store user name, email, and profile photo."
Add roles: "Create two user types - Admin and Member. Admins can see and edit all projects. Members can only see and edit their own."
Test it by creating two accounts - one admin, one member - and verify the permissions work correctly.
P.S. Tomorrow we put it all together and build a complete SaaS product with payments.
📰 1440: Your Source for Unbiased News
In a world flooded with AI-generated content, 1440 is different. Every edition is researched, written, and edited by real people who care about accuracy, context, and clarity.
Their team reviews over 100 sources daily to bring you a 5-minute newsletter that explains the world without bias, spin, or shortcuts. Trusted by over 4 million readers, 1440 delivers news made for humans, by humans. Plus, it’s always free, factual, and refreshingly real.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 Money Shot: This guy turned a weekend project into a $2.5B exit. Here's how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: Executives are leaving top AI labs at an alarming rate. When the builders start walking, pay attention.
💬 Prompt Drop: Garry Tan uses this very specific prompt to push Claude to check its work and test when coding.
🆓 Founder Resource: This website has every template a founder could ever need, from offer letters to financial models and everything in between
💵 Founder Deal: Get 12 months of ElevenLabs for free with their startup grant program.
🔍 Founder Finds
📹 Seedance 2.0 just dropped, offering true multi-modal AI video creation. The videos people are making are insane…
💰 James Dacombe, a 25-year-old founder from London, raised $220M for Olix, a secretive UK AI chip startup pitching a new approach to AI hardware.
🤖 Lindy just launched Lindy Assistant, billed as the ultimate AI assistant for automating workflows end to end.
📚 Matt Shumer's latest piece on where AI is heading is a must-read for any founder building in the space.
🧬 Isomorphic Labs released a technical report showing their drug design engine more than doubles AlphaFold 3's performance on key benchmarks, unlocking rational drug design for structures it's never seen before.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Smart Trashcan
Tired of chasing crumbs around the kitchen with a dustpan? Wish your bin would just come to you?
Introducing BinBot™, the world's first smart trashcan on wheels. It roams your house like a Roomba, vacuuming up dirt, dust, and pet hair as it goes - then parks itself back in the corner when it's done. No more leaving the couch to put your rubbish in the bin, it comes straight to you.
BinBot™ - Bin there, done that.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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