Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as quickly as OpenAI is torching cash right now 🔥
In today’s edition:
💡 Solving a problem that costs small businesses $1.1 trillion
🛠 Building a full SaaS tool with Base44 (5-day mini course)
🔋 How three university friends built a viral app + more
🔍 Anthropic raise, OpenAI model purge, Simile's $100M + more
🍻 Your kitchen's worst kept secret, upgraded
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!
📦 Digital Twin for Small Business Inventory
Twin it to win it
Available Domain: Twinventory.com
The Problem: Small businesses have a big, big problem. The average small retailer loses 4.1% of revenue to stock-outs and another 3.2% to overstock - and that's before you account for the hours spent doing manual stock checks with clipboards and spreadsheets. Enterprise players like Walmart and Amazon have AI-powered digital twins simulating their entire supply chains in real time, but the $1.1 trillion inventory distortion problem hits hardest at the small business level. Your local coffee shop shouldn't need an enterprise software solution to know when they're about to run out of oat milk, for example. It’s time to give small businesses the help they need here. Here's what we're thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A plug-and-play digital twin platform that gives small businesses a real-time virtual replica of their inventory, with AI-powered demand forecasting and automated reorder alerts.
🛠️ Product:
Connect your POS system (Shopify, Square, Clover, or manual CSV upload) and the platform builds a live digital twin of your entire inventory within minutes - every SKU mapped, tracked, and visualized in a simple dashboard.
AI analyzes your sales patterns, seasonality, local events, and even weather to predict demand shifts before they happen, sending automated low-stock alerts and suggested reorder quantities so you never run out of your best sellers.
"What-if" scenario mode lets you simulate new product launches, price changes, or supplier delays to see the impact on your stock levels before committing real dollars.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Try the demo | Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: Freemium for up to 50 SKUs. Growth plan at $49/month (500 SKUs, demand forecasting), Pro at $149/month (unlimited SKUs, multi-location, what-if simulations).
⭐ End Goal: Acquired by Shopify, Square, or a supply chain player like Flexport looking to move downstream into SMB inventory intelligence. 8-15x revenue multiple.
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⚡ The Business Phone Plan with an Edge
Most business cell plans are just consumer plans with a different price tag. SuperMobile from T-Mobile for Business is built differently.
Why it works for startups:
First business plan combining 5G performance + satellite coverage + built-in security
Your critical apps stay prioritized when networks get congested
Threat Protect secures every connection - even coffee shop WiFi
SuperMobile, the best business plan on the Best Network, designed for how teams work today. Starts at $42/line/mo.*
*With 6+ lines on SuperMobile. With AutoPay; plus taxes and fees. Price guarantee exclusions like taxes and fees apply.
💻 Building a SaaS Product with Base44 (5-Day Mini Course)
The Context: You've got the fundamentals - Day 1 basics, Day 2 frontend, Day 3 backend. Now, we're building something real. Today's project: a consultation booking platform where experts offer paid calls and users book and pay via Stripe (which you might remember from edition #422). Let’s do it.
Step-by-step:
Start with: "Build a consultation booking platform where experts list their availability and pricing. Users browse experts, select a time slot, and book a call."
Add the core features: "Experts can set 15, 30, and 60 minute sessions at different prices. Users see a calendar of available slots and can book directly."
Connect Stripe: Go to Settings > Integrations > Stripe, add your API keys, then prompt: "Add Stripe checkout - when users book a session, they pay upfront before the booking is confirmed."
Test the full flow: Create an expert profile, set availability, then book a session as a user with Stripe's test card (4242 4242 4242 4242).
Get the full tutorial
P.S. Tomorrow we're building a two-sided marketplace - the final project in our course.
🏆 LinkedIn Is Now The Top Growth Channel For CEOs
Playbookz builds top CEO & exec brands without you lifting a finger. Ghostwriting, lead magnets, ads, and a human setter - all done-for-you.
Most teams see 150k reach, 300+ leads, and 9 new clients in the first 90 days.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 Money Shot: These three university friends built an app that’s been downloaded 5M times. Here's how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: Recursive Language Models could be the next big thing in AI. Keep an eye on this….
💬 Prompt Drop: This prompt can build one of the coolest websites I’ve ever seen. Try it.
🆓 Founder Resource: This one single chart is a source of dozens of startup ideas. Check it out.
💵 Founder Deal: Get 55% off Incogni, protect your personal data today.
🔍 Founder Finds
🤖 Anthropic just raised $30B in Series G funding at a $380B valuation, and they’re not slowing down.
📢 OpenAI is deprecating GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, and several legacy models tomorrow. Only 0.1% of daily users are on them, but the backlash is real.
💰 Simile raised $100M to build AI that simulates human behavior. This will be a huge business.
🚗 Ever raised $31M Series A to build the all-EV marketplace. Eclipse is leading the charge (pun very much intended).
📚 Jan Koum (WhatsApp founder) on how to deal with competition. Spoiler: just build something people love.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: AI Spice Rack
Tired of your spice rack being a graveyard of expired turmeric? Wish someone would just tell you what to season your chicken with?
Introducing Spicerr™, the world's first AI-powered smart spice dispenser. It holds 6 capsules, learns your taste preferences over time, and auto-dispenses the perfect blend for any dish.
Spicerr™ - Cumin get it.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
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See you soon,