Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as Google launching their new music model 🎶
In today’s edition:
💡 Helping founders to hone a critically important skill
🛠 Using Figma and Claude Code to create products
🔋 How a 24-Year-Old Turned $5M into $25B + more
🔍 Apple’s AI wearables, xAI, $400M raise, + more
🍻 A product that could “scale” incredibly quickly…
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. Happy building!
🎨 Branding Co-Pilot for Founders
The Taste makers
Available domain: Tastestack.co
The Problem: Everybody in tech is talking about one thing right now…taste. Greg Brockman recently said that "taste is a new core skill." Paul Graham wrote an entire essay about it. And Steve Jobs built Apple's entire competitive moat on it. When everyone can build products using AI tools, taste is what separates founders who ship something great from founders who create AI slop. But founders have no systematic way to build or apply taste - their inspiration is scattered across screenshots, Pinterest boards, and browser bookmarks. it’s time to change that. Here's what we're thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A tool that helps founders build a visual swipe file, codify their brand DNA, and export a portable brand kit directly to help them to design their products, marketing materials and more
🛠️ Product:
A user can save inspiration from anywhere on the web and browse similar content on the website to expand their swipe file. TasteStack's AI analyzes the patterns across your saves to extract your brand DNA - color palette, typography instincts, visual tone, and aesthetic signature.
One click exports a structured brand kit directly into your AI builder of choice (Lovable, Claude Code, etc.), so every output is on-brand from day one instead of looking like everyone else's MVP.
As TasteStack matures it becomes a full creative suite - generating on-brand social posts, landing pages and pitch decks that look like they’re part of your brand.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Try the demo | Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: Freemium, with Pro at $19/month (unlimited saves, brand kit exports, AI content generation) and Team plans at $49/month for agencies and studios.
⭐ End Goal: Get acquired by Canva or Adobe to add brand intelligence as a core feature to their platforms. 8-15x revenue multiple.
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🇨🇭 Your emails should have Swiss bank-level privacy
You wouldn't store your term sheets on a public Google Drive. So why is your email sitting on servers that your provider can read whenever they want?
Proton Mail for Business offers:
Zero-access architecture (not even Proton can see your data)
GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2 type II compliance out of the box
Custom domains, AI writing assistant, calendar - all encrypted
Built by scientists from CERN. Trusted by 100 million+ users. Time to upgrade.
🎨 Using Figma and Claude Code to Create Products
The Context: Figma has always been the go-to tool for designing great websites and apps. But turning those designs into real products meant handing off to engineers, losing details in translation, and waiting weeks for something that looked "close enough." Not anymore. With Figma MCP, Claude Code can read your actual Figma file and build it directly. This is how it works.
Step-by-step:
Get your Figma personal access token: go to Figma.com → profile → Settings → Security → Personal access tokens → Generate new token.
Connect it to Claude Code by running:
claude mcp add figma -e FIGMA_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN=figd_xxxxxxxxxx- then type/mcpto confirm it shows figma ✓ connected.Paste your Figma file URL into Claude Code and say: "Analyze this design, extract the color palette and typography, then create a Tailwind config."
Build section by section - "Generate the hero section from my Figma design using Next.js + Tailwind" - and keep going until your full design is live code.
🔗 Your LinkedIn Should Be Booking Meetings While You Sleep
Playbookz turns CEO & exec profiles into predictable growth channels - 100% done-for-you. Content, outbound DMs, ads, and a human setter.
100+ leads/mo. 9 new clients in 90 days. Cancel anytime.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 Money Shot: A 24-year-old turned $5M into $25B. Here's how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: Mark Cuban is calling AI the biggest job creation wave since the internet, and when you look at the numbers, it's hard to argue with him.
💬 Prompt Drop: This Claude prompt gives you a 90-day passive income roadmap, including what to do and what to avoid.
🆓 Founder Resource: Check out this curated library of beautiful websites for when you need a hit of design inspiration.
💵 Founder Deal: Get up to $350,000 in Cloud credits through the Google for Startups Cloud Program. Details here.
🔍 Founder Finds
🚀 Apple is reportedly developing a trio of AI wearables (smart glasses, an AI pin, and AI-powered AirPods) as it races to keep pace with Meta and OpenAI in the wearables space.
🤖 Humain, the Saudi-backed artificial intelligence company, has just invested $3B into Elon Musk’s xAI.
💰 Legora, the Swedish AI legal platform, is in talks to raise $400M at a $5B+ valuation, making it one of Europe's fastest-growing legaltech companies.
📚 Doug Leone, the Sequoia legend, believes that desperation is a great asset for founders. Here's why.
⚔ Here’s why you should never worry about competition as a startup founder.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Planetary Scales
Find yourself a little embarrassed whenever you step on the scales (I certainly do)? Wish the scales were a little more…forgiving?
Introducing CosmicScales™, the world's first multi-planet bathroom scale. Step on, pick your planet, and watch your weight change depending on what planet you select. Mercury for an ego boost, Jupiter for a reality check, Pluto when you really want to feel bad about yourself.
CosmicScales™ - worth the weight.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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