Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as hard to keep secret as OpenAI's new hardware device 🤫
In today’s edition:
💡 Solving a $300B problem in e-commerce
🛠 How to vibe code beautiful UI
🔋 From $60K in debt to a HubSpot acquisition + more
🔍 Claude Code launch, angel investing, retention curves + more
🍻 A product that really takes a stand
Let’s goooo 🚀
💸 $1,000 Giveaway: We've teamed up with Bill.com to give away $1,000 to support one of you this week. In order to enter simply:
Go to this link and download the e-book
Reply to this email with one thing you learned from the guide
Good luck!
🛍️ Post-Purchase Concierge for E-commerce
E-commcierge
Available domain: Apresbuy.ai
The Problem: We’ve all felt the pull of a good e-commerce website, using every trick in the book to get us to buy their product. But once you make the purchase? Radio silence. Most brands couldn’t care less what happens post-purchase, as long as you don’t make a return of course. Because returns are a big problem. The average return rate is 20-30% online and every return costs $20-30 to process, eats into margins, and often means losing the customer forever. But here's the thing - most returns are preventable. Wrong size, unmet expectations, buyer's remorse - these aren't inevitable, they're communication failures. So why not open up a dialogue between buyers and merchants after they’ve hit “buy now“? Why not create a concierge service to manage returns or even upsells and increase customer value? Here's what we're thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: An AI-powered post-purchase messaging platform that reduces returns and increases repeat purchases for e-commerce brands.
🛠️ Product:
The moment a customer buys, the AI kicks in - sending personalised post-purchase messages with styling tips, size reassurance, and usage guides tailored to exactly what they ordered.
If return signals are detected (no product engagement, support queries, hesitation), the AI intervenes with targeted offers - exchanges, store credit, or personalised alternatives - before the customer ever hits the returns portal.
Brands get a full analytics dashboard showing return rate trends, intervention success rates, and lifetime value impact - making the ROI impossible to ignore.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Try the demo (Built in Base44) | Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: SaaS subscription based on order volume - $299/month up to 1,000 orders, scaling up from there. Performance tier takes a % of verified return savings.
⭐ End Goal: Acquired by Klaviyo, Shopify, or a returns platform like Loop or Happy Returns looking to move up the funnel. 8-15x ARR multiple.
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🛠️ Startups, Here's Your Toolkit
Scaling startups face new challenges every single day. But with this free toolkit at your fingertips, every one of them becomes an opportunity to take your growth to the next level.
Download it to get real-world strategies for:
Taking control of cash flow
Strengthening vendor & investor trust
Crafting AI prompts for more efficient processes and much, much more
From the hidden cost of manual processes to scaling without adding headcount - it's all in there. Free to download today.
🎨 How to Vibe Code a Beautiful UI
The Context: Most vibe coded apps look the same. Same blue gradients, same Inter font, same Lucide icons - instant tells that an AI built it. The problem isn't the AI, it's that most people just type "make a landing page" and hope for the best. Here's how to fix that.
Step-by-step:
Sketch first, prompt second - use Excalidraw to draw a quick wireframe before you write a single prompt. Export it and tell the AI "follow this structure exactly." AI copies way better than it imagines.
Screenshot what you like - go to Dribbble or Mobbin, screenshot the specific section you want (a nav bar, a pricing card, a hero section), paste it in and say "copy this style." This alone changes everything.
Feed it a mood board for colors - never tell AI "make it feel modern and warm." Use a mood board generator and feed that image to the AI saying "reference this for the color palette."
Kill the defaults - define a design system before you build, swap Inter for something from Google Fonts, and ditch Lucide for Phosphor Icons. Most vibe coded apps look off because there's limited consistency and not much personality.
Check out the full guide
🚀 How to Validate a Startup Idea in 44 Minutes
Most founders spend months building something nobody wants. The smart ones validate first.
This Wednesday, we're hosting a free live session where we'll show you exactly how to do it:
Walk through 3 real validation examples (including Half Baked itself)
See the exact framework we use before writing a single line of code
Get your idea validated live on the call
Free. 44 minutes. This Wednesday at 6pm GMT.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 Money Shot: This guy went from $60K in debt to getting acquired by HubSpot (literally today). Here's how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: People are predicting a Global Intelligence Crisis in 2028. Here's what that means for founders.
💬 Prompt Drop: This prompt turns Claude into an NLP coach, something used by the world's top negotiators and leaders.
🆓 Founder Resource: a16z & Y Combinator share their million-dollar AI startup ideas for 2026, straight from the people writing the cheques.
🔍 Founder Finds
🤖 Anthropic just launched Claude Code Security, an AI that scans your codebase for vulnerabilities the way a human researcher would. Cybersecurity stocks didn’t appreciate this launch…
🦄 A Stanford professor analysed thousands of angel investments to find out who's backed the most unicorns. Jared Leto made the list. Yes, that Jared Leto.
📱 a16z breaks down the retention numbers behind chatbots…and they're beating most consumer apps.
💀 Claude just killed this startup. Or did it validate it? Either way, worth a read before you build.
🚀 You're earlier to AI than you think. Here's the data to prove it.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Vertical Grill
Enjoy the occasional steak? Wish you could cook both sides to perfection?
Introducing the VertiGrill™ - a vertical infrared grill inspired by the toaster (apparently) that cooks your steak upright to perfection. Because pans are so last century.
VertiGrill™ - Raising the steaks.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
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