Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as earth-shattering as Claude going down today 👀
In today’s edition:
💡 Closing the $4.2B gap between seeing an outfit and buying it
🛠 How Tom Bilyeu uses AI for market research
🔋 From a family kitchen to a $9B orange chicken empire + more
🔍 Cal AI acquisition, SaaSpocalypse, Replit upgrade + more
🍻 A sticky situation for your screen
Let's goooo 🚀
💸 Mac Mini Giveaway: We've teamed up with T-Mobile for Business to give away a Mac Mini to help one founder level up their business.
Go to this link and submit your details in the lead form (takes 7 seconds)
Reply to us with a screenshot of the confirmation.
Shoutout to last week's winner Christopher Torres. Check your inbox! And heads up, we'll be announcing the Baked44 $5K winner in tomorrow's email.
👗 AI-Powered Outfit Search
Wear'd you get that?
Available Domain: Swagsnap.com
The Problem: You're scrolling TikTok and see an outfit that goes unreasonably hard. What do you do? Screenshot it, zoom in, squint at the brand logo, spend 40 minutes Googling "olive green oversized bomber jacket with orange lining" and end up on page 7 of Amazon looking at something that's...not even close. The visual commerce market is worth $4.2 billion, 90% of Gen Z say social platforms influence their purchases, and 57% of women admit to impulse clothing buys. But the gap between "I love that outfit" and "I just bought that outfit" is still massive. It’s time to close that gap. Here's what we're thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: An app that lets you snap a photo of any outfit - on the street, on screen, on social media - and instantly identifies every piece with shoppable links to buy each item.
🛠️ Product:
Snap a photo or upload a screenshot and the AI breaks the outfit into individual pieces - jacket, pants, shoes, accessories - identifying brand, style, and color in seconds.
Each item returns ranked results across retailers with price comparisons, from the exact match to budget-friendly dupes - because sometimes you want the look, not the price tag.
Build a "style profile" over time and get personalized recommendations based on your taste and budget - turning every photo into a personal shopping assistant.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: Freemium with affiliate commissions (3-10%) on every purchase. Premium tier ($7.99/month) for unlimited searches, dupe-finding, and price drop alerts. B2B API licensing for retailers.
⭐ End Goal: Get acquired by Pinterest, Google Shopping, or a major fashion retailer looking to own the "see it, buy it" pipeline. 10-20x revenue multiple.
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🤖 Claude Cowork Masterclass: How to Make Claude the Ultimate Employee
This Wednesday, we're going live for a one-hour masterclass showing you exactly how to use Claude Cowork as the ultimate employee.
We'll be walking through real use cases so you can leave with workflows you can put to work straight away.
Three reasons you should be there:
See it in action - No fluff, no theory. We're doing live walkthroughs of Claude Cowork across multiple business use cases.
Save hours every week - Learn the workflows that let Claude handle the work you'd normally hire for.
Ask anything - Bring your questions. We'll show you how to apply Claude to your specific setup.
This Wednesday, March 4th 🕕 6:00 PM GMT | 1:00 PM ET | 10:00 AM PT
Seats are limited, grab your spot now before they're gone.
Sponsored by T-Mobile for Business.
📈 How Tom Bilyeu Uses AI for Market Research
The Context: Tom Bilyeu sold Quest Nutrition for $1B back in 2019. So what's he doing these days? Well, he's deep in the weeds figuring out the best prompting techniques to get the most out of AI. I'd probably be sipping mai tais on a beach if I were him, but hey, each to their own. Anyway, here's his mega prompt for getting AI to do world-class market research.
Step-by-step:
Head to ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever model you like to use.
Insert the prompt below, adding your own inputs for your product, target audience, and the problem you're solving.
Use the market research generated to validate your startup idea, refine your positioning, or pressure-test assumptions before you build.
🔗 The Easiest Revenue Channel You're Not Using
Most SaaS founders pour money into ads. But your happiest customers? They're free salespeople who just need a nudge.
FirstPromoter lets you launch a fully-branded affiliate and referral program in minutes:
Plugs straight into Stripe, Paddle, or Chargebee - no dev time needed
Tracks every renewal, upgrade, churn, and refund automatically
Pays your affiliates in one click via PayPal
Affiliate-led growth is one of the highest-ROI channels out there. Time to turn it on.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 Money Shot: This duo went from a family kitchen to building a $9B chicken empire. Here's how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: Riley Brown just dropped an 18-minute masterclass on OpenClaw. If you're sleeping on open-source AI tools, now's the time to wake up.
💬 Prompt Drop: The anatomy of a perfect Claude prompt? Ruben Hassid broke it down.
🆓 Founder Resource: Free AI courses from Anthropic: Claude just dropped free courses to help you level up your AI skills.
💵 Founder Deal: Get a 60-day free trial of Wispr Flow (our favourite AI dictation tool) on us.
🔍 Founder Finds
💰 Cal AI just got acquired by MyFitnessPal. From calorie-scanning startup to big exit - what a run.
📉 TechCrunch just did a deep dive into the SaaSpocalypse. Worth checking out!
🔮 Patrick Collison predicts software will shift from mass-produced to bespoke, custom-built the moment you need it. Great take!
🚀 Paul Graham just teased Replit's new vibe coding upgrade. When PG is hyped, pay attention.
🐙 OpenClaw just passed a major milestone on GitHub. Open-source AI is eating the world, one repo at a time.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Dog Cologne
Tired of your dog smelling like a wet carpet that rolled through a park? Ever wish your pup could walk into daycare smelling like a French bulldog who summers in Provence?
Introducing PawFume™, the world's first luxury fragrance line exclusively for dogs. Choose from scents like "Eau de Good Boy," "Muttlewood & Musk," and "Kibble No. 5." Comes in a bone-shaped bottle with a paw-print atomizer.
PawFume™ - Scent from above.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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