Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as interesting as OpenAI’s push to build a super app 👀
In today’s edition:
💡 A product to serve 55 million people around the world
🛠 How to build iOS apps from scratch with Claude
🔋 Turning trauma into a $6 billion empire + more
🔍 Amazon phone, Kalshi raise, vibe coding wars + more
🍻 A vacuum that really goes above and beyond
Let’s goooo 🚀
🤝 Half Baked x Airwallex: This week we've partnered with Airwallex to offer one Half Baked reader a complimentary expert call on Intro.co (worth up to a thousand dollars) matched to wherever you are on your founder journey.
To be considered, just:
Check out Airwallex
Reply to this email with the word “Airwallex“
Good luck!
🧠 Anti-Wandering Wearable Device
A wanderful idea
Source: Stephane Nasser, Founder at OpenVC,
The Problem: 55 million people around the world live with dementia. It’s a truly terrible disease, both for those who suffer with it and their families. Because for families, the fear isn't just the forgetting…it's the wandering. 6 in 10 people with dementia will wander at some point, and when it happens, families have no idea where to look. Current solutions are a mess: ugly medical alert bracelets patients refuse to wear, or consumer smartwatches too complex for someone with cognitive decline. Nobody has built the product in the middle - premium design, simple UX, built specifically for this use case. Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A beautifully designed GPS wristband built for dementia patients to get them to safety if they wander
🛠️ Product:
The device looks like a premium fashion watch, not a medical bracelet. Slim metal casing, interchangeable bands, no flashing buttons or clinical branding.
Carers and families define a "safe zone" and get an instant push notification the moment the wearer steps outside it, all of which is managed through a companion app.
A single SOS button on the device triggers a live location ping and phone call to the primary carer. This can be initiated by the wearer or a member of the public in an emergency. Battery is optimised for 5+ days on a charge.
💻 Prototyping: Try the demo | Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: $99 device upfront + $20/month subscription covering GPS data, unlimited alerts, and the caregiver app.
⭐ End Goal: Get acquired by a major medtech or health insurer. The over-65 population is the fastest-growing demographic in the developed world and every health system needs a solution to wandering.
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💸 You're Losing Money Every Time You Pay Someone Abroad
You built a global team. You sell in multiple markets. But every time you send money across a border, your bank takes a cut you never agreed to.
Hidden FX markups. Slow settlements. A different tool for every country you operate in. It adds up fast.
Here's how Airwallex fixes it:
Interbank FX rates across 150+ countries - no hidden markups
95% of transfers arrive same day
Multi-currency accounts in 20+ currencies - stop converting money you don't need to
Get started with Airwallex in minutes and put your global payments, FX, and spend management on autopilot.
📱 Building iOS Apps from Scratch with Claude
The Context: Building a mobile app used to mean learning Swift, memorizing Apple documentation, and spending days getting Xcode to cooperate before writing a single feature. This structured prompt template turns Claude into a SwiftUI expert guide - walking you through an entire iOS build from project setup to a working app, with working code at every stage, no abstract explanations.
Step-by-step:
Copy the prompt from the link below and send it to Claude - it starts by asking you about your experience level and what you want to build before writing a single line of code.
Work through the structured pipeline it sets up: project setup → core concepts → layout system → interactivity → UIKit integration → working app.
Each concept comes with working code you can test immediately in Xcode, with Claude flagging common SwiftUI pitfalls before you hit them.
For each new feature you want to add, reference the embedded rules - the output always follows Swift naming conventions and production-grade structure.
📡 The AI Brief That Separates Signal From Spectacle
There has never been more AI news, and somehow less clarity. Mindstream exists to fix that. Each issue is human-written and editorially curated to separate trend from trivia, highlight what actually matters, and give you practical next steps you can use right away.
Sober trendlines, vendor watchouts, and clear frameworks you can lift into decks, briefs, and team conversations. Read in five minutes, leave with confidence and context, not FOMO.
If you want fewer tabs, faster decisions, and a smarter way to keep your edge, this is your daily shortcut from hype to how.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 Money Shot: This guy turned trauma into a $6 Billion empire. Here’s how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: Developer productivity has exploded over the past year, per the FT. If your competitors aren't shipping with Claude Code yet, they will be by Q2.
💬 Prompt Drop: Check out these 50 Claude Code tips and best practices for daily use.
🆓 Founder Resource: This guy spent over $1M on tech launches in the past year. Here's what he learned.
💵 Founder Deal: Get Intercom + Fin for free if you're a startup for 12 months.
🔍 Founder Finds
📱 Amazon is reportedly building a new smartphone with Alexa at its core. The Fire Phone died so this one could live...maybe.
💰 Kalshi just raised $1B+ at a $22B valuation, meaning the prediction market platform is now worth more than most sports franchises.
🚀 Apple has quietly blocked updates for vibe coding apps on the App Store. The vibe coding wars are starting to heat up.
🎙️ Jensen Huang just sat down on the All-In Podcast giving the ultimate bull case for AI. Watch here.
📚 Nat Friedman (ex-GitHub CEO) shares his personal beliefs on his website. They’re short, punchy, and worth 2 minutes of your time.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Ceiling Roomba
Sick of staring at cobwebs on your ceiling like you're living in a haunted house? Wish your robot vacuum could more than just clean your floors?
Introducing the Roofba™, a robotic vacuum that uses industrial-strength suction to drive upside down across your ceilings, hunting dust and cobwebs while you watch in mild terror.
Roofba™ - Going above and beyond.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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