Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as often as Netflix raises prices (they’re at it again) 📈
In today’s edition:
💡 The platform flipping sales hiring on its head
🛠 How to automate expense tracking with Claude
🔋 Raising $4.2M to take on Figma + more
🔍 Kleiner Perkins, window washing, Thoma Bravo + more
🍻 A product that makes you poor if you snore
Let’s goooo 🚀
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Check out BILL here (this really helps us out)
Reply to this email with a 3 word pitch on what you’re working on
Good luck!
🔄 Reverse Recruiting for Sales Reps
Flip the (sales) script
Source: Half Baked
The Problem: Great sales reps (particularly in tech) are animals. They’re like professional athletes - high performing, well paid and most of them are pretty confident in their abilities. These reps - the ones consistently hitting 130%+ of quota, closing enterprise deals, building territories from zero - are never actively looking. They're too busy crushing their numbers. They ignore recruiter spam. LinkedIn InMail gets left on read. Meanwhile those same top performers are quietly open to the right opportunity. They just have no good way to signal that without broadcasting to their current employer that they're looking, while companies have no reliable way to find them. So why not fix the market by flipping it on its head? Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A platform where high-performing salespeople share their sales numbers and companies apply to hire them, flipping the traditional recruiting model on its head.
🛠️ Product:
Reps submit proof of performance - quota attainment history, average deal size, industries, total ARR closed - all independently verifiable through W2s or commission statements. AI automatically scrubs the data sources to preserve anonymity. No name, no employer, until they choose to reveal.
Companies browse a searchable database of anonymous but verified talent, filtered by vertical, deal size, quota attainment tier, and geography. They send "interest requests" with a role brief and comp range attached.
Reps review incoming requests anonymously and choose who to engage with. An NDA flow is triggered automatically before identity is revealed on either side.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Try the demo | Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: Reps are always free - supply side can never have friction. Companies pay $500-2K/month for search access and connection requests. $15-25K success fee per confirmed hire.
⭐ End Goal: Acquisition target for a major HR tech platform. 8-12x revenue at exit.
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🗂️ Automate Your Expense Tracking with Claude
The Context: Manually reconciling subscriptions and expenses from your inbox is one of those tasks that takes 45 minutes and feels like it takes 3 days. Claude can do the whole thing - read your Gmail, extract the data, and populate a Google Sheet - in one prompt, no automation tools or Zapier chains required. Here’s how.
Step-by-step:
Install the Claude for Chrome extension, then create a Google Sheet with these headers: Expense Title, Company, Amount, Date, Renewal Date. Copy the sheet link.
Open a new tab, click Extensions → Claude. Your current tab will be highlighted - this is how Claude knows where it's allowed to work.
Paste in this prompt.
Save the prompt as a shortcut by typing / → "Create shortcut" - then schedule it to run daily or weekly so your expense tracking stays current without you touching it again.
📶 Your Team's Phone Plan Shouldn't Be a Bottleneck
You've built a great product. But your team keeps dropping calls, losing signal on client visits, and working off sketchy WiFi with zero security.
SuperMobile from T-Mobile for Business:
Runs on America's largest, fastest 5G network - your calls and video stay crisp
T-Satellite kicks in automatically when cell towers can't reach - no setup needed
Built-in Threat Protect blocks malware and phishing on any network
Starts at $42/line/mo. Learn more on T-Mobile's website.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 Money Shot: This guy raised $4.2M to take on Figma. Here's the story.
📈 Trends with Benefits: Startup valuations are officially in Schrödinger's territory, simultaneously worth a fortune on paper and potentially worth nothing until someone actually looks.
💬 Prompt Drop: Someone literally built a Claude Code skill that clones any website in one prompt.
🆓 Founder Resource: Want to know what world-class talent actually costs in 2026? This report breaks down real salary data across AI, Tech, Data, Design, and more.
💵 Founder Deal: Get 12 months of ElevenLabs for free through their startup grant program - perfect for founders building voice AI products.
🔍 Founder Finds
💰 Kleiner Perkins just raised $3.5B in fresh capital to go all in on AI. One of Silicon Valley's most storied VC firms is doubling down hard on the AI wave. Nice.
🪟 Lucid Bots just raised $20M to scale its window washing drone business. What a genius idea.
🖱️ Thoma Bravo recently shared the most nuanced take on the SaaS market we’ve seen in a while. 100% worth 2 minutes of your time.
💼 Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev just weighed in on jobs in the AI era. His take might surprise you.
👀 TechCrunch just highlighted 16 of the most interesting startups from YC W26 Demo Day.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Money Shredding Alarm Clock
Struggling to drag yourself out of bed in the morning? What if the snooze button cost you actual cash?
Introducing KillBill™, the alarm clock with a built-in shredder. Load a real banknote, set your wake-up time, and if you hit snooze, your hard-earned cash gets shredded. The perfect motivation to get you out of bed.
KillBill™ - wake up or pay up.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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