Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as OpenAI’s cap table leaking (another day, another OpenAI headline…) 👀
In today’s edition:
💡 The $8B problem hiding inside every corporate HQ
🛠 How to get 1,000 waitlist sign-ups before you launch
🔋 The 18-month old show that OpenAI acquired for +$100m + more
🔍 Anthropic acquisition, ElevenLabs release, Will Ahmed + more
🍻 A product you won’t stop droning on about
Let’s goooo 🚀
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🛫 AI for Corporate Relocations
Relocation, relocation, relocation
Source: Half Baked team
The Problem: Every year, tens of thousands of employees get tapped on the shoulder and handed a "congratulations, you're moving to Chicago" conversation. And what follows is an absolute nightmare - visa paperwork, school searches, neighborhood research, shipping logistics, lease negotiations, spousal job hunts. Companies spend an average of $70,000 per domestic relocation and over $100,000 for international moves, and still most employees say the experience is one of the most stressful of their lives. The relocation management industry is worth over $8 billion globally and it runs almost entirely on spreadsheets, PDF checklists, and an underpaid coordinator trying to manage 40 moves at once. We think there’s a better way. Here's what we're thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: An AI-powered relocation platform that acts as a personal concierge for employees being relocated
🛠️ Product:
When an employee is assigned a relocation, they're onboarded to a personalized AI concierge that knows their family size, timeline, budget, and destination city - it proactively surfaces neighbourhood recommendations, school options, and cost-of-living comparisons tailored to their exact situation.
The AI handles the paperwork heavy lifting - flagging visa requirements, pre-filling immigration forms, tracking submission deadlines, and looping in legal partners when it hits something it can't handle - cutting average admin time per move by 70%.
HR teams get a live command centre dashboard showing every active relocation, flagging at-risk moves before they go off the rails, and generating compliance reports automatically - the kind of visibility that currently takes a coordinator 10 hours a week to cobble together manually.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Try the demo | Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: SaaS charged per relocation ($500-$2,000/move) or monthly enterprise licence ($5k-$30k/mo) based on headcount and move volume.
⭐ End Goal: Acquisition by a major HR platform or a relocation giant like SIRVA or Cartus looking to bolt on an AI layer. Target exit 8-12x ARR.
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📋 How to Get 1,000 Waitlist Sign-Ups Before You Launch
The Context: The best founders don't wait until launch day to find users - they show up on day one with a list of people already desperate to get in. Here's how to get your first 1,000 sign-ups before you ship a single line of product.
Step-by-step:
Build the simplest possible waitlist page - one headline that nails the problem, one subheadline on what you're building, one email field. Use Carrd, Framer, or Base44 and get it live in under an hour. A URL you can share today beats a beautiful website you'll finish next month.
Go where your users already hang out and post something genuinely useful - not "I'm building X, sign up." Share a hot take or data point related to the problem, mention the waitlist at the end. Reddit, LinkedIn, X, niche Slacks. Do this every day for two weeks.
Add a referral mechanic from day one. "Refer 3 friends and skip the queue" can 3x your organic growth. Viral Loops or ReferralHero take 30 minutes to set up.
DM the first 100 people who sign up personally. Thank them, ask what problem they're hoping you'll solve, and take notes. Passive email addresses become genuine fans fast.
Give it a try
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🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 Money Shot: Two ex-founders just sold Silicon Valley's favourite tech show to OpenAI for +$100M. Here's how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: The SaaSpocalypse appears to be on hold according to a16z. Here’s why.
💬 Prompt Drop: This prompt can give your website a full SEO audit in minutes. Super helpful!
🆓 Founder Resource: Checkout this database of billion dollar pitch decks. Lots to learn from browsing through a few of them.
💵 Founder Deal: Granola, our favorite meeting note-taker tool, is offering our readers an extended free trial. Don’t miss out!
🔍 Founder Finds
🧬 Anthropic just acquired stealth startup Coefficient Bio in an all-stock deal worth around $400M. The AI arms race is now officially a biotech arms race too.
👥 OpenAI is going through a pretty big executive shuffle right now. Never a dull moment for Sam A…
🎵 ElevenLabs released a new AI-powered music generation app - the company that owns AI voice is now coming for AI music. Spotify's lawyers are sweating.
🔍 Andrej Karpathy recently started using LLMs to build personal knowledge bases for various areas of research. Super cool.
💪 WHOOP founder Will Ahmed posted one of the most inspirational posts I’ve read in a very long time. So good.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Window Washing Drones
Tired of staring up at your grimy windows? Know there's a squeegee with your name on it?
Introducing Pane™, the autonomous window-cleaning drone that clings to your glass, scrubs in a perfect grid pattern, and returns to its charging dock before you've finished your morning coffee. Works on residential homes, apartment blocks, and office buildings - no ladder, no contractor, no excuses.
Pane™ - A pane in the glass.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
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