Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as controversial as Justin Bieber's Coachella set 🎤
In today’s edition:
💡 Bringing AI tools to the world of pools
🛠 How to write cold emails that actually get replies
🔋 From $0 to +$100M in Sales in 9 months + more
🔍 Anthropic leak, Sam Altman post, trend spotting + more
🍻 A product that'll make you sound better (probably not)
Let’s goooo 🚀
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Shoutout to last week’s winner Darcy Booth.
Good luck!
🏊 Lead Gen for Pool Companies
Making a Splash
Source: Shirish on X
The Problem: Here's a wild stat for you - there are over 10 million residential swimming pools in the USA with between 500K and new pools 1M built each year. That's a massive market. But pool builders are still finding customers the old-fashioned way - buying shared leads from HomeAdvisor, running Facebook ads into the void, or praying for referrals. Meanwhile, there are millions of mid-market homes sitting on perfect lots with big empty backyards, owned by people who'd probably love a pool but have never seriously considered it because nobody showed them what it would actually look like. AI changes that. Here's what we're thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A lead generation system that uses AI to identify houses with empty backyards and renders a pool in their backyard from a partner provider
🛠️ Product:
The system scans satellite imagery for mid-market homes ($500K-$1.2M) without pools, filtering by lot size, sun exposure, and recent ownership changes - then pulls the homeowner's details direct from public records so you're never competing on shared leads.
For each prospect, AI renders a luxury pool into their actual backyard, calculates the build cost and home value lift for their specific zip code, and generates a cinematic video walkthrough of their yard with the new pool installed - giving homeowners something they've never had before: a realistic preview of what they're buying.
A personalised postcard with the before/after and a QR code is printed and mailed automatically, while the system simultaneously hits the homeowner with retargeting ads - turning a cold lead into a warm conversation without the builder lifting a finger.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Try the demo | Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: Charge $50-100 per qualified lead on a pay-per-lead model. Premium tier at $3-5k/mo includes the video rendering and retargeting automation.
⭐ End Goal: Acquired by a home services marketplace (Angi, HomeAdvisor), a CRM player (ServiceTitan, Jobber), or a proptech platform looking to own the home improvement lead gen layer. Target exit 6-10x ARR.
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🔥 You're Running a Business. You Shouldn't Be Reconciling Expenses
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📧 How to Write Cold Emails That Actually Get Replies
The Context: One pre-seed investor cold emailed her way to San Francisco, DM'd her way into handwritten band lyrics that don't exist on any website, and emailed Ohio State for more scholarship money - they gave her $20k. No connections, no credentials. Just emails that didn't suck. Here's the playbook.
Step-by-step:
Kill the subject line first - "Quick question" and "Partnership Opportunity" are instant deletes. Write something specific enough that only one person could have received it.
Keep the whole email to five lines - hook, why it matters to them, your ask, a low-friction CTA, sign off. "Would love to connect" means nothing happens. "Got 5 min for a quick yes/no?" is something they can actually answer.
Follow up without apology - most replies come from follow-ups not the first email. Day 3: bump. Day 7: "worth a look or should I close this out?" If you have real news — new users, new MRR — lead with that instead. Traction is the best follow-up you can send.
Track and iterate - send 100 emails, track what gets replies, kill what doesn't. Your first 50 will be bad. By email 100 you'll have a system. The people who win at cold email aren't better writers. They're just more willing to hit send.
Read the full cold outreach bible
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🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 Money Shot: These guys went from $0 to $110M+ in revenue in 9 months selling pillows on TikTok. Here's how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: Researchers from UPenn and Boston University just mathematically modelled why mass AI layoffs could collapse the economy. I really hope they’re wrong…
💬 Prompt Drop: Check out these 40 AI automations you can build in a few hours with zero code.
🆓 Founder Resource: This LinkedIn GTM cheat sheet for recently funded AI & SaaS companies is gold
💵 Founder Deal: Ramp for Startups gives early-stage founders free access to Ramp's expense management and corporate cards, plus up to $250k in partner perks. Claim the deal.
🔍 Founder Finds
🤖 Anthropic is reportedly building a Lovable-like feature that would let users build full-stack apps directly inside Claude. Not confirmed, but can see why Anthropic would ship this!
📝 Sam Altman just dropped a new blog post laying out his latest thinking. Always worth seeing what he’s up to.
📊 Davie Fogarty just shared his framework for predicting winning product trends before they happen. This guy built a $500M+ DTC portfolio so he might know a thing or two.
💰 Bill Gurley is back with a spicy take on why stock-based compensation was never "free" and the SaaS reckoning that's coming.
🎙️ My First Million shared the story of how Elon Musk hired ex-Tesla president Jon McNeill. Very cool story.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Shower Mic
Tired of your shower concerts going completely unappreciated? Wish your rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody at 7am could reach a wider audience?
Introducing AquaAmp™, a showerhead with an amplifier and Bluetooth speaker built right in. You just sing into the showerhead and it broadcasts your vocals through the bathroom like you're headlining Coachella. Plus it comes with built-in autotune in case you need it (you probably do).
AquaAmp™ - Lather. Rinse. Repeat (the chorus).
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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