Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as wild as Allbirds pivoting from sustainable sneakers to AI compute 🤯
In today’s edition:
💡 An idea a famous VC will pay someone to build
🛠 How to use Skills in Google Chrome
🔋 Meet the 3X founder who just sold his business to OpenAI + more
🔍 Anthropic investment, Carry acquired, Gemini release + more
🍻 A product for when you want to wear your vices
Let’s goooo 🚀
💸 Half Baked x BILL: This week we've partnered with BILL to offer one Half Baked reader a new MacBook Neo, Mac Mini or Airpods Max to support them on their founder journey. To be considered, just:
Check out BILL here (it really helps us out)
Reply to this email with which device we should send you
Good luck!
🎙️ AI Podcast Recording Companion
Stern Stuff
Source: Jason Calacanis
The Problem: You’ve probably heard of Jason Calacanis. He’s on the All-In podcast, was the 3rd or 4th angel investor in Uber (which will probably go on his headstone he mentions it so often), and is addicted to launching podcasts. But as a prolific podcaster Jason knows better than anyone that the difference between a good podcast and a great one isn't talent. It's the team behind it. Howard Stern had Gary, Robin, Fred and Jackie - a full production crew that turned a radio show into a $500M empire. And Jason wants to pay someone $5,000 to build the AI version of this production crew. This is the idea.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A real-time AI crew that listens to your podcast as you record and feeds you live fact-checks, context, jokes and news updates, like having a production crew in your ear.
🛠️ Product:
Creators plug in via browser or desktop app and the tool listens to the live audio stream in real time. Four AI personas (Fact-checker, Context Provider, Comedy Writer, News Anchor) activates automatically when relevant, represented by a bubble with a profile picture and a visual sine wave to show when they're "speaking."
The Fact-checker flags dodgy statistics mid-sentence. The Context Provider drops background color. The Comedy Writer generates one-liners tied to the current topic. The News Anchor surfaces relevant breaking stories.
The output is two separate streams - a clean version for regular listeners and an "enhanced" version with the AI sidebar visible, which can be shared as a second-screen experience or used as bonus content for paid subscribers.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Try the demo | Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: $49/mo for indie creators, $199/mo for teams with multi-guest support. Enterprise licensing for podcast networks and live event producers.
⭐ End Goal: Acquired by Spotify, iHeart, or a major podcast hosting platform looking to own the creator production layer. Target exit 8-12x ARR.
Rate this idea
💰 How to Get $500 Back From Your Business Card
Spend $500 on the BILL Divvy Card and get $500 back as a statement credit. No annual fees. Free expense management software included. Here's how simple it is:
How it works:
Employees spend, you get notified instantly
Required info is captured at point of purchase - no receipt chasing
Review, approve, and sync transactions in one place
Credit lines from $1k to $5M. Flexible rewards on every dollar. And $500 waiting when you spend your first $500.
🌐 How to Use Skills in Google Chrome
The Context: Google just launched Skills in Gemini for Chrome - so instead of retyping the same prompt every time you hit a new page, you save it once and run it anywhere with a single click. Here’s how they work.
Step-by-step:
Click the Gemini button in the Chrome toolbar and write a prompt you know you'll reuse (e.g. "summarise the key claims on this page in 5 bullet points"). When it works, save it as a Skill straight from your chat history.
Next time you need to use this Skill, type ( / ) or hit the ( + ) button to pull up your saved Skills, select one, pick which tabs to run it on, and fire.
Don't want to build from scratch? Browse Google's built-in Skills library - macro calculators, product comparators, document scanners - install what you need and edit the prompt to fit.
🤖 The Help Center that Never Goes Out of Date
Create stunning, SEO and AI optimized help docs that stay up to date on autopilot with Ferndesk.
Their AI agent:
writes your help docs
takes annotated screenshots for you
responds to your customers while you sleep
Use code HALFBAKED30 at checkout to get 30% off your first month with Ferndesk.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 Money Shot: This guy built a fintech app from scratch, sold it for $211M, started again from zero - and just got acquired by OpenAI. Here's how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: Tokenmaxxing, where employees are encouraged to maximize their AI use, is sweeping across tech companies (and killing their budgets, as Uber recently discovered).
💬 Prompt Drop: Thinking in first principles is critical for founders. Here’s a prompt to help you to do exactly that.
🆓 Founder Resource: Check out these 67 Claude Skills that turn your $20 per month subscription into a team of workers.
💵 Founder Deal: Get Intercom + Fin for free if you're a startup for 12 months.
🔍 Founder Finds
🤯 Anthropic is reportedly receiving VC funding offers at an $800B valuation, which they’re turning down. Talk about power…
💰 Teachable founder Ankur Nagpal’s retirement and investing platform, Carry, has just been acquired.
🔊 Google just launched Gemini 2.5 Flash with native text-to-speech, bringing voice generation to one of the fastest and most affordable models on the market.
🎙️ Jensen Huang just went on Dwarkesh’s podcast. We’re all gonna listen to this one…
💀 Snap is laying off 1,000 employees, cutting 16% of its workforce. Not a great look after Evan Spiegel was just at Coachella…
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Vape Hoodie
Sick of having to carry a vape around with you? Ever wish your vape was integrated into your clothes?
Introducing Vaprwear™, the hoodie that doubles as a personal vaping apparatus, with a hidden hose running through the drawstring so you can inhale directly from your hood. What a time to be alive (and shorten it by vaping…).
Vaprwear™ - Zip it and rip it.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
Before you go just a few public service announcements:
Looking to sponsor Half Baked? Just fill out this form and we’ll get back to you asap.
See you soon,