Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as unbelievable as a UFC octagon being built on the White House lawn 🤔
In today’s edition:
💡 An idea to give more power to the players
🛠 How to generate high-quality videos using Gemini Omni
🔋 How two students took on Amazon and built a $3B business + more
🔍 OpenAI Foundation, Cognition raise, book launch + more
🍻 Something for those wanting a little buzz at home
Let’s goooo 🚀
💸 Half Baked x Remote: This week we've partnered with Remote to offer one Half Baked reader a brand new MacBook Neo. To be considered, just:
Fill in this short form (takes 10 seconds)
Reply to this email with "done" once you've completed the form
Winner announced next Monday. Good luck!
🎮 Cursor for UGC Games
Built different
Source: Half Baked team
The Problem: Growing up I was a pretty big gamer. Call of Duty, FIFA, Wii Sports, Mario Kart…you name it, I sucked at it. But a little after I called time on my illustrious gaming career, a whole new class of games emerged, the likes of Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft. And these titles all share one common trait - UGC (user generated) games where players can create their own games inside of these worlds. The fascinating part? The players developing games inside these platforms are making a killing. Take this 16-year-old who made $12M in one month from a game he built inside Roblox (who paid out $923M to creators last year, by the way). UGC games are big business, so in the same way AI coding tools like Cursor are making general software development more accessible, why not make it 10x easier for players to develop games for Roblox or Fortnite? Here's what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A Cursor-style AI-native IDE built specifically for UGC game creators, with deep integrations into Roblox Studio, UEFN, Minecraft, and beyond.
🛠️ Product:
Creators connect their Roblox Studio or UEFN project and immediately get a chat-based coding partner fine-tuned on every public Lua, Verse, and Blueprint codebase. Describe the mechanic - "make this NPC chase the player, but only when they're holding a torch" - and watch it ship straight into your scene.
Built-in asset generation handles the parts AI is actually good at - textures, models, sound effects, dialogue trees, animation rigs - so a solo creator can compete with a small studio without ever leaving the editor.
A live debug agent watches your playtests, flags issues in real time ("your collision script is firing twice on touch"), and proposes one-click fixes.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Google AI Studio Demo | Remix this build
💼 Business Model: Free tier with usage caps, $25/mo Pro for serious creators, $99/mo Studio for teams.
⭐ End Goal: Get acquired by Roblox, Epic Games, or Microsoft - all of whom desperately need to lower the technical bar for their creator ecosystems. Target exit 15-25x ARR given the strategic moat.
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👥 How to Get Your Entire Global Workforce Into One HR System
Most HR tools were built for a single-country workforce. If you're managing employees across multiple countries - with different contracts, benefits, and reporting requirements - you need something built for that reality from day one.
How Remote HRIS handles it:
All your people data, workflows, and documents in one place regardless of where employees are based
Automate onboarding, time off, and performance workflows without building them from scratch
Single login for your entire team - no more employees in three different systems
Effortless HR, accurate payroll. Together at last.
🎬 How to Generate High-Quality Videos Using Gemini Omni
The Context: Google unveiled like 100 new things at Google I/O last week. Literally (they had to make a list). One of the best though was Gemini Omni, their model that generates video from any input. Here's how you can use it to make super high-quality videos.
Step-by-step:
Head to Gemini and click the Videos tab.
Simply prompt what video you want Gemini to generate (I went for an astronaut drinking a martini in a bar, naturally).
Keep prompts short and cinematic - think of yourself like a movie director. Google even pulled together a full prompting guide on how to get the most out of Omni.
🎁 Small Business Month: $1,500 Back for Switching to SuperMobile
It's Small Business Month, and T-Mobile for Business is putting $100 back per line into founders' pockets when they activate 15+ voice lines on SuperMobile. No contest, no lottery, just money back for doing the switch.
What you get:
$1,500+ in bill credits on SuperMobile activation
Unlimited premium data, Threat Protect, and satellite coverage
5-Year Price Guarantee with no annual contracts
Offer runs through June 10. US businesses only. Don't sit on it.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 Money Shot: Two Georgia Tech students set out to out-fulfil Amazon - now they're worth $3B. Here's how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: Business schools are now offering up to 50% off MBAs. Make of that what you will…
💬 Prompt Drop: The gap between a bad Claude prompt and a great one is enormous. Here are 25 prompts to improve your prompting game.
🆓 Founder Resource: Check out these 18 hidden Claude settings most users never use, but really should.
💵 Founder Deal: Granola captures action summaries for every meeting. They're giving Half Baked readers 100% off their first month. Claim the deal.
🔍 Founder Finds
📈 The OpenAI Foundation is committing an initial $250M to building secure and abundant economic futures. Here’s what that actually means.
🤑 Cognition AI just raised $1B at a $25B valuation. Mega raise.
📚 Eric Ries (the Lean Startup guy) just dropped his new book Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Ones Stay Great. Could not be more timely.
🎥 Zach Yadegari sold Cal AI to MyFitnessPal at $50M ARR before he was old enough to buy a beer. Now he's building again and documenting every step of his next company, Flow. Totally worth watching.
🧠 Ruben Hassid just met Demis Hassabis and had one major takeaway…AGI is 4 years away. Strap in everyone.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Indoor Beehive
Looking for a little more sweetness in your life? Tired of forking out for overpriced supermarket honey?
Introducing Beehaus™, the world’s first indoor beehive for your living room. The result? Fresh honey on tap, ambient buzzing for relaxation, and a home décor choice guaranteed to make guests question why they’re friends with you.
Beehaus™ - Honey, I'm home.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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