Startup Ideas #359: Smart Timer, Twin Births...

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up business ideas as shocking as Coinbase getting hacked last week 😱 

As you can see we’ve given the newsletter a fresh lick of paint and added in some new sections. Reply and let us know what you think!

Let’s goooo 🚀 

In today’s edition:

• 💡 An Alex Hormozi inspired idea to save you 2.1 hours per day

• 📈 A fascinating birth trend caused by fertility treatments

• 🛠️ A how-to-guide to jump on a viral video trend

• 🤑 How two students built a $12.5B business

• 🍻 How we’re reinventing the taxi industry

⏲️ Smart Productivity Timer

Pomo do more

The Problem: We live in the golden age of distraction. The result? The average knowledge worker gets interrupted every 11 minutes and loses 2.1 hours a day to distractions. That’s why in 2025 being able to focus is more important than anything else. But what’s the best way to focus? Well Alex Hormozi, the internet’s favorite gym bro-turned-business guru, uses a kitchen timer to race against the clock for every task he does. It’s actually a great system, but it’s hard to track anything with such an analog system. So why not push this further and create a smart version of the product? Here’s what we’re thinking…

The Solution:

• In a line: A smart physical timer that tracks activities, connects to an app and helps you do deep, focused work

• Product:

  • ⏱️ Set your focus session on the physical timer (e.g. turn the dial to set the timer for 30 minutes).

  • 🔗 The device syncs with a companion app, logging each session by category (e.g. writing, coding, sales).

  • 📊 The app gives insights over time into session length averages, task-level breakdowns and productivity streaks over time

• Business Model: Charge $69 - $89 for the timer

• End Goal: The ideal goal is to sell to a productivity software company looking to expand into hardware

📧 Boring Marketing Delivers BIG Results

The Pitch: With marketing, you want predictability. So predictable, it’s almost boring. That’s why Omnisend is a marketer’s dream.

The Details:

• In 2023, for every $1 spent on Omnisend’s email & SMS marketing, merchants made $73 back.

• From popups to newsletters to abandoned cart recovery, 125,000+ e-commerce brands use Omnisend to grow their revenue while keeping costs low.

• Use code HALFBAKED10 & get 10% off your first 3 months.

Get started

🚼️ Why Twin Birth Rates are Skyrocketing

The Trend: Over the past 40 years, twin births have gone way up. We're talking a 30% global spike since the 1980s. The main drivers of this phenomenon are increase in IVF and fertility drugs (which boosts the odds of having twins) and many women opting to have kids later in life, which also boosts the odds of having twins. The more you know eh?

Opportunities:

• Parenting Co-pilot (Twin version): An AI parenting assistant tailored for twins that helps manage feeding, sleep schedules, milestones, and caregiving coordination.

• Twin Parents Support Platform: A platform with forums, live chats, and expert Q&As, for twin parents.

👶 Baby Podcast Videos

The Tool: AI baby videos are blowing up right now. Like Baby Trump talking about Americans getting lazy or Baby Elon talking about the National Debt. They’re pretty hilarious and are a great way to drive organic impressions right now. Here’s how to make one.

Step-by-step:

1. Find an audio clip from a podcast you want to use for your video and download it

2. Use an image model to create a baby version of the person you want, like ChatGPT or Midjourney

3. Load the image into Hedra, a multimodal content creation platform, and that’s it, you’re done!

Watch full tutorial

👀 Wall Street’s Next Big Shock?

Remember when Roku shocked Wall Street, growing from an underestimated player to a $9.13B company?

This company is on a similar path. With 10 patents and proprietary tech, they are leading in the $200B smart home industry, already seeing 300% YoY growth.

After securing a partnership with Best Buy, reaching 159m customer visits, this startup is poised for next-level growth. Early investors in Roku saw life-changing returns. This could be your second chance.

Shares are just $1.90 until May 30th and you could earn up to 25% bonus shares.

Click here to learn more

🎨 How Two Students Built a $12.5B Business

The Idea: Back in 2012 Dylan Field (right), a student at Brown University, and teaching assistant Evan Wallace decided to start a business together. So the pair started exploring emerging technologies to find startup ideas…settling on building a web-based collaborative design tool software using WebGL, a JavaScript API which let complex graphics live on the web. This was the idea for Figma.

The Execution:

• Early Funding: Dylan secured a $100k Thiel Fellowship to drop out of Brown and pursue the idea full-time and over the next two years Figma raised around $18m, all before the product had even launched…

• The Launch: Figma was built in stealth from 2013 to 2016, but when it finally launched it was a hit with design teams. It was free to start, required no installation, and let multiple people work on the same file in real time. It was a revelation.

• Growth Investment: As usage soared, investors took notice. Figma raised huge amounts of cash, pulling in a $40M Series C in 2019 and a $200M Series E in 2021 for example.

• The Result: As of May 2024, Figma was valued at $12.5B, a drop from the $20B that Adobe tried to acquire them for in 2022.

In the end Figma’s story shows that big ideas can come from exploring the edges of emerging technologies. If you follow the tech, great ideas can follow.

Read the full story

🚕 DroneTaxi

• Sick of paying for expensive taxis to get you home? Wish you could skip the traffic and get home in record time?

• Introducing the DroneTaxi™, your personal taxi in the skies! Just tap the app to hail your drone, grab the cable, hold on for dear life and pray you reach your destination in one piece.

• DroneTaxi™. Totally unlicensed. Definitely illegal. 100% worth it.

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

💰️ Raise Radar

• 📱 Vuz, a startup which offers immersive video experiences, has raised $12M (Read more)

• 🧬 SpotitEarly, a biotech startup that uses AI and dogs (that’s right, dogs) to detect cancer using an at-home test, has just raised $20.3M (Read more)

• 📹️ Moonvalley, a startup developing AI tools for video creation, has raised $43M in funding (Read more)

• ☢️ The Nuclear Company, a company which builds nuclear reactors (shocking I know), raises a $51M Series A (Read more)

🔍️ Founder Finds

• 📖 Playbook: Blake Anderson, who has built mobile apps with over 20m downloads, released his “Viral App Playbook” recently. It’s well worth a read!

• 🎙️Must-Listen: This interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, where he talks about how Google will win in AI, is a banger

• 📚 Must-Read: Tom Blomfield’s (2x unicorn founder) blog post “The Age of Abundance” is required reading for any entrepreneur

👋 That’s All Folks!

Before you go we have a few public service announcements:

• If you want to talk to us about sponsoring Half Baked, you can reach us here. Or if you refer a brand to us that sponsors the newsletter we’ll pay you a cool $500.

• If you want to speak to one of Half Baked’s founders about the newsletter or even your own startup idea we’re opening up Half Baked Office Hours. Book here.

• We’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve:

See you soon,

John and Darragh | The Half Baked Team