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Startup Ideas #363: Scratch-off Goals, AI Avatars...
Plus From a Hackathon to a $1bn Exit
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas so secretive we too could be secretly run by the Spanish government 👀
Make sure you check out today’s sponsors who are helping us to make rent this month 🥲
Let’s goooo 🚀
In today’s edition:
💡 A product that 91% of people could use
📈 The trend that Klarna and Zoom have kicked off
🛠️ A tool to help you grow your network on autopilot
🤑 From a Hackathon to a $1bn exit
🍻 An incredible idea to help us manage our stress
📔 Scratch-off Goal Journal
I ain’t sayin’ she’s a Goal Digger
Available domain: Goalmine.co
The Problem: With the halfway point of 2025 fast approaching this is a great time to ask…how are those New Years Resolutions going? Remember those? If your answer to that is “not so good“ then don’t worry, you’re not alone. In fact 92% of people never achieve their New Year’s resolutions. Now there’s no shortage of habit tracker apps out there trying to solve this problem, but why not take inspiration from scratch maps and create something more tactile? Here’s what we have in mind.
The Solution:
In a line: A customized scratch-off journal with accompanying mobile app to help you achieve your personal goals
Product:
✅ Users go to the site and select a number of goals they want to achieve over the next year.
📔 They receive a personalized journal containing all of these goals where each one is hidden behind a scratch-off surface like a scratch map.
📱 Users download an accompanying app to track their daily progress and ensure they fully scratch off all of their goals each year
Business Model: DTC model, sell the journals for $49 each. It will be a highly seasonal business around New Years of course.
End Goal: Sell to a wellness or productivity brand at a 4–6x revenue multiple as a way for them to expand their product range.
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👀 You are Being Watched
Nearly half of employed individuals fell victim to cyberattacks in 2024. That’s not just a stat, it’s a warning.
Hackers, trackers, and who-knows-who else can see where you browse, shop, and scroll. Your DMs? Not as private as you’d hope. Personal info, location, even your chats with Grams about what dish to bring to Thanksgiving? All up for grabs.
Surfshark VPN locks it all down. It hides your IP, encrypts messages, bypasses geolocation tracking, and keeps snoopers out—for good.
For Half Baked readers only, get 86% off + 3 extra months on a 24-month VPN plan.
🤖 Are AI Avatars about to go Mainstream?
The Trend: Avatars are trending right now. And no, not those blue guys from the movies. We’re talking about AI avatars. But why are they trending? Well this week both Sebastian Siemiatkowski (try saying that name 10 times fast), CEO of Klarna and Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, delivered their earnings calls using AI avatars of themselves. Can’t figure out if this is super cool or super weird.
Opportunities:
AI Avatar for E-Commerce Demos: A platform that overlays AI avatars onto product pages to give personalized shopping advice or try-on demos.
Virtual Presenter SaaS: A tool that lets companies create AI avatars to deliver webinars, onboarding, or training videos in multiple languages.
Poll: AI Avatars for meetings, super cool or super weird?
❌ Super weird, Black Mirror vibes
Click to see results
🤝 The Ultimate Tool to Grow Your Network
The Tool: As a founder your network is your net worth. And you can use Dripify to connect with 1,000+ new investors, partners, and employees every month, all on autopilot. Here's how.
Step-by-step:
Sign up to Dripify and connect your Linkedin profile to the platform
Build outreach flows with LinkedIn and email steps and import or find leads based on your ideal audience
Automate everything from messages to profile views
Sit back, relax and watch your new connections fly in
Pro tip: Give their free trial a go (no credit card required) and if you really like it use code HALFBAKED for a discount.
🥇 Replace Your Entire Tech Stack With One Login
Funnels, CRM, email, SMS, automations, bookings - all in one place.
If you’re juggling 5+ tools and duct-taping them together with zaps and copy-paste… HighLevel will feel like a superpower.
This is how smart founders scale without growing headcount. No more tab overload. No more leads slipping through the cracks. Just one dashboard that runs your sales and marketing.
See why its trusted by 2 million+ businesses and rated 5 stars by 99% of users. As a Half Baked reader get an extended 30 day free trial.
💊 From a Hackathon to a $1bn Exit
The Idea: TJ Parker (left), a second-generation pharmacist, grew up stocking shelves and filling prescriptions in his dad’s New Hampshire pharmacy. In his role TJ saw firsthand how chaotic it was for patients to manage taking multiple medications. Years later, while at MIT’s Sloan School, he met Elliot Cohen, a computer scientist with a knack for simplifying complex systems. The pair teamed up at an MIT Medicine Hackathon and set out to reinvent the pharmacy experience from scratch. This was the beginning of PillPack.
The Execution:
The MVP: The first version of PillPack was super simple: presorted daily-dose packets of medication, labeled with time and date, delivered to your door. They set up a licensed mail-order pharmacy, built the tech stack themselves, and began shipping to early users in 2013.
The Launch: They debuted publicly at TechCrunch Disrupt 2013. Their pitch "your pharmacy, redesigned for people who take lots of pills" cut through the noise.
Growth & Traction: PillPack won loyalty fast with clean UX, killer customer service, and a product that solved a daily pain point. Word-of-mouth snowballed in caregiving communities, and they targeted Facebook ads to adult children managing their parents' meds. Their growth came not from hype, but from helping.
Investment: Between 2013 and 2016, PillPack raised $118 million from top-tier VCs like CRV, Accel, and Menlo Ventures to expand operations, scale fulfillment, and fight pharmacy giants head-on.
The Result: In 2018, Amazon acquired PillPack for $1B, outbidding Walmart in the process.
The Lesson: When you build something people genuinely need, even the most regulated, slow-moving, and complex industry (American healthcare cough cough) can be flipped on its head.
⭐️ Celebrity Stress Balls
Find yourself getting stressed out lately? Wish you had a creative outlet for your rage?
Introducing the Balls of Fame™, stress balls shaped as your favorite (or maybe least favorite, whatever your vibe) celeb. Whether you choose Trump, Kanye and Gordon Ramsey, each ball is meticulously engineered for maximum cathartic compression.
Balls of Fame™ - we’re giving “squeeze the rich” a whole new meaning.
Vote
💰️ Raise Radar
Slash, a San Francisco-based banking platform for online businesses, raised $41M in a Series B round led by Goodwater Capital, NEA, and Menlo Ventures.
Siro, a New York City-based AI-powered conversation intelligence platform for in-person sales, obtained $50M in Series B funding.
Skriber, a provider of AI-powered transcription solutions, raised $1.3M in pre-seed funding.
RevenueCat, a San Francisco-based platform for managing consumer app monetization, raised $50M in a Series C.
OpenFX, a New York City-based company developing multi-layer liquidity architecture for financial technology, secured $23M.
Carrot, a Lagos-based digital lending startup expanding access to credit in Africa, raised $4.2M in seed funding.
StackHawk, a San Francisco-based shift-left API security platform, secured $12M in funding.
🔍️ Founder Finds
📚 Must-Read: Jason Cohen, WP Engine founder ($2bn valuation), wrote a great article on the Roadmap to Product/Market Fit. Well worth a read/
🎙️Must-Listen: We’re big My First Million Fans at Half Baked. This recent episode on local businesses was particularly good
✖️ Trending Tweet: Google's newest AI video generator Veo3 is breaking the internet right now. Here’s what it can do.
💬 Founder Quote: “The best ideas are fragile. They get squashed in environments that move too slowly.” Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO
👋 That’s All Folks!
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