Startup Ideas #372: Commuting, Solar Prices...

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as shocking as Trump and Elon’s massive falling Twitter fight 😱 

If you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked (which you totally should), you can on our website.

Let’s goooo 🚀 

In today’s edition:

• 💡 Turning your commute into an enriching experience

• 📈 The incredible trend in solar prices

• 🛠️ How to generate AI videos for free

• 🤑 Turning “LinkedIn for X” into a $150m exit

• 🍻 The final boss of the soda game

🚌 Commute Learning App

The perfect sylla-bus

The Problem: We spend hundreds of hours a year commuting, and most of that time we waste. In fact the average American commuter loses 54 hours a year stuck in traffic alone. Globally, millions ride subways, buses, or trains in daily dead zones of productivity. But what if there was a way for us to claim that time back and use it productively, maybe to learn? Here’s what we’re thinking.

The Solution:

• In a line: A micro-learning app that turns your daily commute into a structured, goal-based education experience.

• Product:

  • 🚗 A user joins the app and enters how long their daily commute is

  • 🧠 They can then select from a number of different skills or subjects they wish to learn, like languages, chess, history or some other skill

  • 🎧 AI then creates courses broken up into chunks based on the commute with progression tracked over time

  • 🔁 The courses work offline and sync with Spotify/Apple Podcasts for hybrid formats

• Business Model: Freemium with a $7.99/mo premium tier for curated plans, certifications, and partner content

• End Goal: Acquire a critical mass of motivated learners and exit to an EdTech giant like Duolingo for a 5–8x revenue multiple.

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🔆 So-low Solar Panel Prices

The Trend: The price drop in solar panels over the last 20 years is truly astonishing. Solar panels are now 98% cheaper than they were back in 2004 such that today, building a fence using solar panels can actually be cheaper than using wood. Should this trend continue, it’s clear that solar will play a huge role in energy generation in the future.

Opportunities:

• Solar Consulting Marketplace: Connect small businesses or homeowners with solar consultants who give personalized ROI projections.

• Solar Panel Cleaning Service: Specialized cleaning service for maintaining solar panel efficiency.

📹 Use Sora, OpenAI’s Video Generator, For Free

The Tool: Microsoft has added a new AI video generator to its Bing mobile app (that’s right, remember Bing?). The Bing Video Creator provides a free way to generate short clips with Sora, which is normally locked behind ChatGPT subscriptions ($20 per month). It's only working on iOS/Android right now but will soon work on the web app too. Here’s how you can use it today.

Step-by-step:

1. Download the Bing app

2. Go to the bottom right corner of the Bing app and select "Video Creator" from the mini-app menu

3. Simply type in a description of the video you want to create in the prompt field.

4. You can generate five second long videos in a 9:16 vertical format

Check it out

🛍️ Build your business. Your way.

You don’t need a warehouse. You don’t need investors. You don’t need to know how to code.

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Check it out

🧑‍🎨 Turning “LinkedIn for X” into a $150m Exit

The Idea: Scott Belsky (right) met Matias Corea while they were both working in creative roles. Scott, a Harvard MBA and Matias, a talented designer from Spain they both bonded over how disorganized and underappreciated the creative world was. They realized creatives had no central place to showcase their work professionally. LinkedIn was too corporate, and portfolios were scattered across the internet. They saw an opportunity to build the “LinkedIn-for-creatives”. This was the beginning of Behance.

The Execution:

• The MVP: The earliest version of Behance was bootstrapped with Scott’s savings and a few side consulting gigs. It was a simple, clean platform for creatives to upload their work and get discovered focused on portfolios, not resumes.

• The Launch: They launched Behance in 2006 quietly, mostly spreading it through their own networks and early design communities. Word-of-mouth did the heavy lifting with designers, illustrators, and photographers flocking to the site.

• Growth & Traction: They hosted creative conferences called “99U” to build community and published thought leadership content to fuel early platform growth. They even designed custom notebooks to fund early operations (the "Action Method" product line it was called).

• Investment: Behance stayed mostly bootstrapped for years, only raising a modest $6.5M in 2012 from investors like Dave Morin and Chris Dixon. They were profitable before they raised and were very intentional about staying lean.

• The Result: In 2012, Adobe acquired Behance for a reported $150 million. It became the backbone of Adobe’s Creative Cloud community and remains a top destination for creatives globally.

The Lesson: Build close to home in an industry you really understand. That’s where your comparative advantage lies and where you can build the best business.

🥤The Every Soda

• Tired of making tough decisions at the fountain drink machine? Wish you could just try a bit of every soda instead?

• Introducing The Every Soda™ - the soda that's literally every other soda flavor mixed together in one gloriously confusing beverage. We took Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, and about 47 other sodas and threw them in a bathtub like a caffeinated mad scientist.

• The Every Soda™ - because sometimes life gives you lemons, oranges, cola nuts, and artificial cherry flavoring all at once, so you might as well drink it.

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

🔍️ Founder Finds

• 🚨 Raise Radar: Back in edition #106 we shared an idea for a gun detection platform. This company is building that right now.

• 📚 Must-Read: Everybody talks about “network effects” in Silicon Valley. This is the ultimate guide to understanding the 16 different types of network effects.

• 🎁 Free Resource: Stripe’s “Atlas Guides” for running an online business are great, from managing founder stress to a guide to incorporating your business

• 📈 Growth Hack: SEO on Bing really matters in 2025. Why? Because Bing powers ChatGPT’s live search ranking. Here’s a great guide to mastering Bing SEO.

• 💬 Founder Quote: "Chase the vision, not the money. The money will end up following you.” Tony Hsieh (Zappos)

👋 That’s All Folks!

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See you soon,

John and Darragh | The Half Baked Team