Startup Ideas #376: Rebrands, VAs...

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as surprising as Meta (basically) acquiring Scale AI 😱 

If you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked, you can on our website.

Let’s goooo 🚀 

In today’s edition:

• 💡 An idea to monetize big rebrands

• 📈 Why unconventional personal assistants are taking off

• 🛠️ Using AI to uncover hidden business ideas

• 🤑 Why inventing a category doesn’t guarantee success

• 🍻 The ultimate product for even lazier consumption

🗞️ Rebrands Newsletter

Name of thrones

The Problem: Jaguar. Coke. Tropicana. No, this isn’t some funky word association game. These are companies that have tried and failed miserably to rebrand their businesses. Take Tropicana, who lost $30 million in sales after its 2009 packaging redesign. On the flip side, Burberry’s modern rebrand helped increase sales by 21% in one year. In general company rebrands are fascinating case studies into economics, psychology and business strategy. Which is why someone needs to do a great job at documenting them. Here’s what we’re thinking.

The Solution:

• In a line: A weekly newsletter which covers the strategy, psychology, and execution of iconic company rebrands.

• Product:

  • 🎨 Each issue begins with visual comparisons of logos, packaging, websites, and brand voice to show what the rebrand entailed

  • 🧠 Every issue breaks down what worked (or didn’t) across naming, visual identity, tone of voice, and rollout.

  • 🔍 Include commentary from branding pros, with bite-sized lessons readers can apply in their jobs or companies.

  • 📚 Subscribers can get access to an archive of rebrand breakdowns searchable by industry, style, or company type.

• Business Model: Free newsletter with a paid tier ($10/month or $100/year) for archive access, interviews, and bonus issues.

• End Goal: Sell to a design SaaS company (like Figma, Canva, or Adobe) or a creative agency network as a branded content asset, likely at a 3–5x ARR multiple.

⏳️ It’s Never Too Early to Start

Dorm rooms. Middle school classrooms. Garage workbenches.

That’s where these businesses began:

• Healthy Roots Dolls - now in Target, backed by Procter & Gamble

• Royalty Soaps - a soap empire with nearly 1M YouTube subs

• Bearbottom - an ethical menswear brand that’s donated 700K+ meals

• Mo’s Bows - a handmade bowtie brand started at age 9, now seen on Shark Tank

Some of these founders stayed in school. Others dropped out. Some raised capital. Others bootstrapped. But they all used Shopify to build something real.

Start your store with a 3-day free trial, then it’s just $1/month for your first 3 months.

Get started

 📆 Personal Life Virtual Assistants

The Trend: When we think of a personal assistant, we usually picture someone managing a CEO’s calendar, not organizing your grocery list or reminding you to call your mom. But times are changing. The Personal Life Virtual Assistant trend reflects the rise of AI-powered tools designed to handle the mental clutter of everyday life. These assistants help with scheduling appointments, running errands, remembering birthdays, planning meals and even managing budgets. This is a market that’s just getting started.

Opportunities:

• Life Admin AI App: A personal assistant that handles mundane but essential tasks like canceling subscriptions, booking appointments, renewing documents, and sending reminders for recurring chores.

• AI Household Manager for Families: A platform that helps coordinate calendars, chore lists, shopping, and communication between all family members—like a smart family command center.

⛏️ Using AI to Uncover Hidden Business Ideas on Reddit

The Tool: Reddit is a goldmine for memes, passionate rants about almost anything, but most importantly…for business ideas. And Lutra’s AI agent is able to automatically surface startup ideas directly from relevant subreddits for you. Here's how:

Step-by-step:

1. Go to Lutra.ai and navigate to their Reddit Business Opportunity Analyzer playbook.

2. Write in the subreddits you want to pull in business ideas from (r/businessideas, r/entrepreneur, r/somebodymakethis).

3. Run the playbook which creates a google sheet listing different business ideas based on insights from posts on those subreddits.

4. Pick your favorite and start your business.

Check it out!

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Learn more

🪨 Why Inventing a Category Doesn’t Guarantee Success

The Idea: Eric Migicovsky, a Canadian engineering student, was riding his bike in the Netherlands back in 2008. When he had a thought. He wanted a simple way to see notifications from his phone without pulling it out while cycling. A smartwatch, he thought, would be perfect for this. At the time, the smartphone market was dominated by Blackberry, so he began building inPulse, a smartwatch for BlackBerry users. After moving to Silicon Valley via Y Combinator in 2011 though, Eric realized the market potential for a broader, smartphone-agnostic watch. Thus, Pebble was born.

The Execution:

• The MVP: The MVP was a sleek, e-ink display smartwatch with basic notifications and fitness tracking. It was open to developers and designed to last a week on one charge. He needed money for a production run of his watches, but VC after VC turned him down. So Eric decided to turn to his customers to launch, going on Kickstarter.

• The Launch: In April 2012 Pebble launched with a goal of raising $100k. The result? Eric and his team raised over $10 million from 69,000+ backers. This not only validated market demand, it created the smartwatch category before Apple or Samsung entered the race.

• Investment: After the Kickstarter success, Pebble went on to raise $26 million in VC funding. They also raised again on Kickstarter. If it ain’t broke right? At one stage Pebble got an acquisition offer from Citizen for ~$740M, which they turned down. Something the team would live to regret…

• Growth & Traction: Pebble went on to ship 2m units and built an indie developer community with thousands of apps in their ecosystem. They also launched follow-up models like the Pebble Time, Pebble Steel, and Pebble Round. But soon the big boys came into the market, and Pebble was in trouble.

• The Result: Despite building a cult following, Pebble couldn't survive the arrival of the Apple Watch and other major players. In 2016, Fitbit acquired Pebble’s assets for ~$23 million. The brand was shut down, and Pebble as we knew it ceased to exist.

The Lesson: In markets where big incumbents could arrive any day, sometimes it’s better to sell early and lock in the win.

👓 Lazy Glasses

• Do you love to read? Wish you could do it in a more…horizontal way?

• Introducing Lazy Glasses™, the revolutionary eyewear that lets you read, watch, or scroll while lying completely flat. With built-in periscope mirrors, you can now consume content without ever lifting your neck. Truly revolutionary.

• Lazy Glasses™ - because sitting up is for suckers.

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

🔍️ Founder Finds

• 🚨 Raise Alert: Basket, a UK-based AI-powered shopping companion, is in the middle of a raise at a £17m valuation (250k users)

• 📚 Must-Read: Peter Thiel once taught a class on startups (CS183) at Stanford. Here are some notes from class 7 of the course

• 📈 Growth Hack: A genius hack to get big brands to notice you on social media (30 sec read)

• 💬 Founder Quote: “In a startup, absolutely nothing happens unless you make it happen.” Marc Andreessen (Netscape, a16z)

👋 That’s All Folks!

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See you soon,

John and Darragh | The Half Baked Team