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Startup Ideas #377: Supp Stacks, Phubbing...

Plus Turning $5k in $1.2B

June 12, 2025

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as AI Agents at YC’s Demo Day 🤖

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

Let’s goooo 🚀 

In today’s edition:

  • 💡 Using supplement stacks to make fat stacks

  • 📈 Everything you need to know about “phubbing“

  • 🛠️ OpenAI’s secret academy you need to know about

  • 🤑 Turning $5k in $1.2B

  • 🍻 The ultimate product to keep your doggo dry

💊 Supp Stack Recommendations

SuppleMental

Available domain: Suppstakk.com

The Problem: The supplements industry is kinda insane. Nearly 77% of U.S. adults take supplements, but less than 25% of them consult scientific sources before doing so. Instead of relying on research for their supplement advice consumers rely on influencers, marketing fluff, or vague Amazon reviews to decide what to buy. That means you get millions of consumers popping pills they saw on TikTok without knowing whether they actually do anything. Which is why it’s time to create a trusted source for supplement advice. Here’s how.

The Solution:

  • In a line: A platform that provides feedback and recommendations on someone’s supplement stack as well as the latest supplement trends

  • Product:

    • 🧬 Users sign up via web or mobile app and list out the supplements they’re currently taking

    • 🗣️ The platform gives feedback on their supplement stack around what they are taking and should be taking. This can be linked to data from apps like MyFitnessPal or Cal AI to show where a user has supplement deficiencies

    • 🔍 Users can also search for new, trending supplements which are rated based on efficacy, risk, hype, and value — each shown on a “Hype Meter” gauge

    • 🧾 Optional email alerts for new trends, ingredient recalls, or new research findings about supplements you’re taking

  • Business Model: Freemium model with a paid tier ($5–10/mo) for deep dives, alerts, and personalized reports, plus affiliate revenue from vetted supplement providers

  • End Goal: Sell to a major health content or commerce platform (e.g. WebMD, Healthline, Amazon, WHOOP, or Hims) for a 6–10x revenue multiple

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📵 Everything you need to know about Phubbing

The Trend: Ever since smartphones have taken over the world, “phubbing” has quietly strained personal relationships, to such a degree that it’s now a leading cause of divorce in Singapore. It’s the act of snubbing someone in favor of a mobile phone, something we’ve all done before. This problem isn’t going away anytime soon, which is why it’s an area ripe for innovation.

Opportunities:

  • Smart Coasters – Restaurant table coasters that sense when a phone is placed on them and reward diners for not picking it up during meals.

  • “Phone Parking” Stations - Stylish tabletop boxes for homes or cafes where phones get stashed during meals or conversations, optionally with charging.

🎓 OpenAI Academy is pretty dope

The Tool: A few weeks ago OpenAI quietly launched OpenAI Academy with courses on…well…just about everything related to AI. Here’s how you can access it.

Step-by-step:

  1. Go to OpenAI Academy and sign in

  2. Browse the courses you want to take

  3. That’s literally it.

👀 You Don’t Need Another Idea. You Need to Know if Yours Doesn’t Suck.

If you’re a Half Baked reader, you’ve probably got a startup idea rattling around your head. But how do you know it your idea is any good?

Mat himself has launched and helped others to launch 100+ online businesses and startups over the past 11 years. 4 of his own startups were acquired and most made 6 figures or more in profit.

And today Mat's exclusively giving away all of his industry secrets in this free 21 page eBook aptly named "Validate or Die". Totally worth checking out if think you have a solid startup idea.

👖 Turning $5k in $1.2B

The Idea: Sara Blakely’s story is the stuff of entrepreneurial legend. Back in the late 1990s, Sara, then a 27-year-old fax machine salesperson from Florida, had a problem. She wanted to wear white pants to a party but didn’t like how her body looked with traditional underwear lines showing through. So she grabbed a pair of control-top pantyhose, cut off the feet, and wore them under her pants. They stayed in place, smoothed everything out, and were more comfortable than anything she’d tried. That’s when it hit her: why doesn’t this product exist yet? This was the first pair of SPANX.

The Execution:

  • The MVP: Sara used $5,000 of her savings to prototype the first Spanx in 2000. She drove to North Carolina, pitched dozens of hosiery mills, and finally convinced one to take a chance, only because his daughters loved the idea. She wrote her own patent, designed the packaging, and kept her day job while building Spanx at night.

  • The Launch: She landed a meeting with a buyer at Neiman Marcus and, in a moment of pure hustle, demonstrated the product on herself in the bathroom. They stocked it.

  • Growth & Traction: Blakely hit the pavement selling to stores, demoing the product herself, and personally answering customer service calls. Word-of-mouth and celebrity endorsements did the rest, with Oprah featuring Spanx on her “Favorite Things,” which sent sales into orbit.

  • Investment: Zero. Sara bootstrapped the entire business. No outside funding, no debt, no partners. What a baller.

  • The Result: Spanx went on to become a billion-dollar brand and in 2021, Sara sold a majority stake to Blackstone, valuing the company at $1.2 billion. She celebrated by giving each employee $10,000 and two first-class plane tickets to anywhere in the world.

The Lesson: You don’t need anyone’s permission to build something huge. Sara had no business turning $5k into a fashion empire, but she did it anyway.

🐩 The Puff n Fluff

  • Does your dog love getting wet? Tired of playing towel tug-of-war with a soggy, hyperactive doggo once you get home?

  • Introducing the Puff-N-Fluff™, the revolutionary dog drying pouch that turns your wet canine into a warm, inflatable burrito of joy. Just zip, blow, and behold as your dog fluffs up like a living marshmallow in a convection oven.

  • Puff-N-Fluff™ - turning wet dogs into warm dumplings.

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🔍️ Founder Finds

👋 That’s All Folks!

Before you go we have a few public service announcements:

  • If you have content ideas you think we should cover on the newsletter, let us know here!

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See you soon,

John and Darragh | The Half Baked Team

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