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- Startup Ideas #379: Wills, Yeti POVs...
Startup Ideas #379: Wills, Yeti POVs...
Plus Three Brothers. Two Exits. +$1.4B.
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as surprising as Donald Trump launching a smartphone ⁉️
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In today’s edition:
💡 Simplifying a process 68% of Americans avoid
📈 What AI and Yetis have in common
🛠️ Using AI to create viral videos
🤑 Three Brothers. Two Exits. +$1.4B.
🍻 A beach product needed this summer
📃 AI Will Maker
Where there’s a will…
Available domain: Betterwill.ai
The Problem: There are things none of us like to think about. Where hot dogs really come from. How many spiders we accidentally swallow per year (8 apparently). But top of the list of things we don’t like to think about is death. So it’s no wonder that ****68% of Americans don’t have a will, including over 75% of Millennials, even as they buy homes, start families, and accumulate (some) assets. Traditional estate planning is expensive, intimidating, and time-consuming. And no, writing it on a napkin doesn’t count. Which is why it’s time to make the process as simple as possible. Here’s how.
The Solution:
In a line: An AI-powered will maker that helps you die organized—without the lawyers, stress, or paperwork.
Product:
📝A user signs up and answers natural-language questions via chat or form, and gets matched with the right legal will template based on their location.
⚙️ AI adapts the will in real time including guardianship, pet care, assets, healthcare directives etc.
🗂️ The user can securely store their will, share access with loved ones, and get reminders to update it yearly or after major life events.
👩⚖️ There is an optional upgrade for human lawyer review to ensure it complies with local laws and gives peace of mind.
Business Model: Freemium with paid upgrades for legal review, document storage, and bundled estate planning tools.
End Goal: Sell to legaltech players (like LegalZoom) or fintech/insurance companies at a 10–15x ARR multiple.
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🦍 Why AI POV Videos are Popping Off
The Trend: What do AI, Star Wars and yetis have in common? One thing…viral videos. With the launch of Google’s Veo 3 model, AI generated videos are going super viral on TikTok, particularly POV videos or vlogs of these characters. Take this BigFootVlogs TikTok account which has grown to over 1m followers in less than 30 days. And this is just the beginning…
Opportunities:
AI-Generated Found Footage Horror Channel: Niche down to horror. Use Veo + ElevenLabs to create found footage-style horror series
POV-Based Exposure Therapy: Use AI to create therapeutic POV experiences (e.g., “POV: You’re giving a speech to a crowd,” “POV: Your flight takes off safely”) for exposure therapy, social anxiety, or coaching.
📹 How to Generate Viral Videos Using Veo 3
The Tool: As we just mentioned AI POV videos are going super viral right now. Even this dentist has jumped on the trend to generate leads for his business. Here’s how you can make these videos yourself.
Step-by-step:
Go to Google Labs’ Flow product and hit the “Create with Flow” button (Pro tip: if it’s not available in your region, use a VPN like Surfshark’s)
Subscribe to Google One’s AI Pro plan (you get 30 days before you have to make your first payment)
Click the settings slider (red circle) in the prompt box and change the outputs per prompt to 1 and select the VEO 3 - quality model
Enter your prompt for the scene you want to make
🍕 He was a 19-year-old pizza delivery driver. Now he’s a billionaire
Ben Francis started Gymshark in his garage - sewing fitness gear by hand and selling it online between pizza shifts.
He built a Shopify store, went viral, and scaled his brand into a global fitness empire.
Now Gymshark is worth over $1.5 billion. Ben didn’t have investors or a roadmap - just a laptop, an idea, and the will to build.
Whether you’re just starting out or ready to scale, Shopify gives you everything you need to go from driver to billionaire. Start your store with a 3-day free trial, then it’s just $1/month for your first 3 months.
🚀 Three Brothers. Two Exits. +$1.4B
The Idea: The Mokhtarzada brothers (Yahya, Haroon, and Idris) are maybe the best founders you’ve never heard of. By 2015 they already had their first exit under their belt, selling their drag and drop website builder (Webs.com) for $118m to Vistaprint. But they were just getting started. Because in 2015 they were all catching up when Haroon noticed he’d been charged for a subscription he thought he canceled. That small annoyance sparked a big idea. What if there was an app that helped people automatically cancel unwanted subscriptions and stay on top of their money? This was the beginning of Truebill.
The Execution:
The MVP: The team codes up a simple prototype that connects to users’ bank accounts and flags recurring charges.
The Launch: Early adoption came from personal finance communities and app store visibility. People loved being told “you’re overpaying $273/month.”
Growth & Traction: Used subscription tracking as a viral hook. Then layered in more value: budgeting tools, spending insights, and bill negotiation.
Investment: Raised over $85 million across multiple rounds from investors like Bessemer and Eldridge before the acquisition.
The Result: Acquired by Rocket Companies for $1.275B in 2022. Now integrated into Rocket’s broader personal finance ecosystem.
The Lesson: Start with a pain point so relatable it hurts, and build outward from the relief.
🌞 Sunblock Booths
Trying to protect your skin this summer? Tired of spending hour manually applying sunblock to every square inch of your body?
Introducing the Sunblock Booth™ – the walk-in sunscreen misting chamber that blasts SPF onto every nook, cranny, and crevice without any awkward rubbing. It’s like a car wash, but for your fragile epidermis.
Sunblock Booth™ – mist your body, not your chance at surviving summer.
Vote
🚨 Raise Alert: Y Combinator Dropout Raises $14M from Investors to Disrupt $5B Market
Future Cardia, a bold and scrappy innovator redefining implantable cardiac monitoring, taking on billion-dollar giants in the $5B+ estimated annual market.
How’s It Going?
✅ 39 successful human implants, evidencing its breakthrough technology in real-world patients.
✅ 60,000+ hours of real-world cardiac data collected, delivering exceptional insights for early disease detection.
✅ Accelerated by Stanford StartX and Incubated by Johnson & Johnson’s JLABS
Future Cardia has already raised $14M across all offerings, and now, investors have the chance to own a stake in the next big innovation in heart health.
🔍️ Founder Finds
🚨 Round Closed: Alta, an AI stylist and personal shopper that makes outfit recommendations, raises $11m
📚 Must-Read: Check out the most upvoted Reddit ad of all time (30 sec read)
🎁 Free Resource: This tool is a cool way to measure if you have Product-Market Fit
💬 Founder Quote: “If you’re not getting laughed at, you’re not thinking big enough.” Palmer Luckey
👋 That’s All Folks!
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