Startup Ideas #382: Runna for X, Deodorant...

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as shocking as the details emerging in the “OpenAI Files” 👀 

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In today’s edition:

• 💡 Stealing a startup idea from another famous Sam (not Altman)

• 📈 A personal care product that’s getting even more popular

• 🛠️ Using AI to turn frustrations into startup ideas

• 🤑 From $0 to an $80m Exit in 6 months

• 🍻 Keeping your keyboard squeaky clean

🏃 Runna for Sprinting

For sprints and giggles

The Problem: Fun fact - once someone reaches the age of 30 there’s a 90% chance that they will never sprint ever again for the rest of their lives. The 10%? Well that’s just people sprinting to catch their flight or trying to flag down a runaway ice cream truck. But one person over 30 who still sprints is Sam Parr, Hampton founder and host of the My First Million podcast (which we love btw). And it’s no wonder why - sprinting spikes natural growth hormone and testosterone production, burns fat efficiently and improves V02 max. Earlier this week Sam shared on Twitter how he wanted someone to build the “Runna” for Sprinting (which was just acquired btw). So let’s help Sam out.

The Solution:

• In a line: A sprint-focused tracking app that logs your speed bursts, ranks you on leaderboards, and helps you get faster.

• Product:

  • 📲 Download the app and sync with your phone's GPS/accelerometer to auto-detect sprints

  • 🏁 Choose your personalised training plan and start running sprints in accordance with your plan while tracking performance over time

  • 🥇 Compete in local or global sprint challenges and leaderboards within the community section of the app

• Business Model: Freemium: free core features, premium analytics and training tools for $10/month.

• End Goal: Sell to a company like Strava or WHOOP for 5–10x ARR, something like that.

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👃 Aluminum-Free Deodorant

The Trend: We’re all (hopefully) very familiar with deodorant and (again…hopefully) use it each and every day. But a lot deodorants have a problematic ingredient that health-conscious consumers are extremely wary of: aluminum (or aluminium as it’s known in the UK). There are concerns that aluminum can block sweat glands which is pushing consumers to seek gentler, more natural options as part of their personal care routine. Hence, aluminum-free deodorant is trending right now, and with brands like Wild selling for £230m earlier this year to Unilever, this is a market worth paying attention to.

Opportunities:

• Personal Care Product Ingredient App: An app which scans ingredients of common household items and suggests better alternatives

• Pregnancy-Safe Deodorant Line: Start an aluminum-free, fragrance-free, and doctor-approved deodorant line.

😩 Using AI to Turn Personal Frustrations into Startup Ideas

The Tool: As all Half Baked readers know, the best startup ideas often come from personal pain points. Which is why you should be using AI to track your personal pain points in the hunt for startup ideas. Here’s how.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to ChatGPT and enter the following prompt: “Here are some pain points I have as a solopreneur. Turn each into a startup idea: [list them].”

2. Once you’ve banked a number of pain points use ChatGPT to stack rank them using this prompt: “Stack rank each idea by monetization potential, urgency, and ease of validation.”

3. Pick an idea to start

4. Get rich…maybe?

Try it out

❓️Could this be the next big medtech giant? ($5B+ market says yes)

Imagine passing on the next breakthrough in heart health, one that's already showing signs of dominating a $5B+ market.

That’s what Future Cardia is quietly building, an implantable cardiac monitor designed to outperform the bulky, outdated tech used today that recently completed clinical testing in both the EU and the US.

This isn’t just a prototype. They’ve already successfully implanted the device in 39 real patients, collected 60,000+ hours of live heart data and have raised $14M+ to date.

If you're waiting for a signal that this is the future of heart monitoring...this is it and investors have a chance to get in early.

Check them out

🖥️ From $0 to an $80m Exit in 6 Months

The Idea: 31-year-old Maor Shlomo had already achieved what most SaaS founders dream of. At age 24 he founded Explorium, a fast-growing startup that raised around $130 million and scaled the business to a team of 150 in a few short years. But despite the success, in 2022, Maor walked away from it all. Why? The emotional toll of raising VC money and the shifting priorities that came with hypergrowth left him feeling disconnected from the work. But after taking some time-off Maor started playing around with a side project that allowed users to create powerful apps and websites without coding. This was the beginning of Base44.

The Execution:

• Late 2024: After returning from reserve duty in the military, Maor had made a clean break from Explorium. He spent the next few months heads-down, writing code and iterating on his idea. The first few versions weren’t great, but after a few months, something clicked and the users started flooding in.

• Early 2025: With no VC funding, no PR push, and no employees, Maor pushed Base44 forward. Through building in public and word of mouth, the platform exploded, crossing 300,000 users and $3.5m ARR in just a few months.

• June 2025: Cut to just six months after launching and Wix just acquired Base44 for $80 million in what can only be described as “speed-running capitalism“. Maor is staying on to grow Base44 with Wix, but to achieve such an amazing outcome in such a short period of time really shows how the world has changed.

In the age of AI, six months is all it takes to rewrite your story. You don’t need a 10-year roadmap or a massive war chest…just a great product, real users, and the courage to start.

BTW Maor did an AMA on the r/SaaS subreddit about the acquisition, you should check it out!

⌨️ Keyboard Roomba

• Ever look down at your keyboard and wonder what year the crumbs are from? When was the last time you can remember cleaning it?

• Introducing the Roomboard™, the world’s first autonomous keyboard-cleaning robot. It glides gracefully over your keys, vacuuming up snack shrapnel, DNA evidence, and whatever that sticky spot near the "S" key is.

• Roomboard™, because your keyboard deserves a clean slate.

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

🔍️ Founder Finds

• 📰 Headline: Waymo, Google’s autonomous taxi business, is set to launch in NYC in the coming weeks

• 🚨 Raise Alert: Multiplier, founded by ex-Stripe exec, has raised $27.5M to fuel AI-powered accounting roll-ups

• 📚 Must-Read: Check out this comprehensive list of the 24 US AI companies that raised over $100m in 2025. (2 min read)

• 🛠️ AI Tool: Midjourney has just launched its first AI video generation model

• 🎁 Free Resource: Looking for inspiration for a landing page you’re building? Check out Lapa.ninja (Great name)

• 💬 Founder Quote: "Being wrong might hurt you a bit, but being slow will kill you.” Alexis Ohanian - Reddit Founder

👋 That’s All Folks!

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John and Darragh | The Half Baked Team