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Startup Ideas #385: AI Posture, AI ASMR...
Plus Making $60m/yr Selling Popsicles
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as in demand as the All-in Podcasts’ $1,200 tequila 🥃
If you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked, you can on our website.
Let’s goooo 🚀
In today’s edition:
💡 Solving an affliction that 80% of us suffer with
📈 AI + ASMR = virality?
🛠️ How to prompt multiple LLMs at once
🤑 Making $60m/yr selling popsicles
🍻 Reinventing a common condiment
🪑 AI Posture Cushion
Getting back on track
Available domain: Alignnd.com
The Problem: There are telltale signs that you’re getting older. Your bedtime starts creeping forward. You get excited about buying household appliances. You struggle to understand youth slang. But the number one sign, bar none, of ageing is…back pain. It feels like the second your twenties are over your back decides to start hurting. It’s a law of nature, like gravity, and it affects almost all of us. In fact over 80% of adults experience back pain at some point in their lives. The cause? Well a lot of it comes down to posture. Who would have thought that sitting slouched for 8+ hours a day over a laptop could have negative health consequences? Wild. That’s why we need a solution to stop the slouch. Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
In a line: An AI-powered smart cushion that tracks and corrects your posture in real time.
Product:
🪑 A user purchases the AI Posture Cushion and syncs it with the companion app via Bluetooth
🧠 The user places the cushion on their office chair and built-in pressure and IMU sensors detect poor posture and gently alert the user with vibrations or smartphone nudges
📊 The app provides daily posture scores, tracks improvements, and offers guided exercises and ergonomic tips
Business Model: D2C hardware sales ($120 - $150 price point),
End Goal: Sell to a wellness brand (e.g., Therabody) or tech-driven health brands for a 6–10x multiple on annual revenue.
Rate this idea: |
🍕 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.
🍓 AI ASMR
The Trend: ASMR always felt a bit...off. Like why am I listening to someone whisper into a mic or eating food? But now it’s gotten even weirder, with AI entering the chat. AI ASMR videos are blowing up right now. Take this AI fruit-slicing clip where a fake knife cuts through fake fruit with fake crunch sounds. Sounds strange right? Well it’s racked up over 70 million views in the last few days. It’s sensory overload, but made completely artificially. Dystopian dopamine.
Opportunities:
ASMR Detox Tool: A Chrome extension or app that filters out ASMR content from your feeds - for people who just want to scroll without getting ambushed by slime, whispers, and uncanny crunches.
AI ASMR Fruit Game: A hyper-satisfying mobile game where you slice, squish, and pop AI-generated fruit (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em)
🤖 How to Prompt Multiple LLMs at Once
The Tool: ChatGPT. Claude. Gemini. Some models are better than others for certain tasks, but it’s not always clear where you’ll get the best response. In those situations wouldn’t it be great if you could prompt multiple models simultaneously and simply pick the best response? Well you can. Here’s how.
Step-by-step:
Go to Promptcannon.com
Sign up with Google (you need to sign in to use advanced models)
Select what models you want to generate responses with (you get some free credits to play with)
Type in your prompt and generate your responses
📈 Drive your sales growth
Pipedrive is the CRM designed to help you close more deals with less effort.
Built by salespeople for salespeople, it gives you full visibility into your pipeline, automates repetitive tasks, and keeps your team focused on what matters most - selling.
Whether you're scaling fast or just getting started, Pipedrive makes it simple to stay on track and hit your targets.
Sign up today to get an extended 30-day free trial + 20% off your first year.
🧊 Making $60m/yr Selling Popsicles
The Idea: Back in 2009, University of Texas student Daniel Goetz was wandering through an Austin farmers market, craving something cold. When he spotted a stand selling aguas frescas (bright, fruity, all-natural drinks). Which got Dan thinking…could you turn these into popsicles? So Dan started experimenting with new, healthy popsicle recipes. No artificial colors. No corn syrup. Just fruit, fruit juice, and a freezer. “Good” ingredients. “Pop” format. This was the beginning of GoodPop.
The Execution:
2009: Daniel started selling his frozen treats at local farmers markets in Austin, TX, hand-pouring each pop in a shared kitchen and selling them out of a tiny cart. The original MVP? Fruit juice frozen into sleek, modern-looking treats.
2011: Dan landed shelf space in Whole Foods Market's Southwest region, a major validation moment. He focused on in-store demos and guerrilla sampling to win over customers one bite at a time.
2013: The brand expanded into more natural food stores, leveraging the “better-for-you” trend as consumers shift from junk food to clean-label snacks.
2018: GoodPop went fully organic and non-GMO verified and started pushing into mainstream retailers like Target and Sprouts.
2020: The brand surged in popularity as the pandemic spiked demand for comfort food with clean ingredients. Growth was supplemented by smart partnerships and influencer shoutouts.
2023: Today the brand brings in around $60m/year.
All of which goes to show that a great mental model for building a business is “X, but better” which can be applied to any market.
🍅 Ketchup Slices
Ever wish your condiments had more structural integrity? Tired of ketchup turning your dinner plate into a crime scene?
Meet Slice of Sauce™ - it’s ketchup...but in a slice. That’s right: no squeeze, no spill, just a flat, floppy square of ketchupy goodness. Delicious.
Slice of Sauce™ - less dipping, more draping.
Vote:
🔍️ Founder Finds
🚨 Raise Alert: Wispr Flow, an AI-powered dictation app (that we previously covered in the newsletter), raises $30M
📰 Headline: Amazon to spend over $4B to expand Prime delivery to rural communities in the US
📹 Must-Watch: Elon Musk appeared at YC’s startup school last week, a good listen (since he’s talking tech, not politics)
📚 Must-Read: The definitive guide on how to rank on ChatGPT (3 min read)
💬 Founder Quote: "Move fast. Speed is the ultimate weapon in business." Sam Altman
👥 From the Community
Joey, one of our earliest readers, is building a marketplace for warm intros called Joiner. This will be massive, mark my words!
Ashley, a new Half Baked reader, is building her startup Airplane Mode, an events platform
P.S DM me if you want your product featured here in future editions!
👋 That’s All Folks!
Before you go just a few public service announcements:
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See you soon,
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