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- Startup Ideas #388: Survival Kits, Rice Water...
Startup Ideas #388: Survival Kits, Rice Water...
Plus Turning Rap Lyrics into an $80m Exit
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as extravagant as Jeff Bezos’ $50M Wedding 💒
We’re still looking for creators to get involved in our creator program, more details here if you’re curious.
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In today’s edition:
💡 An idea that 60% of Americans need
📈 Turning waste water into a beauty trend
🛠️ How to create AI voices for your content
🤑 Turning rap lyrics into an $80m exit
🍻 Getting your pet in on a Friday ritual
🆘 Custom Survival Kits
Check Yo’ Self Before You Prep Yo’ Self
Available domain: Doomboxx.com
The Problem: Is it just me or does it feel like the world’s falling apart? Wars are being waged. AI meanwhile is coming for our wages. It’s all a bit of a mess right now. Which is probably why in the last few weeks I’ve ended up down a few YouTube rabbit holes around survival, doomsday prepping, that sort of content. Which is when I did a bit of digging and found out that, according to FEMA, 60% of Americans have zero emergency supplies. None at all. And the ones that do probably bought some generic survival kit that won’t do anything for them right now. I think it’s time to level up this product. Here’s how.
The Solution:
In a line: A personalized emergency survival kit service that delivers tailored, high-quality gear to your door based on your location, lifestyle, and risk factors.
Product:
Users start with a short quiz that asks them where they live, who with (pets/kids?), and what scenarios they’re prepping for.
Based on their inputs, a survival kit is auto-generated with options to customize further before it’s sent out to the customer
An accompanying app sends restock reminders, seasonal risk alerts, and “how-to-use” guides for each item in the kit.
There’s an option to subscribe to an annual refresh so expired meds, batteries, and snacks are always up to date.
Business Model: Charge for the kits with an optional subscription upsell for regular refreshes of supplies
End Goal: Sell to a major outdoor gear brand (e.g. REI or Patagonia) or an emergency supply company at a 5–8x revenue multiple.
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🍚 Rice Water
The Trend: People are willing to try a lot of things to look good. Plastic surgery. Ozempic. Snail slime apparently? Basically anything except some good old-fashioned dieting and exercise. And the latest beauty craze people have turned to for better looks is something surprising…rice water. That’s right, that thing you throw down the drain when cooking dinner is being bottled, branded, and pushed all over TikTok as the secret to Rapunzel hair, glass skin, and even gut health. The more you know.
Opportunities:
Beauty Ritual Tracker App: Create an app to help users log beauty experiments and routines to see results over time.
Smart DIY Rice Water Kit: A kitchen-friendly kit with a strainer jar, pH test strips, and scent drops to make your own rice water at home.
🗣️ How to Create AI Voices for your Content
The Tool: There are endless scenarios, particularly in content creation, where you need to use your voice. And if you’re anything like me and hate the sound of your own voice then AI is here to help (thankfully). That’s because you can use Google AI Studio’s speech generation feature to create natural-sounding voice content. Here’s how.
Step-by-step:
Go to Google AI Studio and select “Native speech generation”
Create your script and select voices for each speaker (you can either have a single speaker or have two AI voices converse together)
Click “Run” to generate your audio and download it
👀 So, you built the thing. Now what?
Back in edition #377 of this newsletter, OG Half Baked reader and all around great guy Mat Gordon shared his guide on how to know if your startup idea doesn’t suck. Then, a few weeks later, he shared his secret formula for launching an MVP.
And today Mat's back with his final exclusive eBook in this series called "Launch, Grow, Repeat", where he shares what to do once you've actually launched your product.
Mat himself has launched and helped others to launch 100+ online businesses and startups over the past 11 years. In fact 4 of his own startups were acquired and most made 6 figures or more in profit. So if you're ready to really grow your business, this is the guide for you.
🎶 Turning Rap Lyrics into an $80m Exit
One night, back in 2009, Mahbod Moghadam, Tom Lehman, and Ilan Zechory were having a debate. The three Ivy League friends, all hip-hop superfans by the way, were furiously debating a particularly cryptic lyric in a Cam’ron song. Which gave them an idea…why not build a website that let users upload rap lyrics and annotate them with explanations? Think Wikipedia, but for rap. This was the “genius” idea for Genius.
The Execution:
2009: They built their MVP (which they called “Rap Exegesis”) in a dorm room using Rails. They quickly rebranded to “Rap Genius” and it started with the founders’ friends uploading their favorite songs to the site.
2010–2011: The platform gained traction in college circles and among hip-hop heads. Early viral growth came from arguments and memes on Reddit and forums.
2012: The team raised a $15M Series A from Andreessen Horowitz. Ben Horowitz said they were building “the internet Talmud.” They were betting big.
2013: Rappers like Nas and Kendrick Lamar started annotating their own songs on the platform, boosting credibility and virality.
2014: The company rebranded from Rap Genius to just Genius so they could expand beyond music. They added poetry, politics, Bible verses, even Supreme Court decisions to the site.
2017: They raised a $15M Series B to increase their growth, but traffic was declining. Expansion beyond music didn’t catch on as hoped.
2021: Genius was acquired by MediaLab for $80M, less than total funding raised. It never became the “layer of meaning” for the internet as envisioned.
All of which goes to show that, in the end, virality and funding don’t guarantee success in a startup. Virality gets you noticed. Solving a crucial problem keeps you around.
🔍️ Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: Browse more than 37,000 cutting edge AI tools to level-up your business.
🎁 Free Resource: OpenAI’s 34 page eBook “Identifying and scaling AI use cases” is well worth a look.
📚 Must-Read: This blog post “How Venture Capital 3.0 Impacts Founders in the AI Age” is required reading for any founder (5 min read).
📈 Growth Hack: The Psychology Behind McDonald’s $2 BillionSelf-Serve Kiosks is fascinating.
💬 Founder Quote: “The really good ideas are rare, and when you find one, you should quadruple down on it.” Sam Altman.
🔦 Reader Spotlight
👪 NotSus - Adam Hart is creating a better web browser for kids, without the distractions.
💡Easy Startup Ideas - Chris Ray is working on a newsletter that shares startup ideas. If you’re a fan of us then you’ll be a fan of his!
💵 IndieHustle - AJ is building a database of interviews and case studies of indie founders running successful businesses.
👥 Commix - Andrew Sosa has built an AI-first Intelligence platform helping people leaders tackle disengagement by unifying people, operations, and culture metrics.
📹 SupportMyWork - Tom Pate has launched a platform where followers can directly support creators via direct payments without paying any commissions.
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Dog Beer
Looking forward to cracking open a cold one over the weekend? Wish your dog could join in too?
Introducing Dog Brew™, the beer for dogs who’ve had a ruff day. Made with all-natural, dog-safe ingredients (and zero alcohol of course, we're not monsters), it’s the perfect way for your furry friend to join in on your Friday night ritual, minus the bad decisions.
Dog Brew™, because every good boy deserves a brewski too.
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