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Startup Ideas #389: Cofounder Compatibility, Green AI...
Plus Turning Music into a $1.4B Business
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as Zuck’s leaked “Meta Superintelligence Labs” Memo 📝
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In today’s edition:
💡 Solving a problem that kills 65% of startups
📈 Why AI is having to go green
🛠️ How to design perfect apps with AI
🤑 Turning music into a $1.4B business
🍻 An idea that’s pure gold…fish
🤝 Cofounder Compatibility Assessment
Test Before You Vest
Available domain: Vesttest.co
The Problem: Startups and marriages are surprisingly similar. They start with optimism, shared dreams, and big promises. But all too often, they end in arguments, lawyers, and the splitting of assets. If that’s the case, then your cofounder isn’t just a partner, they’re basically your startup spouse. And yet, most founders choose their cofounder like they choose their lunch: based on convenience, not compatibility. It’s no surprise, then, that 65% of startups fail because of cofounder conflict. But what if you could know that you were aligned with your cofounder before diving in? What if you could test your fit before you split equity, stress, and sleepless nights? Here’s what we’re building.
The Solution:
In a line: A Myers-Briggs inspired personality and work-style test that predicts cofounder compatibility before they team up.
Product:
🧪 Users take a proprietary psychometric test inspired by MBTI, Myers-Briggs, Big Five, and founder-specific dynamics (visionary vs executor, risk tolerance, etc.)
🧑🤝🧑 Founders compare their results side-by-side, get a compatibility score, and receive advice for navigating tension areas
📄 The platform also offers an exportable compatibility report for VCs to show team fit
⚒️ Check out the full demo here
Business Model: Sell into startup accelerators or cofounder matching platforms
End Goal: Get acquired by a VC platform (like AngelList or First Round) to integrate into founder onboarding or portfolio risk profiling. Exit at a 7–10x multiple on EBITDA.
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♻️ Green AI
The Trend: AI is pretty great. It helps us get more work done, acts as our therapist and much, much more. Having said that though large AI models are guzzling up a lot of energy. Training huge models like GPT or image generators often burns more energy than a transatlantic flight, and people are starting to notice. Take this recent story where a major YouTuber was forced to take down a video he made because his fans opposed his use of AI in the video on environmental grounds. And this debate is just getting started.
Opportunities:
The "EcoScore" for AI Tools: A Chrome extension or API that rates AI tools based on their energy consumption and environmental impact.
AI Carbon Tracker for Enterprises: A dashboard that tracks how much energy a company’s AI pipelines use and suggests greener alternatives.
🧑🎨 How to Design Perfect Apps with V0
The Tool: There are a lot of AI tools out there for building websites and apps. And v0 is one of the best. It's aimed at developers, designers, and product teams who want to go from idea to interface to code faster. Here’s how you can use it to create great looking apps.
Step-by-step:
Visit v0 and give a detailed prompt of your desired user interface. Use ChatGPT to generate the prompt if you like (pro tip)
Click the "Design" tab to enter manual editing mode
Select any element (text, buttons, sections) to customize the copy, layout, colors, or styling
Preview changes in real-time and click "Save" when ready
🔓️ Unlock sales success
Pipedrive is the CRM that empowers you to take control of your sales process and close more deals, faster.
With an intuitive interface, powerful automation, and real-time pipeline tracking, it’s built to help sales teams focus on what they do best - selling.
No clutter, no confusion, just results.
Sign up today to get an extended 30-day free trial + 20% off your first year.
🎵 Turning Music into a $1.4B Business
The Idea: Back in 2009, TV producer Oscar Höglund had a problem. In the course of his work he was constantly coming up against the complex and outdated music licensing system. Meanwhile, songwriter David Stenmarck, saw a similar problem for musicians who weren’t getting their fair share either. Together, they quickly realised that content creators needed a simple, affordable, and legally clear way to access music. How? By doing something radical at the time - buying music outright, owning all the rights, and making licensing deals simple for creators. That was the birth of Epidemic Sound.
The Execution:
2009: They founded the business in Stockholm. The MVP? They paid composers upfront to own 100% of the rights to their music then licensed tracks directly to content creators.
2010–2012: The platform gained early traction with Swedish TV networks who loved the pre-cleared model.
2015: The YouTube boom fuelled growth where Epidemic offered subscriptions to creators tired of getting hit with takedown notices.
2017: The team raised $5M from EQT Ventures to expand internationally.
2019: They raised $20M more to grow the catalog and scale the platform.
2021: They went all out and raised $450M at a $1.4B valuation from EQT and Blackstone. Used the cash to double down on product, global expansion, and creator partnerships.
2022–2024: Epidemic became the go-to music platform for creators, brands, and streaming giants like Netflix.
The takeaway? Epidemic didn’t fix or fight the system, they rebuilt it from scratch. Because sometimes when a market’s really broken, the smartest move is to rebuild from the ground up.
🔍️ Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: DeepMind’s new AI model for DNA analysis is incredibly impressive.
🎁 Free Resource: This 67 page AI report on how 300 execs at software startups like Cursor, ElevenLabs, Sierra use AI is worth a skim.
📚 Must-Read: Ramp’s cofounder Karim Atiyeh wrote a post on why we all need to take more asymmetric risk in life. He’s spot on.
🎙️Must-Listen: Steve Ballmer went on the acquired pod and talked about a lot of things, including how he makes $1B per year in dividends.
💬 Founder Quote: “You don’t need permission to build something great.” Alexis Ohanian, Reddit Founder
🔦 Reader Spotlight
💬 Robylon AI - Dinesh Goel is working on an agentic AI platform designed to streamline customer support and business operations
👨 Dad’s First Step - Joe Davini is building a pocket guide to modern fatherhood for new fathers
👪 Family Legacy Files - Karl Schnitzer is building a service that helps families preserve and pass on their most important wisdom, values, and instructions across generations
🌎 The US LLC - Ajay Sankar has launched a platform that makes it easy to launch your U.S. company from anywhere in the world.
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Fish Football
Worried that your goldfish might be getting bored? Want to give them something to enjoy in their downtime (which they had a lot of)?
Introducing Fish Football™ - the world’s first underwater soccer kit for fish. Complete with a tiny goal, a little ball, and absolutely no understanding of the offside rule. It’s the best way to keep your goldfish in tip-top shape.
Fish Football™ – where your goldfish can win the golden boot.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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