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- Startup Ideas #390: YC for BBs, Pay Per Crawl...
Startup Ideas #390: YC for BBs, Pay Per Crawl...
Plus From 0 to 10M Users in Four Years
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as crazy as a two year old business raising $150m at a $2B valuation 💸
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In today’s edition:
💡 Bringing YC’s model to another industry
📈 The beginning of the new PPC revolution
🛠️ How we use AI to generate logos
🤑 From 0 to 10M Users in 4 Years
🍻 You “butter” believe that this is a great idea
🥱 YC for Boring Businesses
Less flash, more cash(flow)
Available domain: Yieldcamp.co
The Problem: Here at Half Baked we love talking about tech, AI and all manner of “sexy” startups. But you may have noticed that we also have a soft spot for so-called “boring businesses”. HVAC, laundromats, mobile car washes, septic services. These businesses are low churn, high margin, AI-proof, cash cows that are completely overlooked by many entrepreneurs. Oh, and since an estimated $10 trillion in small business assets will change hands by 2030 as baby boomers retire, there’s never been a better chance to get into one of these businesses. But how do you actually go about this? Why isn’t there an accelerator guiding and investing in founders who want to go this route? We think there should be.
The Solution:
In a line: A startup accelerator for cash-flowing, “unsexy” small businesses empowering founders to start or acquire a cash-flowing business
Product:
🧾 Would-be founders apply online to the accelerator (completed in cohorts)
👥 They join an intensive 12-week bootcamp focused on how to start or acquire and operate a boring business
💰 Selected founders receive capital at the end of the program ($25K–$100K)
🏗️ Post-bootcamp support includes shared backend infrastructure (bookkeeping, scheduling, CRM), community mastermind groups, and ongoing capital access.
Business Model: Revenue share in each business funded + charge SaaS-style fees for backend infrastructure post-program.
End Goal: Sell to a large SMB roll-up fund or private equity group ideally at a 10–15x EBITDA multiple based on platform and portfolio synergies (they love when you talk about synergies)
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🛒 Build your Business. Your Way.
You don’t need a warehouse. You don’t need investors. You don’t need to know how to code.
All you need is an idea...and Shopify.
From your first product to your hundredth sale, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch, grow, and scale your business. Custom storefronts. Built-in payments. Inventory and shipping. All in one platform trusted by millions of entrepreneurs worldwide.
If you’ve been waiting for a sign to start, this is it. Start your store with a 3-day free trial, then it’s just $1/month for your first 3 months.
🤖 The Pay Per Crawl Revolution
The Trend: For years PPC has always referred to “Pay Per Click” on the web. But that could be about to change because of something Cloudflare announced just yesterday they’re calling “Pay Per Crawl”. The idea is pretty simple. AI bots are chewing through website data like it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet. So Cloudflare built a tool which allows website owners to choose whether these crawlers can access their material, and then they can set a price for access by charging AI bots per crawl. We’re in the early innings of this and it’s an area full of opportunity.
Opportunities:
Crawl Rights Broker: A B2B platform that connects publishers and AI companies to license crawling rights at scale, with prebuilt contracts.
Bot Negotiator: A chatbot or backend tool that negotiates crawl fees autonomously with AI companies trying to access your content.
🎨 How We Use AI to Generate Logos
The Tool: Here at Half Baked we generate new startup ideas everyday. And to make life even harder for ourselves we try to create brands and logos for each of these ideas, as I hope you’ve noticed. Now as much as I wish I could say we spend hours and days perfecting every pixel of each logo design, we just don’t have the resources to do that (yet). So we came up with a little process to help us design logos using AI. Here’s how you can do it too.
Step-by-step:
Go to ChatGPT (its image generation capabilities are great for this).
Paste in this prompt (put it in a Notion doc so you can copy it).
ChatGPT will come back and prompt you to give it the relevant data points it needs to generate the logo. The prompter becomes the promptee eh?
Download your logo.
🤖 Transform Your Business with Advanced A.I. and Automation
In 2025, A.I. should be your hardest-working employee. But how do you even being to integrate A.I. into your business effectively and efficiently?
That's why we've teamed up with BotBuilders to provide a free web class where you'll learn:
⏰ How to make A.I. work for you 24/7
🧠 6 killer ChatGPT tips, and
🤖 How to build a custom chatbot in 5 minutes.
The training is hosted by Matt Leitz, the founder of BotBuilders (a 3X consecutive Inc. 5000-winning company).
Claim your spot now and start turning AI into your unfair advantage.
✍️ From 0 to 10M Users in Four Years
Back in July 2020, OpenAI launched GPT-3 in beta. And for Paul Yacoubian (left), this was a life-changing moment. It completely blew his mind. So Paul started building MVPs of products on top of GPT-3 and sharing these products on Twitter. In fact he built and launched five different MVPs in this way in just 90 days. Why five? Well the fifth one took off. So he teamed up with Chris Lu as the product rocketed to 40,000 users in just 3 months. This was the beginning of Copy.ai.
The Execution:
October 2020: Copy.ai launched officially and hit #1 on Product Hunt.
November 2020: The business hit $2K MRR with users paying $3, then $5, then $10/month. Price elasticity showed the broader platform potential.
March 2021: The team raised $2.9M seed from Craft Ventures, Naval Ravikant, and Elad Gil.
August 2021: Copy hit $85K MRR and 250K+ users. Early growth was fuelled by Twitter, Reddit, and viral demos.
October 2021: Copy raised $11M Series A from Wing VC and leaned into SEO via 30+ lead magnet tools (e.g. a blog title generator).
2024: The team launched Copy.ai Workflows, AI automation for GTM teams and starts winning enterprise customers.
March 2024: Copy hit 10 million users in under four years.
The takeaway? One tweet can literally change your life. So if you’re building something, share it wherever you can, because you could be one post away form changing your life too.
🔍️ Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: Higgsfield Soul (which we covered previously) is now free for everyone to use. Go go go!
🎁 Free Resource: HubSpot is giving away 3 months of Perplexity Pro for free to our readers, grab it while you can!
📰 Headline: PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey are teaming up on Erebor, a digital bank built for crypto and tech startups.
📚 Must-Read: This Reddit post on YC’s Hidden Formula (100 Users, $100/Month, $10k MRR) is a great read.
💬 Founder Quote: “It’s easy to be a critic. It’s hard to be an entrepreneur.” John Mackey, Whole Foods Founder
🔦 Reader Spotlight
💡 IdeaFloat - Anthony Kirkham is building a tool to help founders validate their business ideas in minutes.
🧠 ADVYSOR - Alex West is building an AI co-founder product, guiding founders from idea to MVP launch and beyond.
📈 PocketQuant - Tristan is building an AI-powered investment research business. Nice.
📖 ThinkTotem - Claudio Carnino is building a platform which turns books into AI-driven conversations built for our screen-trained brains.
👪 AI for Busy Parents - Ian Krohnfeldt is creating a toolkit designed to help moms and dads lighten their mental load by putting AI to work in everyday life.
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Heated Butter Knife
Hate trying to spread rock hard butter on your toast every morning? Ever wish spreading it was less like chiseling marble and more like…well, spreading?
Introducing the Heated Butter Knife™. It’s exactly what it sounds like, and yes, it’s genius. This magic utensil heats up just enough to make your butter spreadable without turning it into a melty mess. Charges via USB too for ultimate convenience.
Heated Butter Knife™ - because life’s too short for torn toast.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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