Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as often as Windsurf gets acquired apparently 😆
If you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked, you can on our website.
Let’s goooo 🚀
In today’s edition:
💡 Transforming podcasts from passive to active experiences
📈 Explaining the biggest M&A trend in tech right now
🛠️ How to generate SEO optimized articles using AI
🤑 How a rain shower led to a +$50M exit
🍻 A new take on an old adage
Hear here!
Available domain: Castwave.co
The Problem: Everybody has a favorite podcast. Joe Rogan. Crime Junkies. My First Million. The Pen Addict of course (yes, a podcast about pens, don’t judge). But while podcasts are great they do have one huge shortcoming…interactivity. Listening to a podcast is a passive, one-way experience. Which got us thinking. What if you could transform podcasts into an interactive listening experience? Like guessing who the killer is during your favorite true crime podcast? Or answering polls on topics from the podcast? What about choosing what ad you want to listen to? The possibilities are endless. Here’s what we have in mind.
The Solution:
In a line: An interactive podcast player that transforms passive podcasts into interactive media experiences.
Product:
🎧 Users download the app or sign up on web, then import their favorite feeds
🔄 During playback, polls, quizzes, questions or other prompts pop up, synchronized with the episode
🧑🎨 The platform also includes a builder where podcasters can build other bespoke integrations specific to their audience and content
📈 Hosts can get live analytics on engagement spikes, poll results, and user feedback to shape future content
🛠️ Check out our little demo
Business Model: Freemium app, charge users a monthly subscription.
End Goal: Sell to major podcast platform like Spotify for a 7–10× revenue multiple.
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HubSpot for Startups has just launched The Next Big AIdea, a pitch competition built exclusively for early-stage AI companies.
Here’s what’s up for grabs:
💰 $50K in non-dilutive cash, $25K in AWS credits, 600K in Clay credits
📣 Global exposure through HubSpot’s network
🎤 A live pitch on stage at INBOUND 2025 in SF in front of 1,000+ investors
So if you're an early-stage, US-based AI startup, here's how to enter:
Download HubSpot’s free CRM here
Submit a 60 second video pitch
Deadline to apply is July 25th.
The Trend: Acquisitions have always been a cornerstone of capital markets. But of late, big tech acquisitions have been a little…funky. Years of pushback from the FTC has led to big tech companies “getting creative” in acquiring AI companies and their talent. Take Meta’s 49% investment in Scale AI (which included their CEO Alexandr Wang), or Google’s reverse acqui-hire of Character AI’s team. In fact Google just did the exact same thing with Windsurf, raiding the company of its top talent and leaving the remains to be acquired by Cognition AI. It’s war out there.
Opportunities:
AI Skill Valuation Engine: A data-driven tool that benchmarks an AI engineer’s skill level
AI Talent Tracker: A tool that tracks the movements of AI talent from role to role
The Tool: As we’ve said before, and despite what naysayers may say, SEO is still a vital traffic source for businesses these days. Here’s how you can use AI to write SEO optimized articles for any product in seconds.
Step-by-step:
Go to Zapier Agents to their SEO Optimized Article Generator and click on the “Use template” button
Click on the “Test Agent” button and follow the prompts, beginning with entering the URl of the product/website you want an article on
Check the article for any errors and export to Google Docs once ready
Recent tariffs have majorly delayed the selling season for DTC brands that waited for the tariff cuts or ran out of inventory.
And for the next 90 days, tariffs have been reduced, but this might not be enough time to get inventory where you need it, plus, you’re still dealing with a 30% tariff.
Portless is here to help. While competitors' inventory sits on a boat for 60-90 days, you could be:
Restocking best-sellers in 3-5 days
Freeing up more working capital
Paying tariffs only after customers pay you
Turn 6-week delays into 6-day deliveries directly from China.
Portless lets you take back control of your inventory and start leveraging tariff deferment today. Contact Portless today.
The Idea: Back in the summer of 2011, Adam Grossman (right) found himself stranded under a highway rest-stop awning with his girlfriend, soaked by an abrupt downpour. Frustrated that every weather app only showed a vague “40% chance of rain,” he dove into National Weather Service radar feeds on his laptop, determined to predict rainfall down to the very minute. He teamed up with fellow developer Jack Turner (and later engineer Jason LaPorte), and they sketched out a “now-casting” engine. A hyper-local, second-by-second forecast, that would tell you exactly when the rain would start, and stop, at your precise GPS location. This was the beginning of Dark Sky.
The Execution:
October 2011: They launched a Kickstarter campaign to validate demand. Backers funded the project within days, giving the team runway to build their prototype.
April 2012: The app debuted the iOS app at $3.99. The uncluttered interface featured a minute-by-minute precipitation chart, instantly standing out among other weather apps of that time.
2013–2015: They grew by courting developers, releasing a public API that powered dozens of third-party apps and websites. Word-of-mouth in tech blogs and a simple “embed our map” widget fueled organic adoption.
2016: The team rolled out an Android version with a freemium model (free basic forecasts plus a subscription tier for advanced alerts) expanding reach beyond Apple’s ecosystem.
2019: API usage hit tens of thousands of developers. Although they declined traditional VC rounds, they secured a small strategic investment to scale infrastructure.
March 31, 2020: Dark Sky was acquired by Apple for a reported $50M - $100M, with their technology folded into Apple’s native Weather app while retiring the Android and Wear OS editions.
Dark Sky is a textbook example of starting with a very specific problem you’ve experienced yourself, and solving it. Once you do, you can bet other people have experienced the same problem too. Find them, and you’re in business.
🛠️ AI Tool: This tool from Google can make your images speak. For real.
🎁 Free Resource: Every founder should be building a personal brand. Here’s a Twitter Growth Playbook to help you kickstart your growth journey!
📚 Must-Read: Michael Karnjanaprakorn’s (Skillshare Founder, now running Choop) newsletter Tings is really great. We’re huge fans of it at Half Baked!
✖️ Trending Tweet: This is why you need a quest in life.
💬 Founder Quote: “How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top”. Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia
💻 VibeTest: Caleb Eom is building a tool which measures people's ability to vibe code as a skillset.
🌍 Humbo: Anders Palm is building the IMDb of travel, helping users discover and share trips worldwide.
🤖 Inov-ai: Nixon Uiso is turning user feedback into structured insights for SaaS growth teams.
🐾 My Pawspective: Alex and Wilson are connecting pet parents with trusted sitters through AI-powered matching.
📺 USB Slideshow: Deepak PK is turning Android TVs into digital signage with photo, video, and music slideshows.
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
They say that the pen is mightier that the sword. But why should you have to choose between the two?
Introducing the Sword Pen™, the sleek stainless-steel writing instrument with a razor-sharp blade hidden beneath its cap, perfect for signing contracts or slashing open that stubborn envelope. Who knew note-taking could be so…cutting-edge?
The Sword Pen™ – because sometimes words need a little edge.
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