Startup Ideas #400: Screen Distortions, Spiritual Apps...

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas more valuable than the rights to the Fyre Festival (which were just sold on eBay) 👀 

If you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked, make sure you check them out on our website.

Let’s goooo 🚀 

In today’s edition:

• 💡 A drastic solution to a generational problem

• 📈 The spirituality x tech combination

• 🛠️ Using AI to estimate your startup’s market size

• 🤑 The $500M background removal tool

• 🍻 An area that’s ripe for disruption

📱 Screen Distorting Cover

Pane pains

The Problem: We talk about phone addiction a lot at Half Baked. Why? Because it’s one of the defining problems of our world today. It makes me think of Bonnie Ware, a palliative care nurse who famously wrote “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” back in 2011, which captured her patients’ biggest regrets from their lives. I believe that one of our generation’s biggest regrets will be how much time we spent on our phones. So it’s time to get drastic here. Screen time limiting apps can work, until you decide to shut them off. But practical solutions can work well. Studies have shown for example that using a grayscale filter can reduce screen time substantially. So why not take this to the extreme? Here’s what we’re thinking.

The Solution:

• In a line: A thin screen cover that combines with an app to introduce a gentle optical distortion to your phone screen to prevent long usage

• Product:

  • 📱 The customer buys and applies the ultra-thin, micro-lensed film cover to their phone screen

  • ⤵️ They also download an accompanying app which adds additional effects that make the phone uncomfortable to look at

  • ⏱️ After 5–10 minutes of continuous use, the pattern gently fatigues the user’s eyes and induces the beginning of a headache

  • 🔄 This encourages the user to keep their screen time to a minimum, but allowing them to keep their phone with all of its functionality

• Business Model: One-time hardware sale for $20 - $30 plus a free app

• End Goal: Get acquired by a major accessory manufacturer for a 7–10× revenue multiple.

🖥️ How to Use Framer to Validate Your Startup Idea

Startup ideas are exciting (we would know), but execution starts with validation. Here's how to use Framer to test if your idea has real demand (Using a past Half Baked idea as an example, “Peloton for Pickleball”):

1. Brand it: Give your product a name and a visual identity

2. Mock it up: Design a few simple visuals or product mockups.

3. Build fast: Use Framer to create a slick, responsive landing page. No code needed.

4. Drive traffic: Run ads to the page and see how many sign-ups or pre-orders you get

Start validating with Framer today.

♎ Spiritual Apps

The Trend: Generally speaking, technology and spirituality don’t go too well together. Except for that fact that this app genre has exploded in popularity recently. Take Starcrossed, an astrology-based dating app that became a 70k MRR business in 90 days. Or Copia, a manifestation app, which passed 10k downloads in just 30 days after going viral on TikTok. Maybe the founder manifested that success? Or it was written in the stars. Who knows.

Opportunities:

• Manifestation Coaching Network: Create a marketplace connecting users with certified manifestation coaches who deliver custom goal-setting programs

• Crystal Subscription Box: A monthly delivery of hand-selected crystals keyed to users’ astrological transits

📊 Using AI to Estimate Market Size (TAM, SAM, SOM)

The Tool: When starting a company, figuring out the size of the market you’re operating in is key. Here’s how you can use AI to do exactly that and estimate the TAM, SAM and SOM of your business.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to ChatGPT or your favorite LLM

2. Research the market you’re working in to find out the total number of users in the market and their willingness to pay

3. Use the following prompt:

   “Estimate the market size for [Industry] in [Region]:

   Total possible users: [X]

   Willingness-to-pay: [$Y/year]

   Provide TAM, SAM, and SOM with all of your assumptions.”

4. Cross-reference the result with other LLMs and from other sources to ensure it’s correct

Try it out

📦️ Tariffs Got You Tense? Take Back Control With Direct Shipping and Tariff Deferment

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 $500M Background Removal Tool

The Idea: Back in 2019, Matthieu Rouif, a former GoPro employee, was haunted by the countless hours he spent manually cutting out backgrounds in images in his job. That’s why he teamed up with machine-learning engineer Eliot Andres to automate the grunt work of image editing. So, in a tiny Paris apartment, they decided on their mission: “Studio-quality photos for everyone.” Borrowing ideas from Matthieu’s days building apps for après-ski outfits and Eliot’s research on semantic pixel segmentation, they started plotting their build…a one-tap background-removal engine built on custom deep-learning models. This was the beginning of PhotoRoom.

The Execution:

• 2019: They launched the MVP, an iOS prototype that they built in two weeks, which let e-commerce sellers strip backgrounds and slap on white backdrops. Posted it on Product Hunt and sold into small Etsy shops.

• 2020: They expanded to Android and the web, hitting 1 million downloads by year’s end. Growth hacks included a Shopify app integration and DIY tutorials in creator forums.

• October 2021: Closed a $19 million Series A led by Balderton Capital to scale AI R&D, beef up mobile performance and expand the feature set of the product.

• 2022: They rolled out an API and “Instant Background” feature, generating custom scenes from text prompts. ARR surged to around $30 million.

• Mid 2023: Announced a $43 million Series B at a $500 million valuation to fuel global expansion and deepen API offerings

• 2024: Achieved $50 million ARR profitably, with a lean 50-person team distributed across Europe.

PhotoRoom’s story shows that nailing a niche need (fast, flawless background removal) and leaning into rapid, user-driven iteration can turbocharge growth and attract major capital.

🔍️ Founder Finds

• 🛠️ AI Tool: This tool can build the coolest pitch decks of all time

• 📚 Must-Read: Good read on how to avoid OpenAI killing your business

• 🎙️Must-Listen: 5 AI Experts Reveal The Best & Worst Case Scenarios

• 🏷️ Founder Discount: Early-stage founders get 1 year free of Framer’s Launch Plan (worth $900) by mentioning "Half Baked" in the partner field. T&Cs apply.

• 💬 Founder Quote: “Building a company is like hiking up a mountain in the fog; you only see the next few steps, and that’s how you make progress.” Logan Green, co-founder of Lyft

🔦 Reader Spotlight

• 📝 Reviewdog: Kelvin Wong is helping local businesses manage and grow online reviews all in one place.

• 💬 Queryfast: Jakob Rosen is building a product that lets teams chat with data for instant, no-code insights.

• 📈 F2Insights: Landon Elscott is building a job search CRM to track apps, automate follow-ups, and guide smarter decisions.

• 🤖 AutoAnalyst: Arslan Shahid is creating an open-source AI data scientist with a planner to manage multi-agent tasks.

• 🔍 SEO Goldmines: Kishor K is boosting traffic by optimizing old blog posts and ChatGPT content for SEO.

P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!

🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Banana Phone

• Sick of your phone being just another cold, black rectangle? Ever think that this is an area that’s ripe for innovation?

• Introducing the Banana Phone™: the Bluetooth handset that turns your smartphone into a potassium-powered hotline. It pairs seamlessly with any device—no slippery slopes here—and offers crystal-clear calls, so you can finally peel away from group chats in style.

• Banana Phone™ – the most appeeling deal in mobile communication

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

👋 That’s All Folks!

Before you go just a few public service announcements:

• Have an idea you want feedback on? DM me to discuss it or book in for Office Hours here.

• Looking to sponsor Half Baked? Just fill out this form and we’ll get back to you asap.

See you soon,

John and Darragh | The Half Baked Team