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- Startup Ideas #416: Lore, Billboards...
Startup Ideas #416: Lore, Billboards...
Plus From $0 to $10M ARR in 2 Years
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as hotly anticipated as OpenAI launching GPT-5 tomorrow 😱
If you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked, you can check them out on our website.
Let’s goooo 🚀
In today’s edition:
💡 Taking an online trend…offline
📈 Why tech is embracing an old school ad platform
🛠️ How Tom Bilyeu uses AI for market research
🤑 From $0 to $10M ARR in 2 years
🍻 An incredible product that will change your life
🃏 Lore Card Game
Lored of the lies
Available domain: Goodlored.com
The Opportunity: The word “lore” may be a surprise frontrunner for 2025’s “word of the year”. But why has a word that’s been around for hundreds of years suddenly become so popular? Well yt’s because over the last few months a single tweet with a simple ask to “share a piece of lore about yourself” has gone mega viral. Like it got 1.2B views viral. Billions. With a B. Since then similar tweets have gained hundreds of millions of more views, proving that humans really do love sharing stories about themselves. Which got us thinking…this is the perfect premise of a party game, right? Think Cards Against Humanity, but based on lore. Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
In a line: A cards-against-humanity-style party card game where players bluff and banter with pieces of lore about their lives
Product:
👤 In each round a rotating Lore Lord begins by pulling a prompt card e.g. Share a piece of dating lore about yourself
🎴 Each player then shares a piece of lore about themselves based on the prompt. This can either be true, but each player also receives 6 - 8 cards with ideas for lies they can tell based on the different prompts
😆 At the end of each round the Lore Lord picks the best story, 1 point if it’s made up, 2 if it’s a real story (to encourage sharing real stories)
Business Model: Sell as a $25–$30 physical card game, with optional $5–$10 expansion packs or app upsells.
End Goal: Exit to a party game publisher (like Hasbro, Exploding Kittens, What Do You Meme) for a 4–6x revenue multiple
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🛣️ The Resurgence of Billboard Ads
The Trend: Billboards are back, baby. Whether it’s American Eagle with Sydney Sweeney or seemingly every tech company in Silicon Valley, brands are rediscovering the power of old-school outdoor ads. Why? Because they work. Studies show they deliver 55% brand recall on average and generate a 6x return per dollar of ad spend on average. This means that while marketing budgets are shrinking across the board, billboard spending is climbing. Oh and if a billboard ad is good enough, it gets snapped and shared online, giving it a second life. Every marketer’s dream.
Opportunities:
Programmatic Billboard Marketplace: Let SMBs book billboard time by the hour or day, paying only for high-traffic periods.
AI Billboard Analytics: A tool that tracks attention, footfall, and conversions using cameras and computer vision.
🔍 How Tom Bilyeu Uses AI for Market Research
The Tool: Tom Bilyeu sold his company Quest Nutrition for $1B back in 2019. And what’s he up to these days? Well he’s in the weeds figuring out the best prompting techniques to get the most out of AI. I’d probably be sipping muay thais on a beach if I were him, but hey, each to their own. Anyway, here’s his mega prompt for getting AI to do world class market research.
Step-by-step:
Go to ChatGPT or whatever model you like to use
Insert this prompt, adding your own inputs for your product, audience and problem.
Use the market research generated to validate your startup idea
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📱 From $0 to $10M ARR in 2 Years
The Idea: Kenneth Schlenker grew up in the French Alps, surrounded by mountains and a slower pace of life. But after a career in tech (including a stint at Google…ooh la la) he became hyper‑aware of how smartphones were hijacking attention. So he decided to build a tool that would create “productive friction” with our devices, nudging people to stay focused without feeling like they were being punished. That was the beginning of Opal.
The Execution:
2020: Kenneth founded Opal in Paris with the mission to help people reclaim focus. He builds a scrappy MVP that blocked distracting apps and lets users “earn gems” for staying offline.
2021: Early traction came via organic TikTok and Twitter virality in the digital well‑being community. Kenneth built a tiny remote team (fewer than 5 people) and began conversations with Apple about accessing private Screen Time APIs.
Late 2022: Opal launched publicly on iOS as one of the first apps with official Apple Screen Time API access. Users loved the playful “intent checks” that asked why they want to open Instagram at 2 a.m.
2023: Growth accelerated through community‑driven marketing and newsletter shoutouts from productivity influencers. ARR crossed $5M with a team of just 11 people.
Early 2025: Opal closed its Series B, hit 10M ARR, and cemented its position as the go‑to focus app for iPhone users.
Kenneth’s story proves that these days, tiny teams can accomplish great things over short periods of time. You just need to find the right idea to work on.
🔍️ Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: Google’s AI coding agent Jules is now out of beta
🚨 Raise Alert: Endex, an AI agent that lives inside Excel, just raised $14M and launched today.
📚 Must-Read: Somebody leaked 50+ ranking factors Perplexity uses to evaluate and rank content. Baller move.
✖️ Trending Tweet: The YC recommendations on how to spend your 20s in the AI era
💬 Founder Quote: “Most of the work in a startup is not glamorous. It’s just refusing to quit.” Noah Kagan (AppSumo Founder)
🔦 Reader Spotlight
🎨 SatoshiWall: Peter Schuetz is working on a site where users can purchase and personalize a pixel block on a digital Bitcoin Wall of Fame
🔑 KeyHaven: Thanawat Thomas is working on a platform that provides secure management, rotation, and analytics for API keys
🎶 Binauro: Tim Ofenbach is creating binaural beats for focus, sleep, meditation, or relaxation with a user-friendly online generator.
📚 Fisherloop: Arne is creating interactive audiobooks that facilitate language learning through reading foreign books while improving pronunciation and grammar.
🤖 Method: Amogh Reddy is working on this ai-powered tool helps engineering and product teams autonomously turn meetings into structured specs and actionable tasks
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Hands-free Umbrella
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Hands-free Umbrella™ – let it rain.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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