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- Startup Ideas #417: Big Tech Hunt, Joblessness...
Startup Ideas #417: Big Tech Hunt, Joblessness...
Plus Turning a Blog into a $30M Exit
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as GPT-5’s launch today (which we’re gonna talk about a lot here FYI) 🚀
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:
💡 An idea inspired by today’s big launch
📈 Why the college decision is trickier than ever
🛠️ How to create viral content using AI
🤑 Turning a blog into a $30M exit
🍻 How to get your beauty sleep anywhere, anytime
🚀 Product Hunt for Big Tech
Launch & order
Available domain: Shipradar.co
The Problem: It feels like new AI startups are launching and announcing new funding rounds every 20 minutes or so. But something that a lot of people are missing is the shipping speed of the incumbents. Big tech companies like Google, Meta, Perplexity and OpenAI (particularly relevant today) are launching new products and existing product updates at lightning speed. But trying to keep up with everything they’re churning out is basically impossible. For me, there are like 5 companies in the world that that I need to get updated on every time they ship something new. Sp why not turn this into a product? Here’s how.
The Solution:
In a line: A platform that tracks and delivers product launch updates from big tech companies you choose to follow.
Product:
🚀 Sign up and follow specific companies that you want to hear updates from (OpenAI, Apple, Notion, etc.)
🔼 Users upvote launches they’re excited about, and each listing gets a short AI-generated summary, links and screenshots
🧵 Every launch has a discussion thread for reactions, early demos, use cases, or dev commentary
Business Model: Free with companies paying to be featured
End Goal: Sell to a news outlet (TechCrunch, The Verge)or a market intel player (CB Insights, Crunchbase) for an 8–12x revenue multiple
Rate this idea: |
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🎓 College Grad Joblessness
The Trend: The college advantage is fading, especially for men, suggesting that a degree is no longer a guaranteed ticket to job security. Recent data shows that for the first time young male college graduates in the US (ages 22–27) are now facing the same unemployment rates as their non-college-educated peers, a sharp reversal from historical norms. And given the crazy of college these days, this makes the calculus on deciding to go about as difficult as the actual calculus math undergrads are studying. Yikes.
Opportunities:
College Decision App: An app that helps high school students (and their families) decide whether college is worth it for them
No Degree Job Board: A job board exclusively for roles that do not require college degrees but pay above $60k/year, sorted by state and skill level.
📈 How to Create Viral Content Using AI
The Tool: In 2025, content is king. But churning out high quality content on a super regular basis is tough. Trust us, we know. We miss the mark plenty. So why not use AI to help research trending topics and create viral video scripts and supporting assets to up your content game? Here’s how.
Step-by-step:
Go to Zapier’s Viral Content Creation Agent and set up all your permissions
Edit the prompt to compile the exact content you want to make and hit test agent
Approve the agent’s output which then gets posted in a Google Doc
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📝 Turning a Blog into a $30M Exit
The Idea: Back in 2015 Ben Halpern was a young Canadian developer who loved to code. But Ben didn’t just love to code, he loved writing about codint too. So he decided to start his own blog where he shared coding tutorials, tips and tricks, especially for beginners. And eventually this small action would snowball into a multi-million dollar exit a few years later. This is how he did it.
The Execution:
2015: Ben launched his personal dev blog, posting beginner-friendly articles and coding tutorials. He shared posts to Reddit and Hacker News to bring in his first readers.
2016: He rebranded the blog to Dev.to. Every post was cross-shared on Twitter with friendly commentary, building a tight-knit first 1,000 users.
2017: Ben built a simple MVP of user-generated posts and comments. A community started to form around positivity-first moderation (no Stack Overflow snark allowed).
2018: The blog hit 100,000 registered developers. Ben and his small team turned the underlying tech into Forem, an open-source platform for any niche community.
2020: Forem raised an $11M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz to scale Forem and Dev.to simultaneously
2021: Dev.to surpassed 700,000 members and 5M monthly visitors.
2022: Prosus (the parent company of Stack Overflow) acquired a majority stake in Forem for a rumored $20–30M, letting Ben and team continue running the community independently but giving them a nice payday. You live to see it.
All of which proves that, in startups, where you begin your journey and where it finishes can be worlds apart. So just begin, the rest will take care of itself.
🔍️ Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: GPT-5 launched earlier today. Nothing else in AI matters right now apart from this, so it’s worth watching the launch video.
✖️ Trending Tweet: This is a really great review of GPT-5.
📹 Must-Watch: Check out what GPT-5 can do inside Lovable now. This is gonna be fun.
🎙️ Must-Listen: In non-GPT-5 related news (shock horror gasp), Alex Hormozi went on My First Million and it’s a great listen.
💬 Founder Quote: “The greatest danger to a good plan is the dream of a perfect one” Reed Hastings, Co-founder of Netflix
🔦 Reader Spotlight
🔍 Jangoro: Isaak Smart is working on this platform enables businesses to gain deeper insights into customer thoughts and opinions
💸 Splitally: Yusuf Munir is working on this application simplifies group expense management
🎉 Pump Up Post: Alex Vanston is working on this startup allows you to celebrate each small victory by sharing your wins
🖋️ Forged: Ijon Kushta is working on a tool that enables users to create, sell, and monetize blogs, courses, and written guides using AI assistance.
🧠 Proread: Ayush Kanodia is working on this AI interface helps you explore topics in a hierarchical manner
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Portable Sleeping Pod
Ever wanted to nap in public, maybe on a plane, train or in an automobile (as a passenger obviously)? Maybe you’ve dreamed of dozing off in line at the DMV to kill time?
Introducing the SnoreShell™, a portable sleep pod you slap over your head to instantly mute the world. It's like noise-cancelling headphones, but for your entire existence. Just put it on and get transported to a world of pure bliss where sleep is just a few seconds away.
SnoreShell™ – tune out, nap on.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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