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- Startup Ideas #427: Hot Takes, Gut Health Clinics...
Startup Ideas #427: Hot Takes, Gut Health Clinics...
Plus From Selling Sunglasses to a $2.2B Exit
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as Google’s cringey Pixel launch event 😬
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:
💡 Turning hot takes into cold hard cash
📈 The trend sweeping South-East Asia right now
🛠️ How to use AI for financial modelling
🤑 From selling sunglasses to a $2.2B exit
🍻 The ultimate underwater propulsion vehicle
🔥 Crowdsourced Hot Takes Newsletter
Hot Takes, Cold Truths
Available domain: Perspexity.com
The Opportunity: TBPN is the biggest thing in Silicon Valley right now. The show is great, we’re big fans, and recently they shared some cool insights in their newsletter. They asked 5 heavy-hitters (including Bryan Johnson and Nic Carter) to give their thoughts on whether jobs would disappear overnight or fade slowly, which they then shared. We think this is a phenomenal concept. In fact, it’s such a great concept we think someone should turn it into a newsletter. Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
In a line: A weekly newsletter where you ask founders or business leaders for their take on an important question and share their takes with readers
Product:
You sign up to an ESP and create your newsletter (using Beehiiv of course)
You reach out to influential voices in the tech or business space asking them some big questions e.g. When will we reach AGI, are we in an AI bubble etc.
You send out a weekly edition where you share the responses to one of these questions from the different thought leaders polled
Business Model: Sponsored placements in each issue + premium membership for archive/search/tools
End Goal: Potential acquirers include Substack/Morning Brew/Axios/HubSpot, LinkedIn, or X. Target 4–6× revenue once brand and data moat are established.
Rate this idea: |
💰️ Don’t Miss the $10M Tax Break You Probably Qualify For
Afino is built for founders who need real finance help. They're a Slack-connected, AI-powered finance team that handles bookkeeping, tax prep, R&D credits, and fractional CFO support. Total game changer if you’re still winging it with spreadsheets.
They also help founders qualify for QSBS, a massive tax break that could save you up to $10M+ when you exit.
Half Baked has partnered with Afino to offer a free QSBS check and one year of free corporate taxes for the first 5 companies that claim it.
🧬 The Gut Health Clinic Explosion
The Trend: Southeast Asia has recently become a hotspot for gut health clinics. With rising rates of digestive issues, food intolerances, and lifestyle-related conditions, consumers are flocking to these specialized clinics that offer microbiome testing, personalized diets, and probiotic therapies. We think these are gonna start popping up more and more in the USA. Just a gut feeling we have…
Opportunities:
Gut Health Diagnostic Kits: Direct-to-consumer stool and microbiome tests with actionable, clinic-level insights.
Microbiome Supplements Brand: Probiotics, prebiotics, and postbiotics customized from clinic test results.
💹 How to Use AI for Financial Modelling
The Tool: Every startup founder at some stage finds themselves deep in Excel building a financial model for their business. Maybe it’s a forecast for investors to look at, or a DCF (Discounted cash flow) model as part of a valuation. How can you tell it’s a startup’s model? Revenue is always going up and to the right. Here’s how you can use AI to speed up the process.
Step-by-step:
Go to Elkar and install their Excel add-in or their Google Sheet add-on, choose your poison
Prompt Elkar to create your model (similar to ChatGPT). You could even use ChatGPT to craft your prompt.
Once your model is created make any changes you like and you can use the extension for error checking etc.
Try it out (this isn’t sponsored btw)
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💳 From Selling Sunglasses to a $2.2B Exit
The Idea: Back in 2010, Swedish entrepreneur Jacob de Geer (left) had a problem. His ex-wife was selling sunglasses and couldn’t accept card payments at a small market stall. At the time, Europe’s card payment systems were locked down by banks and hardware providers. Inspired by Square in the U.S., Jacob saw a huge gap in Europe, where chip-and-PIN and EMV standards made it more complicated than just swiping a magstripe. His solution? A tiny mobile card reader that anyone could plug into a smartphone to take payments instantly. This was the idea for iZettle.
The Execution:
2010: Jacob (ex-TradeDoubler, ex-PayPal Europe) teamed up with Magnus Nilsson and they founded iZettle in Stockholm. They hacked together the first dongle-style card reader that could handle chip cards - a key differentiator from Square.
2011: Launched publicly in Sweden, one of the world’s earliest mass deployments of mobile point-of-sale (mPOS). Immediately hit a nerve with small businesses who had never accepted cards before.
2012–2014: Raised funding from Index Ventures, Creandum, Greylock, MasterCard, American Express, and others. Expanded across Europe and into Latin America. Became known as the “Square of Europe.”
2015: Hit 100,000+ merchants. Launched a contactless card reader, just in time for the wave of NFC payments (Apple Pay, Google Pay).
2017: Raised $63M at a ~$500M valuation, doubling down on financial products (loans, invoicing, business analytics).
2018: Planned to go public, but just before IPO day PayPal swooped in and acquired iZettle for $2.2 billion, PayPal’s largest-ever acquisition at the time.
iZettle is an incredible example of the “geo-arbitrage” playbook that we talk about a lot. Take something that’s working in one market, then bring it to another. It’s one of many ways you can win.
🔍️ Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: This site for discovering AI prompts is super cool
📰 Headline: Manus AI is forecasting $90m of ARR
📚 Must-Read: 17 things Sam Altman wishes someone had told him.
🎟️ Event: Bolt are giving away $5K in cash prizes to whoever people who build cool sites on their platform. Get the bag!
💬 Founder Quote: “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.” Jack Dorsey (Square/Twitter)
🔦 Reader Spotlight
🔗 Rizz.farm: Fred Wu is building a lead gen tool for Reddit that focuses on helping instead of selling, to build long-lasting organic traffic.
🤝 LifeWork: Jay Runner is working on a platform that connects organizations and candidates through open feedback, enhancing the hiring process for both job seekers and recruiters.
🎭 Sitchat: Hritik Gupta is working on an interactive storytelling platform that allows users to participate in their favorite shows through immersive group chats with AI characters.
🖥️ Zlytch: Kristijan Petek is working on a slick no-code website builder.
📧 MXtoAI: Harsha is working on a platform to automate any email workflow with AI.
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: SeaBike
Ready to take your biking to a whole new domain?
Meet the SeaBike™, the revolutionary underwater bicycle that lets you cycle beneath the waves. It’s just like a road bike, except you’re dodging sharks instead of cars.
SeaBike™ - it’s making waves.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
Before you go just a few public service announcements:
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