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- Startup Ideas #436: Hackathons, Junior Devs...
Startup Ideas #436: Hackathons, Junior Devs...
Plus From $1M Dinner Bet to $6.2B Fintech Empire
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as important as Google not being forced to sell Chrome 👀
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:
💡 Hoppin’ on the hackathon trend
📈 The changing demographics of the developer landscape
🛠️ How to find viral app ideas using TikTok
🤑 From $1M dinner bet to $6.2B fintech empire
🍻 Combining golf and beer pong to make the ultimate game
💻 Hopin for Hackathons
Hack yeah!
Available domain: Hackflow.ai
The Problem: Remember hackathons? Those caffeine-fueled, 24-hour coding sprints that birthed ideas like Facebook’s “Like” button? Well, they’re back. But this time, it’s not just startups. Over 80% of Fortune 100 companies are now running internal hackathons to drive innovation. The problem? Most are still managing them with a messy patchwork of Slack channels, Zoom links, and Trello boards. It’s chaotic, hard to scale, and nearly impossible to track ROI or impact. So as the hackathon renaissance goes corporate, companies need a dedicated platform to manage the entire process, from idea to execution. Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
In a line: An all-in-one platform for companies to run, manage, and measure the impact of their internal and external hackathons.
Product:
🚀 Companies can create a branded event page, set the theme and challenges, and manage registrations.
🤝 An AI-powered matchmaking feature helps employees find teammates with complementary skills from different departments.
✅ The platform contains integrated tools for teams to brainstorm, manage tasks, and submit their final projects, all within the platform.
📊 A streamlined judging workflow and a powerful analytics dashboard are used to track engagement, project quality, and long-term business impact.
Business Model: Pay per hackathon based on the number of participants
End Goal: Get acquired by a company in this space like Devpost for a 6x - 8x revenue multiple
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😵 Bad Passwords Kill Startups
As a founder, you're used to taking risks. But some risks just aren’t worth it - like leaving your company exposed to weak or reused passwords.
That's because just one leaked password can nuke your business. It’s not worth the risk.
That's why smart teams (and even dumb teams like ours) use 1Password, the industry leader in password management. It keeps your credentials safe, your team in sync, and your business protected.
Take big swings with your product, not with your security.
🧑💻 The Junior Developer Apocalypse
The Trend: Everyone's talking about how AI will create new jobs for developers. But here's what they're not telling you: AI is quietly eating the bottom rung of the developer ladder. Data from Brynjolfsson, Chandar, and Chen shows that since 2022, hiring of developers aged 22-25 has crashed by over 20%, while developers over 35 have grown by 25%. Why? Because AI tools can now handle the grunt work that used to be perfect training ground for junior devs. Companies would rather hire one senior developer with AI superpowers than three junior developers who need hand-holding.
Opportunities:
AI-Proof Junior Bootcamp: A training program that teaches new developers the skills AI can't replicate—system design, stakeholder communication, and complex problem-solving.
Human-AI Collaboration Platform: A service that helps junior developers learn to work alongside AI tools effectively, positioning them as "AI whisperers" rather than competing with the machines.
📱 How to Find Viral App Ideas Using TikTok
The Tool: TikTok is an amazing app idea discovery tool. How? By using their Creator Search Insights feature to reveal trending topics with millions of searches. Here's how to find these viral trends yourself.
Step-by-step:
Open the TikTok app on your device (I know you have it installed) and go to search at the top right
Type “creator searches insights” into the search bar
Browse trending searches or start your own searches to find things that are trending
Check if there’s a dominant app relating to a trending area. If there isn’t, go and build it
📈 From 0 to 30k subscribers in just 8 months
Simon Coton grew his AI automation YouTube channel from 0 to 30k subscribers in just 8 months. How? By posting 3 automation workflow demos a week, recorded and edited automatically in Tella.
Today, Simon:
Generates >$15k per month with a private Skool community.
Saves $1500/month since firing his video editor
Scaled production from 1 to 3 videos/week, with no extra staff
So if you’re a founder looking for a sign to start investing in video, this is it.
Check out Tella today and get 30% off for 12 months
💳 From $1M Dinner Bet to $6.2B Fintech Empire
The Idea: Back in 2015, Lucy Liu (no, not that Lucy Liu) sat down for dinner at a restaurant in Melbourne with two university friends complaining about expensive coffee cup imports. Jack Zhang and Max Li were bleeding money on foreign exchange fees for their side-hustle coffee shop. But Jack had a crazy idea: what if they could build a better cross-border payments system? He was looking for $500,000 to get started. Lucy, a then 25-year-old investment banker on a career break, made a decision that would change everything. She offered double…$1 million…and wired it to Jack's personal account within a week. That dinner conversation launched Airwallex.
The Execution:
2016: The team founded Airwallex and became first Australian startup accepted into Mastercard's Start Path accelerator program.
2017: Built platform superseding SWIFT's 1970s payment system with real-time, transparent cross-border transactions.
2018: Secured $13M Series A from Tencent, Sequoia Capital China, and Mastercard within 18 months of launch.
2019-2021: Expanded from payments to business accounts, expense management, and multi-currency cards.
2022-2024: Grew to 150,000+ customers including Brex, Rippling, and AfterPay, reaching $500M+ revenue.
2025: Closed a $300M Series F at a $6.2B valuation with Blackbird Ventures, bringing the total raised to $1.2B. Airwallex is approaching decacorn status.
The lesson? Sometimes the best investments often come from backing people who are personally frustrated enough to fix broken systems everyone else just tolerates.
🔍️ Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: This 18 year old built a canvas UI for LLMs. Baller.
🎁 Free Resource: Check out these 10 pro-level prompting techniques for LLMs
📚 Must-Read: How to find the perfect name for your company (from a guy who’s named 4,000 of them)
📰 Headline: Scale AI is suing a former employee and rival Mercor
💬 Founder Quote: "How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top." Yvon Chouinard (Patagonia founder)
🔦 Reader Spotlight
📌 Flippost: Becky is building a tool that makes Pinning incredibly fast and easy for Pinterest content creators
📂AI Renamer: Irem is building a tool to rename files based on what’s inside them
🔍 Kosmik: Paul is building a visual research app that transforms your research workflow.
🧳 Triplyte: Kenan is working on this startup offers a frugal travel AI assistant that crafts personalized itineraries
💼 Proism: Jolly is working on a platform that automates the process of job searching
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: PutterBall
Are you a beer pong wizard? Ever wondered if you could combine your beer pong abilities with your impeccable golf skills?
Introducing PutterBall™, the 12-foot putting green that turns any backyard into a country club mixed with a frat party.
PutterBall™ - putting the “tee” in tipsy
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
Before you go just a few public service announcements:
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See you soon,
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