- Half Baked
- Posts
- Startup Ideas #444: Optimizely for X, FDEs...
Startup Ideas #444: Optimizely for X, FDEs...
Plus From Family Health Crises to $7B Telehealth Empire
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as often as OpenAI execs are saying we’re in an AI bubble 🫧
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:
💡 Productizing a piece of Steven Bartlett’s video strategy
📈 WTF are AI FTEs?
🛠️ Using AI and Parasite SEO to Rank on Google
🤑 From family health crises to $7B telehealth empire
🍻 The spray to allay our biggest fear
🖼️ Optimizely for Thumbnails
Thumb wars
Available domain: Clickpick.ai
The Problem: When it comes to video content, your thumbnail is everything. It can be the difference between 1,000 views and 1 million views, between a flop and going mega viral. Which is why creators spend so much time and money on thumbnail testing. Take Steven Bartlett, the podcaster. His team uses Facebook and YouTube ads to A/B test up to 100 different thumbnail variations and captions for every single episode of The Diary of a CEO. Which got me thinking, why not make this process more accessible to the masses? Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
In a line: A platform that A/B tests short or long form video thumbnails at scale using simulated audience behavior + paid ad traffic.
Product:
🚀 A user uploads a video + multiple thumbnail variations, then sets their budget for testing.
🎭 The platform simulates user behavior across TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Reels using AI users.
🔁 The user can also test thumbnails using ad budgets across these platforms to see which performs best.
📊 The dashboard shows CTR, engagement, and makes recommendations so users find the best thumbnail variation
Business Model: SaaS subscription + pay-per-test (similar to how you’d spend on ads).
End Goal: Sell to a creator economy platform (YouTube, Adobe, Canva, TubeBuddy) or large media/advertising agencies for a high multiple on creator SaaS (10–15x ARR).
Rate this idea: |
😵 The Old BFCM Playbook Is Dead. Here’s What Works Now.
The old BFCM playbook is dead. Between rising costs, shifting platform performance, and tougher acquisition, you can’t rely on guesswork or last-minute tactics. Success now depends on leveraging AI to analyze trends, cut inefficiencies, and act faster.
Triple Whale's Ultimate BFCM Prep Guide delivers what you need to stay ahead:
H1 2025 benchmarks from 10K+ ad accounts
BFCM 2024 insights and how to evolve your strategies this year
90-day checklist for campaign preparation and optimization
AI-powered workflows to drive more efficient growth across your entire brand
Make AI your edge — and make BFCM 2025 your most profitable yet. Start prepping with Triple Whale.
Get the guide
⏩️ The FDE Playbook AI Startups are Following
The Trend: Over the last two decades, Palantir pioneered and popularized the “forward deployed engineer” role in companies. These engineers embedded themselves inside a single customer’s company, ensuring they got the most out of Palantir’s software. Well today startups have figured out that, in order to build what companies actually want, they need to copy the Palantir playbook in the AI age. That’s why AI forward deployed engineers roles are some of the hottest jobs on the market right now. And don’t take our word for it, take YC’s.
Opportunities:
FDE-as-a-Service: A consulting firm that provides Forward Deployed AI Engineers on-demand to help companies implement AI without hiring full-time specialists.
AI Implementation Bootcamp: Training programs that teach traditional software engineers how to become Forward Deployed AI Engineers, focusing on enterprise integration rather than model development.
📊 Using AI and Parasite SEO to Rank on Google
The Tool: Parasite SEO. It sounds like something you catch after eating some dodgy Taco Bell, but it’s actually one of the easiest ways to skyrocket your site’s authority. The trick? You “piggyback” off the credibility of established websites to rank for ultra-competitive keywords. And with AI, pulling it off has never been simpler.
Step-by-step:
Get a free trial for Semrush or Ahrefs and find keywords where the Keyword Difficulty (KD) is under 10
Open Perplexity Pages (for creating articles) and use your keyword as the title (but make it juicy).
Let AI draft an article, then edit the piece and add your expertise.
Hit publish and promote the article quickly in the first 24h.
Submit the article to Google Search Console and watch the traffic come in
Check out Perplexity Pages
❌ Start Blocking Ads Right Now
Ever noticed that when you view an item on Amazon or eBay, for the next month, all you see is the same repeated ads? That’s because advertisers are tracking us. All the time.
That's why so many of us use ad blockers, like Total Adblock.
With Total Adblock from Total Security you can:
Say goodbye to pop-ups, autoplay video ads on YouTube™, and banners on Facebook
Clear your browsing history, cookies, and cache in one click
Enjoy smoother browsing and improved page load times
Mute any annoying notifications
If you’re tired of the clutter and want a cleaner, faster, and more private browsing experience, give Total AdBlock a try. Half Baked readers get 80% off.
💊 From Family Health Crises to $7B Telehealth Empire
The Idea: Zachariah Reitano is no stranger to healthcare crises. His father survived four heart attacks and a stroke, his mother battled a neurological disease and his sister fought cancer twice while managing an autoimmune disease and brain tumor. Zachariah himself underwent heart surgery at 18. The only reason his family survived was because his father was a physician who could navigate the broken healthcare system. So after botching an internship and selling Mexican food from his apartment, Zachariah realized he could put "his dad in everyone's home through software." He wanted to make the caring, accessible healthcare his physician father provided available to everyone, starting with the health conditions people were too embarrassed to discuss with doctors. This was the beginning of Ro.
The Execution:
2017: Zach founded Ro with co-founders Saman Rahmanian and Rob Schutz, raised $3.1M focusing on sexual health and hair loss.
2018: Expanded into multiple health conditions, completed Series A and B funding rounds with explosive user growth.
2019: Raised $35M debt facility, launched $6M credit card program for TV advertising, explosive growth and enterprise value creation.
2020: Raised $200M Series C, expanded to $90M revolving credit facility during pandemic telehealth boom.
2021: Closed $500M Series D, scaled credit facility to $125M, acquired Workpath and Kit for B2B expansion.
2022: Reached $7B valuation by March, now serving 25+ health conditions with 700+ employees.
2025: Operates comprehensive telehealth platform covering mental health, fertility, metabolic health, with nationwide pharmacy delivering 1,000+ medications.
The lesson? Sometimes the most powerful business ideas come from personal pain. Zachariah's family health crises taught him that accessible healthcare shouldn't require having a doctor in the family…it should be available to everyone through technology.
🔍️ Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: VEED just released Fabric 1.0, the world’s first AI talking video model.
🎁 Free Guide: Here’s a short guide to building your first AI agent (if you want to give it a bash).
📚 Must-Read: Here are the 9 most talked about startups after YC Demo Day.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Want to see the the entire google SEO algorithm in 1 screenshot? Here you go.
💬 Founder Quote: “In startups, speed wins. The biggest risk is moving too slow, not making the wrong decision.” David Cancel (Drift)
🔦 Reader Spotlight: Meet Vishvendra
What are you building? I’m Vishvendra, and I’m building an AI-native compliance management system called NozelPay, a simple way to help businesses follow laws and regulations.
How did you come up with the idea? It started at home, growing up around our family business. I saw firsthand how payroll struggles and messy compliance drain energy. With today’s tech, I feel compelled to solve it once and for all.
Biggest challenge right now? Right now, it’s about cracking the toughest part: understanding core compliance flows, connecting them with AI, and of course, finding those first customers and testers.
How can Half Baked readers help? Here’s where you come in. If you’re in this field and open to sharing insights, I’d love to connect, no matter the industry.
Connect with Vishvendra: Vishvendra on LinkedIn
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Shark Repellent Spray
Find yourself regularly swimming with sharks? Spent enough time watching shark week to know how risky that can be?
Introducing Shark Repellent Spray™ - Just spritz yourself before swimming and take comfort in the fact that you’re totally 100% safe from any danger. Ideal.
Shark Repellent Spray™ - because chum is for chumps.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
Before you go just a few public service announcements:
What did you think of today's edition? |
See you soon,
Reply