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- Startup Ideas #446: Stock Hotlines, Mortgage Help...
Startup Ideas #446: Stock Hotlines, Mortgage Help...
Plus From Squatting to Building a $6B Business
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as hotly anticipated as Meta’s new product launch today 👓️
A huge shoutout to Eric Chang who won our Shopify accelerator last week by building and launching Flavor Pump. You’re the GOAT Eric!
Let’s goooo 🚀
In today’s edition:
💡 An idea inspired by a single tweet
📈 Why 2025 is feeling very 2008 all of a sudden
🛠️ How to master responsive design in lovable
🤑 From squatting to building a $6B business
🍻 The ultimate gadget for at-home productivity
📞 Stock Expert Hotline
TickerTalk
Available domain: Duedill.co
The Opportunity: Everybody’s been talking about Opendoor lately. Why? Because there are some big changes happening at the business. Keith Rabois has become the company’s new Chairman and Kaz Nejatian, former Shopify COO, is taking over as CEO. These leadership changes have sent the stock soaring with more and more traders looking into the stock. One person interested in learning more about the stock was “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, who tweeted he would “pay $500/hour to speak to a experts on $OPEN. former employees, vendors, customers, etc”. Cool tweet Martin. Let’s turn it into a startup.
The Solution:
In a line: A platform that connects investors with verified experts who have insider knowledge (which is legal to share…chill out) about specific stocks they want to research.
Product:
🔍 Investors post requests like "Looking to pay $500/hour to speak with $NVDA former employees about AI chip demand" and the platform matches them with relevant experts.
✅ All experts are verified through LinkedIn, employment history, and professional references to ensure they actually have the claimed expertise and insider knowledge.
💰 Experts set their own hourly rates ($200-$2,000/hour) based on their seniority and knowledge depth, with the platform handling payments and scheduling.
📋 Built-in legal safeguards ensure all conversations stay within SEC guidelines, with clear boundaries on what can and cannot be discussed.
Business Model: 15% fee on all transactions
End Goal: Potential acquisition by financial data companies like Bloomberg or FactSet, or by retail trading platforms like Robinhood at a 8-12x revenue multiple.
Rate this idea: |
🚀 50 AI Prompts to Crush BFCM 2025
Black Friday / Cyber Monday can drive up to 40% of your annual revenue — but the difference between winning big and scrambling comes down to how fast you can turn data into decisions.
That’s why Triple Whale built this: 50 AI-ready prompts crafted for scaling ecommerce brands.
Inside, you’ll get:
✅ Prompts to analyze and optimize every stage of BFCM
✅ Step-by-step workflows that save you hours
✅ Automation tips with Triple Whale’s Moby to keep you ahead in real time
Skip the guesswork. Copy, paste, and let AI do the heavy lifting this peak season.
🏚️ Oh Boy…Here we go Again?
The Trend: Everyone's celebrating the "soft landing" and saying the economy is fine. But Google Trends is telling a slightly different story. Searches for "help with mortgage" have spiked back to 2008 levels, the same peak we saw during the financial crisis. High interest rates, inflated home prices, and economic uncertainty are creating a perfect storm here. Let’s hope today’s 25 basis point rate cut will help, but let’s be honest…we’ll need a few more cuts to make that happen.
Opportunities:
Fractional Home Sale Platform: Lets people sell small portions of home equity (like a “reverse mortgage lite”) to unlock cash without losing their house.
“Sell My Mortgage” Platform: An exchange where struggling homeowners can auction their mortgage or property directly to investors with structured buy-back options.
🔲 How to Master Responsive Design in Lovable
The Tool: We’ve all used websites that are great on desktop, but fall apart the second you load it up on mobile. And since mobile is where most users live, if it breaks there, it’s broken. Period. Responsive design solves this. Here’s how you can master responsive design in Lovable.
Step-by-step:
Remember these main rules of responsive design:
Desktop → Full layout, sidebars
Tablet → Collapse sidebars, simpler nav
Mobile → Stack everything, big tap targets
Small mobile → Larger text, fewer actions
Use the following break points in your design:
Desktop ≥1440px, Tablet ≥1024px, Mobile ≤768px, Small mobile ≤375px
Use the following prompt in your design “Make sure the layout is fully responsive. Stack below 768px. Hide sidebar on mobile. Use full-width buttons below 480px.”
Test your app to ensure these responsive settings work
13 Million People Are Losing Weight With This App’s Scientific Method
Losing weight is hard, we all know it. But what if we told you there was a new approach that doesn't involve medication or strict diets?
Simple is a clinically proven weight loss tool that empowers users to achieve significant results through their app.
Their science-based method uses features like habit trackers, fasting schedules, and a personal coach to achieve lasting results. So far, they’ve helped 13 million users lose millions of pounds.
🎨 From Squatting to Building a $6B Business
The Idea: At 16, Rob Kalin left home and moved into an artists' squat in Boston, dreaming of becoming a photographer. After bouncing through five colleges and working everything from cashier to carpenter to demolition crew, he finally graduated from NYU in 2004. Then, in early 2005, while working on a design project for getcrafty.com with friends Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik, Rob observed something interesting…crafters and artisans desperately wanted a place to sell their products, but hated eBay's rising fees and impersonal auction format. So the team set out to build a platform for this audience. This was the beginning of Etsy.
The Execution:
2005: After just 10 weeks of building, they launched Etsy from Rob’s Brooklyn apartment
2007: Reached 450,000 registered sellers generating $26M in annual sales. Celebrated one-millionth sale and raised over $3M in venture funding.
2008: Chris and Haim both departed from the company. Rob hired Chad Dickerson from Yahoo as CTO to build engineering team.
2011: Chad Dickerson replaced Rob as CEO after proving his leadership as CTO for three years.
2012: Raised $40M Series F, became B Corporation certified, expanded internationally to France, Germany, and Australia.
2013: Sales exploded from $895M to $1.34B after controversial decision to allow manufactured goods alongside handmade items.
2015: Filed for IPO in March, went public in April with $1.8B valuation raising $237M. Became largest VC-backed IPO from New York City.
2025: Today Etsy is worth a cool $6B.
The lesson? Etsy proved that sometimes niche beats mass. By building trust with a tight-knit creator community and focusing on identity (handmade, human, different), they created a global marketplace that eBay couldn’t copy.
🔍️ Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: Gamma just launched Gamma 3.0 to make creating presentations even easier
📱 Cool App: This app went from 0 to 100k users in just 5 days…
📚 Must-Read: Non-Consensus is Dead. Long Live Non-Consensus.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Want to see what OpenAI’s cap table looks like? It’s fascinating
💬 Founder Quote: “The value of your company is the sum of the problems you tackle.” Daniel Ek (Spotify)
🔦 Reader Spotlight: Meet Arman
What are you building? I’m building a fantasy league platform that finally makes it easy to collect dues and even adds community ratings for commissioners and league-mates.
How did you come up with the idea? I realized the current platforms just don’t fit today’s fantasy sports community. I wanted to make the experience smoother, fairer, and with lower fees.
Biggest challenge right now? Trust. Building FanCred into a brand the fantasy community believes in is my biggest hurdle. People love using it, now it’s about spreading the word.
How can Half Baked readers help? Know someone who lives for fantasy sports? Send them to FanCred!
Connect with Arman: Arman on LinkedIn
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Keyboard Pants
Looking to take your productivity to the next level? Wish your WFH setup could fit snugly on your waistline?
Introducing Keyboard Pants™ - trousers with a fully functional QWERTY stitched right into your thighs. Perfect for multitaskers who want to Slack, snack, and slouch all at once.
Keyboard Pants™ - picking up the slacks.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
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