Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as mind blowing as xAI raising $10B at a $200B valuation 🚀
If you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked, you can check them out on our website.
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In today’s edition:
💡 Taking a leaf out of BeReal’s playbook
📈 The latest marketing meta that doesn’t involve Meta
🛠 Using AI to identify huge market opportunities
🤑 Turning 3 courses into a $2B Business
🍻 Making your golf swing much more explosive
🔉 BeReal for Voice Notes
Vox and Friends
Available domain: Yappchat.co
The Problem: Friendships are weird. You can be tight with someone for years, but as life speeds up with work, moving cities or starting families, the time you actually spend with friends slows down to a trickle. Even when we do stay in touch, it’s often reduced to dry text threads, missed calls, or the occasional like on Instagram. So it’s no surprise that about half of US adults report feeling lonely. So why not inject some spontaneity into our long lost friendships by taking some inspiration from BeReal? Hear us out…
The Solution:
In a line: A daily voice note app that randomly matches you with one friend for a spontaneous 1-minute audio exchange, creating deeper connections through authentic conversation.
Product:
📱 Every day at a random time, the app matches you with one friend from your network and sends you both a notification to record a 1-minute voice note.
🎙️ Both friends have 2 minutes to record their voice note about anything. Their day, a random thought, or just how they're feeling in that moment.
🔄 Once both people record, the voice notes are automatically exchanged. No editing, no retakes, no filters, just raw, authentic human connection.
📅 Build a beautiful audio timeline of your friendship over time, creating a unique voice diary of your relationship.
Business Model: Grow the user base and try to monetize through ads over time
End Goal: Potential acquisition by Snapchat (to enhance their audio features) or Discord (for deeper friend connections) at a 8-12x revenue multiple.
Rate this idea:
🚀 50 AI Prompts to Crush BFCM 2025
This BFCM, growth isn’t about guesswork — it’s about speed, clarity, and execution.
Triple Whale's done the hard work for you with 50 ready-to-use AI prompts built specifically for ecommerce founders. From campaign planning to real-time pivots, these prompts help you maximize every click, cart, and customer when it matters most.
Don’t waste hours writing prompts. Just plug in your data, and let AI surface the insights you need to grow.
🛠️ The Latest Marketing Tactic: Tools
The Trend: Everyone's still buying Facebook Ads and writing blog posts to grow, while smart individuals and companies have figured out the new distribution playbook…build tiny tools that market themselves. Greg Isenberg calls this "Distribution Software", where you create free utilities that funnel attention to your real business. Take Rob Hallam, who launched like 4 free tools on X to promote his business SuperX. The result? Millions of impressions, more users and of course more MRR. The arbitrage is massive…spend a Saturday building a micro-tool instead of $50,000 on ads. Much better bang for your buck.
Opportunities:
Distribution Software Factory: A service that builds and deploys micro-tools for companies every week, turning marketing teams into product teams.
Viral Tool Analytics: Track which micro-tools are driving actual conversions and help companies optimize their Distribution Software strategy.
🔍 Using AI to Identify Huge Market Opportunities
The Tool: When you start a business, the market you pick matters more than anything else. Because even the best founders with the best product will fail in the wrong market. The good news? AI can now help you cut through noise, spot hidden demand, and zero in on the markets where great companies actually get built. Here’s how.
Step-by-step:
Go to your LLM of choice
Copy this prompt into your LLM and follow through the process it takes you through
Use the output to pick your market
🗄 Compliance Made Simple for Startups
Achieving SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR, or even ISO 42001 compliance can feel overwhelming. But Vanta makes it painless.
Trusted by 12,000+ companies, Vanta automates up to 90% of the compliance process, offers real-time monitoring, and streamlines audits so you can get certified in weeks, not months.
And we've teamed up with Vanta to offer a collection of resources for startups, including step-by-step compliance checklists and case studies from fast-growing startups. It's an incredible resource.
🎓 Turning 3 Courses into a $2B Business
The Idea: Back in 2012, Stanford Computer Science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller were frustrated by the limitations of traditional higher education. They watched helplessly as brilliant minds around the globe couldn't access Stanford's caliber of education due to geography, cost, or admission barriers. So they decided to experiment by offering three Stanford computer science courses online for free, just to see what happened. The result? Each course attracted over 100,000 learners with no promotion whatsoever. This was the beginning of Coursera.
The Execution:
2012: The pair founded Coursera after the massive success of their free Stanford courses. Within months, convinced Princeton, Penn, and Michigan to join the platform.
2013: Raised a $43M Series B in July, followed by $20M Series B-1 in November. Still had no monetization model but investors believed in the mission.
2015: Raised $49.5M Series C as the MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) trend exploded globally.
2017: Secured $64M Series D, expanding beyond individual courses into enterprise and degree programs.
2019: Achieved unicorn status with $1B valuation in Series E, proving online education could scale massively.
2020: Pandemic accelerated growth. Coursera raised $130M Series F at $2.5B valuation as millions turned to online learning.
2021: IPO’d on NYSE at $33/share with $4.3B valuation, raising $520M. Revenue hit $415M, up from $294M in 2020.
2025: Current market cap around is around $2B, with the business pulling in around $750M in revenue per year.
The lesson? In business you just have to try things. Because in the internet age even the simplest actions, like offering some free courses, can scale beyond your wildest dreams.
🔍 Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: In the latest instalment of the “Browser Wars”, Gemini is now in Chrome. Game on.
🎁 Free Resource: Google also just launched a simple new tool that allows people to use AI to map out their career potential. Very cool.
📚 Must-Read: Roy Lee (Cluely)’s thesis on virality and hype is a must-read
✖️ Trending Tweet: “Life is poker, not chess”
💬 Founder Quote: "Don't be afraid to do something big." Daphne Koller (Coursera)
🔦 Reader Spotlight: Meet Nicola
What are you building? I’m building a tool that answers pilots’ aviation related questions directly from FAA-approved sources.
How did you come up with the idea? While studying for my private pilot’s license, I was buried in endless FAA documents. Since examiners expect FAA-sourced answers, I thought why not build something that delivers them instantly?
Biggest challenge right now? Some documents are way tougher to process than others. It slows down release. Plus, I’m still figuring out how to reach aspiring pilots to test the site.
How can Half Baked readers help? If you’re training for your pilot’s license, try out aviationdocs.net and tell me what documents you’d love added and how the site feels!
Connect with Nicola: Nicola on LinkedIn
Want your startup featured in front of 100k readers? Click here!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Explosive Golf Tees
Looking to add some flare to your golf game? Want your drives to sound just like the pro’s?
Meet TeeNTees™ - the world’s first golf tees that explode on impact. That’s right: every swing comes with a mini fireworks show, guaranteed to make your foursome forget about your slice.
TeeNTees™ - they’re “tee-rrifying”
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
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