Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as OpenAI and AMD’s multibillion-dollar data center partnership 💲
Let’s get into it 🚀
In today’s edition:
💡 Bringing some practice to online dating
📈 Why tech is all about the drip these days
🛠 Using Comet to summarize YouTube videos
🤑 From $2B to a $5B valuation in 4 months
🍻 The robot for when you’re caught short
💞 Simulated Dating App
Swipe training
Available Domain: Swipesim.com
The Problem: Online dating is brutal. Really brutal. Studies show that the average guy gets just 1 match for every 115 swipes. Ouch. However, today 22% of couples meet online. So online dating does work, but it’s not a fun experience, particularly if you’re new to the dating scene. It’s a high-pressure, low-feedback environment with nowhere to practice. Every real interaction is high stakes with real people judging your photos, bio, and chat game. So why not create a space for people to practice? Like a gym, but for tinder rizz? Here’s what we have in mind.
The Solution:
A simulated dating app where you practice with AI bots that give real-time feedback on your profile, photos, and conversation skills before you hit the real apps.
A user signs up, creates their profile and then starts getting matches. They can then interact with them and get feedback on their interactions, as well as their profile.
The ultimate goal here is to get acquired by a major dating platform as a top of funnel channel for them to acquire users.
Rate this idea:
📦 The Easiest Way to Start your E-commerce Business in 2025
In our recent webinar with Ryan Bartlett, founder & CEO of True Classic (+$850M brand), we asked what he’d do if he were starting an e-commerce business today.
His answer? Dropshipping.
It’s the fastest way to test products, gain traction, and scale without big upfront costs. And the easiest way to start is with AutoDS. One-click imports, automated fulfillment, and trend-spotting tools are just some of the reasons why it's trusted by 8,000+ founders.
👕 Why Tech is All About the Drip These Days
The Trend: Tech companies are starting to look more and more like fashion companies in 2025. Take Anthropic, who opened up a “Thinking Space” (i.e a pop-up store) in New York’s west village last Friday where they gave away tonnes of free hats and coffees (of course). Meanwhile, Palantir’s merch drops are getting better and better. This may seem like simple swag, but it isn't - it's strategic brand building. When your technology is invisible and your product is a black box, physical merchandise becomes your most tangible brand touchpoint. And tech brands are leaning into this more than ever before.
Opportunities:
AI Brand Merchandise Platform: Help AI companies design and sell high-quality branded merchandise that builds community and creates additional revenue streams.
Tech Swag Marketplace: A platform for users to buy and sell modern and vintage tech merch
📺 Using Comet to Summarize YouTube Videos
The Tool: Perplexity’s Comet browser, which just became available to everyone by the way, is awesome. It completely changes what you can do inside your browser. For example, here’s how you can use it to summarize all of those talks you don’t have time to listen to.
Step-by-step:
Download Comet’s browser
Go to a YouTube video and click on the “assistant” button in the top right hand corner of the browser
Prompt in the chat to summarize the video
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⚡ From $2B to a $5B Valuation in 4 Months
The Idea: Paul Copplestone and Ant Wilson are incredible founders. Paul was the CTO of a Singapore-based startup, Nimbus for Work. But while building a chat app, he hit a wall with Google's Firebase. It was slow and lacked the flexibility he needed. To get around this, he built a solution that replicated Firebase data into a Postgres database. This experience sparked an idea: why not create an open-source alternative to Firebase. Paul then met Ant, a serial entrepreneur with a strong software engineering background, through the Entrepreneur First accelerator in Singapore. Paul's vision for a better developer experience resonated with Ant, and in January 2020, they decided to team up. This was the beginning of Supabase.
The Execution:
January 2020: Supabase was born. The duo founded the company and raised a $100k pre-seed round from angel investors to get started.
May 2020: An early user shared them on Hacker News, and the post went viral. They went from 80 to 800 users in just three days, and were accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2020 batch.
March 2021: The team pioneered their now-famous "Launch Week," shipping seven major features in a single week. This relentless shipping cadence became a core part of their growth strategy.
May 2022: Supabase raised an $80M Series B round led by Felicis Ventures, bringing their total funding to $116M.
October 2025: In a testament to their incredible growth, Supabase announced a $100M Series E at a staggering $5 billion valuation, up from their $2B valuation four months earlier. This was in large part due to Supabase riding the vibe coding wave.
All of which goes to prove that sometimes building a great product is only half the battle. The other half is riding the right wave at the right time. By solving a real developer pain point and positioning themselves perfectly for the next wave of innovation, they turned a startup into a multi-billion dollar movement.
🔍 Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: OpenAI just launched apps inside of ChatGPT.
🛠️ AI Tool #2: OpenAI also just launched AgentKit to help developers build and ship AI agents.
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✖️ Trending Tweet: What it looks like to have $11M sitting in your account…
💬 Founder Quote: “Startups don’t fail because they run out of money. They fail because they run out of reasons to keep going.” Justin Kan (Twitch)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Rollbot
Ever sat down only to realize you’ve grossly overestimated your remaining toilet paper supply? Need someone (or something) to save you?
Meet Rollbot™ - the world’s first robot that brings you toilet paper when you’re caught short. With precision navigation and zero judgment, Rollbot rolls in to save you in your time of need.
Rollbot™ - always there for you…no ifs, ands, or butts.
Vote
🔦 Reader Spotlight: Meet Gissele
What are you building? I’m running a platform that produces media and classes sharing one powerful message, love and compassion can change the world.
How did you come up with the idea? It all began when I was a Director in child welfare, surrounded by burnout and trauma. I stumbled upon compassion while trying to help others, only to realize it was healing me too. That discovery inspired my TEDx talk, writing, and podcast.
How can Half Baked readers help? Right now, my focus is growing the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele, heard in 45+ countries. I’d love to connect with sponsors and partners who share our values!
Connect with Gissele Taraba: Gissele on LinkedIn
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
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