Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas despite the internet totally falling apart today (thanks AWS) 😵
Let’s get into it 🚀
In today’s edition:
💡 An idea inspired by Uber
📈 YouTube is dominating TV these days
🛠 How to use ChatGPT 4x faster with Wispr Flow
🤑 From moving millions to making millions
🍻 The ultimate tech-forward fashion item
📲 Micro-gigs Platform
Queue the money
The Problem: Uber drivers do a lot of driving, but you know what they do a lot of too? Waiting. That’s why Uber launched Tasks, a product that allows their drivers to earn money by completing short digital tasks in their free time. It’s a cool concept, and got us thinking. You know who else does a lot of waiting? All of us. The average person spends about six months of their life waiting in lines for everything from coffee to checkout. This massive amount of idle time and captive attention is a fundamentally underutilized resource. What if we could turn that wasted time into productive, paid activity, just like Uber is trying to? Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
In a line: A mobile app that allows users to complete simple, paid micro-tasks during their idle moments.
Product:
📱 A user downloads the app, creates a simple profile, and connects a payment method.
🧠 While waiting in a queue, on their commute, or during any downtime, the user opens the app to find a feed of available micro-tasks (e.g., “Transcribe this short audio clip,” “Draw a box around all the cars in this image”).
💸 Tasks are designed to be completed in minutes. Upon completion and verification, the user’s account is instantly credited with small cash rewards, which they can cash out at any time.
Business Model: Take a 20-30% commission from the companies that provide the tasks.
End Goal: Sell to a major player in the gig economy space (e.g. Fiverr) for a 5-8x revenue multiple.
Rate this idea:
⏳ Save Hours in Every App You Use
Typing wastes time. Wispr Flow makes voice the faster, smarter option everywhere.
Wispr Flow:
Transforms voice into perfect prompts instantly - just hold space and speak.
Works everywhere you work, from Slack, Notion, Gmail, and ChatGPT to Cursor, Windsurf, and iPhone.
Auto-edits out filler words gone, grammar fixed, formatting intact.
Wispr Flow users save an average of 5–7 hours every week, getting full workdays back every month.
📺 Inside the YouTube Takeover
The Trend: YouTube was once a silly little website people uploaded their home videos to. Today, it has become the dominant force in media, even in TV. Recent Nielsen data shows that YouTube captures a larger share of total TV usage (13.1%) than any single traditional media giant. This signifies a major shift in viewing habits, and underlines YouTube’s place as the future of media. There is no bigger hedge against scarce attention than owning media on YouTube today.
Opportunities:
Creator Streaming Tools: Tools for creators to optimize videos for TV (thumbnails, pacing, resolution, audio mix, etc.).
IP Revival Studio: Acquire forgotten IP from dying cable networks and reboot it as YouTube-first franchises.
🪝 Using AI to Generate Viral Hooks
The Tool: Creating viral content is all about nailing the hook, that initial line that draws someone in to your writing or video. Here’s how you can use AI to create them.
Step-by-step:
Go to your favorite LLM (we used ChatGPT)
Paste in this prompt and input the topic of the video
The AI will come up with 20 viral hooks for you and you can choose your favorite one.
🤖 Connect All Your Work Apps with Lutra
You’re juggling countless apps like Gmail, Google Sheets, Outlook, Slack, CRMs… copying/pasting between them, wasting hours everyday. Lutra AI is the first productivity agent to connect all your work apps so you can automate your repetitive work processes.
With Lutra AI you can:
Extract data from websites
Send personalized emails at scale
Enrich contacts to help you close more deals
And do much, much more all in a single interface.
💳 From Moving Millions to Making Millions
The Idea: Stuart Sopp spent nearly two decades on Wall Street trading for Morgan Stanley and Citi. But while he was moving millions around, he couldn’t help noticing something - regular people were getting left behind. Banking fees, overdrafts, delays…the system wasn’t designed for everyday Americans, especially younger ones. After leaving finance in 2015, Stuart teamed up with Trevor Marshall to build a bank that worked like the products his daughter was growing up with: fast, transparent, and mobile-first. He called it Current.
The Execution:
2015: Current began as a debit card for teens that parents could control, teaching kids about money while avoiding traditional bank bureaucracy.
2017: The teen banking product gained traction through influencers and word-of-mouth among parents. Current quietly built the financial infrastructure behind it, knowing they wanted to do something bigger.
2019: Pivoted from “teen banking” to a full mobile bank for everyone, launching checking accounts with no overdraft fees, early direct deposit, and a slick app UI that felt more like social media than banking.
2020: As COVID hit and stimulus checks rolled out, users flooded in. Millions joined Current for faster access to funds. Growth exploded from 200k to over 2 million accounts in a year.
2021: Raised $220M Series D led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $2.2B valuation, joining the fintech unicorn club.
Today: Current is one of the most recognized digital banking brands in the U.S., competing with Chime and Cash App for Gen Z wallets.
The lesson? When going into big markets you need to find your wedge. You can’t be everything to everyone on day one, but you can be in the future.
🔍 Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: Shortcut, the first superhuman Excel agent, is fully live and free for everyone to try.
📚 Must-Read: Apparently LLMs can get brain rot too. We’re doomed aren’t we?
📹 Must-Watch: Alex Bouaziz only did one podcast to announce Deel’s $300m raise. This is it.
✅ Half Baked Rec: Want to go from idea to launched app in 60 days? Byldd can help with that. Check them out.
💬 Founder Quote: “There’s no courage without looking stupid first.” Brian Chesky (Airbnb)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Solar Panel T-shirt
Ever feel like your t-shirt could do so much more than just absorb sweat?
Introducing HotWatt™ - the world’s first solar-panel covered t-shirt that harnesses the sun’s energy for your every need. Charge your phone, run your toaster, use the energy however you like.
HotWatt™ - watt’s good t-shirt fans.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
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