Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as Brian Chesky’s one rep max 💪
💸 Wispr Flow, our partner this week, is giving away $1,000 to support one of you on your founder journey. To enter just:
Download Wispr Flow for free (if you’re already a user, we love you)
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Winner will be announced next week. 💸
Let’s get into it 🚀
In today’s edition:
💡 A new spin on a pretty competitive market
📈 Using parody to bring in the big bucks
🛠 Using ChatGPT Atlas to find available domains
🤑 From 78 readers to a $20M/yr newsletter
🍻 Where fashion meets function
🥞 Voice- based Calorie Tracker
Snack to the Future
Available Domain: Calchat.com
The Problem: Calorie tracking apps are a dime a dozen these days. MyFitnessPal is the OG. Cal AI is the new kid on the block. But they all have issues. Manually logging your meals is super time consuming, so much so that 70% of people who start tracking their calories stop tracking after 30 days (according to a Stanford study). Meanwhile, apps where you take pictures of your food can be a little inaccurate. So why not say what you’ve eaten and let the app do the rest? Think Wispr Flow, but for tracking your macros. Here’s what we have in mind.
The Solution:
In a line: A voice-first calorie tracker that lets you say what you ate and instantly logs accurate calories and macros
Product:
📲 A users downloads the app and during onboarding you set your target macros
🎙️ Say what you ate in as much detail as possible and AI estimates calories/macros using a verified database
🔄 Your macros are counted and meals are suggested based on your usual meals to hit your target macros
Business Model: Freemium (voice logging + daily summary) with Pro at $10/month (advanced macro coaching, meal plans etc.)
End Goal: Position for acquisition by a nutrition/health app for a 6–9× ARR multiple once you hit strong retention and cohort LTV.
Rate this idea:
⚡ How to Use ChatGPT 4x Faster with Wispr Flow
The secret to getting killer results from ChatGPT is crafting detailed, long-form prompts. But typing out long prompts is a massive time drain. That’s where Wispr Flow comes in.
How it works:
Download Wispr Flow for free
Open ChatGPT, hold down the space bar, and speak your prompt in as much detail as possible
Your prompt will then magically appear in ChatGPT, perfectly formatted with filler words removed
Bonus: you can use Wispr Flow in apps like Slack, Gmail, Docs too…everywhere you work.
🤡 Parody Accounts are Big Business
The Trend: Having an audience these days is incredibly valuable. So much so that parody accounts, particularly on X, are becoming very popular with brands. Take LinkedIn Lunatics, the X account with over 125K followers that advertises Memelord. Or Henrick Johansson, a hilarious EU parody account that’s linked to Comp AI. In fact Charlie Light has built an agency out of spinning up these parody accounts. In 2025 it’s all about owning the memes of production.
Opportunities:
Parody-as-a-Service Platform: SaaS platform that lets brands create and manage parody-style social personas.
The Persona Network: Build up a network of parody accounts and act as a micro-publisher of content.
🔍 Using ChatGPT Atlas to Find Available Domains
The Tool: ChatGPT Atlas is a seriously cool product with endless use cases for founders. You can use it to get feedback on your landing page, draft email or DM responses, optimize ad campaigns, almost anything you can think of. To take just one example, here’s how you can use Atlas to find available domain names for your business.
Step-by-step:
Download Atlas here
Navigate to a domain registrar website like GoDaddy or Domain.com
Hit “Ask ChatGPT” in the top right hand corner of your browser and a chat window will pop up
Hit the + button and activate agent mode
Prompt in the chat window something like “I want some domain ideas for my AI relationship app. Give me 5 name ideas and check their availability”
🤫 The Secret Weapon Behind Half Baked
Running a fast-growing newsletter isn't for the faint-hearted. There's content, sales, growth - the chaos never ends. So how do we manage it all? We have a secret weapon.
Executive assistants.
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📰 From 78 Readers to a $20M/yr Newsletter
The Idea: Back in 2017, Tim Huelskamp (pictured), Andrew Steigerwald, Pierre Lipton and Bobby Adelson were frustrated by the constant flood of biased, clickbait news dominating their feeds. They wanted to stay informed, without feeling manipulated by sensational headlines or partisan framing. Their solution? Create a daily email that delivered just the facts, covering culture, science, politics, and business in five minutes per day. They named it 1440, for the number of minutes in a day.
The Execution:
2017: They launched 1440 by sending their first newsletter to just 78 subscribers (mainly friends and family). Their MVP was a plain-text email curated by hand thrown together in a day. They didn’t overthink it, just took action.
2018: The team raised $500K to fuel their growth. They added a “forward to a friend” callout and built a loyal base that grew from 10K to 100K subscribers.
2020: As pandemic news fatigue peaked, 1440 exploded to over 500K subscribers, positioning itself as the go-to “no-spin” daily read for professionals tired of media bias.
2023: Crossed 2 million subscribers and became profitable through a mix of sponsorships, premium ads, and partnerships with educational orgs. The business faced extremely tough times though when Pierre unexpectedly passed away.
Today: Today 1440 Media has over 4.4M subscribers, does > $20M per year with only 21 employees. An incredible business.
The lesson? You don’t need flashy tech or viral gimmicks to build a media brand - just trust. 1440 proved that in a world drowning in noise, clarity is the product.
🔍 Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: Google has made some huge upgrades to their AI Studio vibe coding tool.
🚨 Raise Alert: Sesame, the conversational AI startup from Oculus founders, raises $250M and launches beta
📚 Must-Read: This article “In search of long term thinking” is really, really great
📹 Must-Watch: “People are wildly overestimating what AI will do to society in the next two or three years, and wildly underestimating what it will do in ten or fifteen” Brian Chesky.
💬 Founder Quote: “Indecision kills more dreams than bad decisions” Alex Hormozi
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Pizza Hoodie
Big pizza fan? Wish you could keep a slice warm and ready for consumption wherever you go?
Introducing the Pizza Pouch Hoodie™, the revolutionary garment that combines comfort with culinary convenience. This stylish hoodie features a dedicated, insulated, and food-safe pocket, perfectly designed to hold a standard slice of pizza, keeping it warm and accessible at all times. It's the pinnacle of wearable technology for the modern foodie.
Pizza Pouch Hoodie™ - you know you want a “pizza” this action.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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