Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as SoftBank selling its entire stake in Nvidia for $5.8B (big money move) 📈
💸 This week we’re teaming up with Google to give new Google Workspace users 20% off for 12 months. Grab your unique discount code here.
Congrats to last week’s Lindy giveaway winner Jeremy Olken - check your inbox Jeremy! 💸
Let’s get into it 🚀
In today’s edition:
💡 An idea for the B2B founders out there
📈 Why the AI math ain’t mathin
🛠 Using AI to learn any technical topic
🤑 From $0 to $100M ARR in 5 years
🍻 The ultimate extension for your phone
🤖 AI-Powered Demo Platform
Finding demo
The Problem: For B2B companies, the "Book a Demo" button is the most valuable call-to-action on their website. It signals a high-intent buyer is actively engaged in a purchasing decision. Yet, at this precise moment of peak interest, the vast majority of sales processes introduce a fatal flaw: friction. Instead of a demo, the buyer is met with a Calendly page, where they can book in a call a few days later, killing all momentum. What if the user could get an interactive demo right there and then, no matter the time of day or night? We think they could. Here’s how.
The Solution:
In a line: An AI agent that brings website visitors through a fully interactive, custom, product demo instantly.
Product:
🤖 A visitor clicks "View Demo" on a website and is instantly added to a call with an AI agent
🖥️ The agent then guides the visitor through a personalized, interactive product demo, showcasing the most relevant features of the product. During the demo the user can use the software and speak with the AI agent live who answers any questions they may have.
📅 At the end of the demo, the AI agent can schedule a follow-up call with a human sales rep, seamlessly handing off the qualified lead, or get the user to sign up.
Prototyping:
Here’s the prompt we used to build it
Fork your own version of this app
Business Model: A monthly subscription fee based on the number of demos conducted
End Goal: Sell to a major CRM or sales automation platform (like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Outreach) for a 10-15x revenue multiple.
Rate this idea:
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➕ The AI Data Center Math Ain’t Mathin
The Trend: We’re all aware of the crazy AI capex buildout going on right now, with the hyperscalers (Google, Meta etc.) pouring hundreds of billions of dollars of cash (and debt…uh oh) into building AI data centers (with questionable depreciation policies on the servers/chips inside those data centers…double uh oh). The problem? Well according to a JP Morgan AI CAPEX report to drive a 10% return on AI investments through 2030 would require around $650 billion of annual revenue into perpetuity. So revenue from AI products and services needs to explode in the next five years, otherwise data center capex plans will have to be slashed. Interesting times…
Opportunities:
AI Infrastructure Talent & Staffing Agency: A recruitment firm specializing in sourcing and placing the highly skilled talent needed to build and operate large-scale AI data centers.
Second-Hand Market for AI Hardware: A marketplace for buying and selling used AI hardware, such as GPUs and other specialized chips, which will become increasingly important as the current generation of hardware is replaced.
🧠 Using AI to Learn Any Technical Topic
The Tool: AI is an incredible tool for learning, so much so that you can use it to learn about literally anything. Here’s how you can use AI to learn any technical topic in minutes.
Step-by-step:
Go to Gemini or another LLM of your choice
Enter this prompt, replacing the [INSERT TOPIC HERE] placeholders with the topic you want to learn
Read through the generated report and learn as much as you can on the topic
👦 Your Kid’s Next Big Idea Deserves a Co-Founder. You.
Some kids are out there building websites and apps before high school. Not because they’re smarter, but because someone showed them how to start.
The AI Challenge Helper app from Hampshire County AI helps parents to unlock that same spark in their kids. It’s an interactive, AI-powered guide that walks you and your child through the full app creation journey, from brainstorming to building working prototypes.
Perfect for parents and educators supporting students in the Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge, where K-12 innovators use AI to solve real-world community problems.
Stop abandoning ideas and start building them, together.
📊 From $0 to $100M ARR in 5 Years
The Idea: It was the height of the pandemic in 2020, and Grant Lee, a seasoned consultant and investment banker with experience scaling the A/B testing giant Optimizely, found himself in a unique position. Having just moved his family to London, with a newborn in tow, he was immersed in the world of remote work and endless slide decks. He realized that traditional presentation software was failing to keep up with the new way of working. So he reached out to his former Optimizely colleagues, Jon Noronha and James Fox, and despite the distance and the lockdown, they decided to build a competitor to PowerPoint. This was the idea for Gamma.
The Execution:
Fall 2020: Grant, Jon, and James team up to start building Gamma.
October 2021: The team secured a $7M seed round led by Accel and Afore Capital, giving them the fuel to build their vision.
2022: Gamma launched its public beta, gathering feedback and refining the product with a small group of early adopters. By the end of the year, they had around 60,000 users but were facing a critical juncture with just over a year of cash remaining.
March 2023: This was the turning point. Gamma integrated AI into its platform. The result was explosive, word-of-mouth growth, acquiring 10 million users in just nine months. Their growth was fueled by clever product-led tactics like a “Made with Gamma” badge and a referral program.
May 2024: Gamma raised a $12M Series A led by Accel, validating their incredible traction and product-market fit.
Early 2024: The company became profitable, a rare feat for a venture-backed startup, demonstrating the efficiency of their lean, 30-person team.
April 2025: Gamma hit a major milestone, crossing $50 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) with 50 million users on the platform.
November 2025: The growth continued to accelerate, with Gamma announcing they had surpassed $100M in ARR and raised a $68M Series B at a $2.1B valuation led by a16z.
The lesson? No incumbent is insurmountable. Gamma has come into a market Powerpoint has dominated for decades, and are winning over millions of users. You can win anywhere.
🔍 Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: Google's no-code AI app builder, Opal, is expanding from 15 to over 160 countries
🎁 Free Resource: Another day, another free paper. Here’s Google’s free guide on Agent Tools & Interoperability with MCP.
📚 Must-Read: This piece on the physics of attention is worth your attention.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Marc Andreessen’s guide to productivity is trending right now.
💬 Founder Quote: “Don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes – learn at least a little from them and move on. It is never too late to improve. Get the right heroes and copy them.” Warren Buffett
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Phone Case Calculator
Ever find yourself needing to crunch some numbers, but too lazy to click into your calculator app?
Introducing the Caseulator™, the world's first and only phone case with a fully integrated, solar-powered calculator. Not only does it offer state-of-the-art drop protection, but it also ensures you're always ready for life's important equations, like calculating a tip, or graphing a function as you do.
Caseulator™ - protection you can count on.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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