Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as badass as Blue Origin’s rocket booster landing on a barge in the ocean 🚀
💸 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!
Let’s get into it 🚀
In today’s edition:
💡 An idea inspired by something we’re doing right now
📈 Apple’s interesting announcement on the app store
🛠 Using AI to generate micro-niche business ideas
🤑 Turning travel into a +€100m/yr business
🍻 The grooming product for the 21st century
🧑💻 All-In-One Hackathon OS
Let’s get it (hackath)on
Available Domain: Hackstack.co
The Problem: Hackathons are booming right now. Everybody’s running them - tech companies, colleges, accelerators, and even humble newsletters. That’s right, we’re teaming up with the team at Bolt to launch a 10 Day Hackathon next week, which we’re super pumped about. But organising the hackathon has been a little…stressful. There’s a million and one things to do for it and we’re juggling about half a dozen tools to organize it, including Beehiiv, Luma, Slack, Zoom, Discord…the list goes on. We would love if there was an all-in-one tool we could use to run this (and any future) hackathons we want to do. Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
In a line: A centralized platform to plan, host, and manage hackathons from kickoff to awards night.
Product:
🚀 The hackathon organizers can sign up and set up their hackathon in minutes, including the event details, different landing pages and can host any webinars which are part of the hackathon on the platform.
🧑💻 Participants can discover hackathons that are happening, register, form teams, chat with each other (Discord style), and submit their projects all on the platform.
🎯 Sponsors get branded dashboards where they can see analytics on hackathons, view submissions, help with judging and even discover hackathons to sponsor.
💬 Organizers and sponsors can communicate on the platform with each other and co-ordinate on announcements, social posts etc.
Prototyping:
Here’s the prompt we used to build it
Fork your own version of this app
Business Model: Charge per participant and additional fees for webinar hosting (that gets expensive)
End Goal: Get acquired by an event platform (Hopin, Eventbrite) or a competitor (Devpost) for a 7–10x ARR exit multiple.
Rate this idea:
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📲 Why Mini Apps are the Future
The Trend: For a company that’s been accused of napping through the AI boom (quite rightly), Apple has just made a very interesting move. They just announced a new Partner Program for “Mini Apps”, which are tiny applications that live inside normal apps that give users more features. There are a variety of native iOS apps that offer mini apps, like WeChat or Discord, which have mini apps or mini games embedded inside them. This is super exciting for founders, since the TAM for standalone tools that don’t warrant installs just went up 10x. Calendars, calculators, QR code readers, planners etc. are all perfect examples of mini apps that could live inside other larger apps. Let’s see where this goes…
Opportunities:
AI-Powered Mini App Generator: A service that uses LLMs to generate simple, yet powerful, mini apps (like calculators, planners, or niche utilities) for businesses and individuals, ready to be embedded in host apps.
Niche Mini App Rollup: Develop a "super app" focused on a specific vertical, such as "Local Artisan Marketplaces" or "Independent Game Arcades.”
💡 Using AI to Generate Micro-Niche Business Ideas
The Tool: There are an infinite number of ways to generate business ideas. One way is through some creative AI prompting. Here’s how.
Step-by-step:
Go to Gemini, ChatGPT or another LLM
Enter this prompt into your LLM, hit enter, then enter the broad market category you want opportunities in.
Analyze the 3 business ideas generated.
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🌎 Turning Travel into a +€100m/yr Business
The Idea: Paolo De Nadai, Erika De Santi, and Fabio Bin love to travel. But as they got older, they found it increasingly difficult to organize trips with friends who were all at different stages of life with new jobs, relationships, and homes. They had tried group tours for solo travelers but were disappointed by the lack of authenticity and social connection. They realized there was a gap in the market for travel experiences that were not just about seeing new places, but about building genuine connections with like-minded people. This was the idea for WeRoad.
The Execution:
2018: The company launches and receives its first seed funding of $2.34 million in July.
2020: During the pandemic, with travel restrictions in place, WeRoad's community proves to be its saving grace. The company transparently communicates its financial struggles and, in just three days, raises €750,000 through gift card sales to its community, allowing them to cover salaries.
2021: In October, the company raises €13.5 million in a mix of equity, convertible, and debt funding, including €4 million from a crowd-investing campaign.
2022: Andrea D'Amico, a former executive at Booking.com, joins as CEO in April to help scale the company internationally.
2023: In November, the company secures €18 million in a Series B funding round.
2024: The company launches WeRoad.com, an international platform to unify its online presence and ends the year with a revenue of €100 million, a 70% increase from the previous year.
2025: WeRoad launches WeMeet, an initiative to foster its community through in-person events in over 30 European cities. The company's goal is to become the leading adventure travel brand in Europe.
WeRoad's success demonstrates that when customers feel a genuine connection to a brand's mission and values, they become its most loyal advocates and can even be its lifeline in a crisis. That’s how much your users need to love your product.
🔍 Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: Canva’s magic studio (we use Canva for graphics at Half Baked FYI) is really cool.
🎁 Free Resource: OpenAI just dropped their prompting guide for GPT 5.1
📚 Must-Read: How Starbucks is making 30% ROI on AI investments.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Marketplace founders are leveraging AI to build bigger businesses. Here’s how.
📹 Must-Watch: This F1-esque car can drive itself. Nothing to do with entrepreneurship at all, I just think it’s super cool.
💬 Founder Quote: “Fear is the disease. Hustle is the antidote.” Travis Kalanick (Uber)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Laser Razor
Tired of having to replace your razor every few weeks? Wondering why your grooming routine still involves scraping metal across your skin like it’s the 1950s?
Meet the Laser Razor™, the only razor that replaces your dull blades with a beam of concentrated, follicle-obliterating light. It’s like a tiny lightsaber for your face. Who doesn’t want that, right?
Laser Razor™ - the best a man can regret.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
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