Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as ChatGPT’s 3 year anniversary (how time flies) 🤖
We’re trying out some more changes to the newsletter this week, including an earlier send time. Reply to this email with any feedback you have, we love to get it!
In today’s edition:
💡 An idea inspired by the Black Friday madness
🛠 Using AI to recreate any photo perfectly
🔋 Building a $20B empire, gift guides + more
🔍 AI moats, inversion thinking + more
🍻 Turning airport travel into a joyful occasion
Let’s goooo 🚀
💸 $1,000 Giveaway: We’re partnering with Warp this week to giveaway $1,000 to support one of you on your founder journey. To enter just:
Check out Warp, the #1 AI terminal, and give it a try if you’re a developer!
Reply to this email if you’re currently a Warp user or not
Last week’s winner was Diego Jaurena. Congrats Diego!
Good luck!
🛍️ Winget: E-commerce Engagement Widget Creator
In it to widget
Available Domain: Winget.co
Problem: Black Friday is over for another year, and hopefully you snagged some great deals in the sales. I was hoping for some huge Black Friday deals on groceries myself…maybe next year. But Shopify sellers crushed it this year, clearing over $6.2B in sales on Black Friday. And if you visited a Shopify website over Black Friday, you were probably hit with that “spinning wheel” discount app that so many e-commerce stores use to get you to engage with their website. Which got me thinking…why aren’t stores building other mini widgets or games to capture leads, drive discounts and reduce cart abandonment? They should be. Here’s what we’re thinking.
Solution
💡 The Idea: A no-code platform that empowers online merchants to build custom, branded mini-games (like scratch cards and spin wheels) that capture leads and reduce cart abandonment.
❓ Product:
Merchants sign up to the platform and choose from a library of game templates including Spin-to-Win, Scratch Cards, Slot Machines, or "Pick a Gift." They can also create a new game from scratch.
Using a visual editor, the merchant customizes the design assets to match their brand and sets the "Probability Engine" (e.g., set the odds so only 1% win the grand prize, while 90% win a 10% discount).
The game automatically deploys as an overlay or popup triggered by user behavior (like exit intent), instantly syncing won discount codes or other prizes to the customer's cart upon completion.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Try the demo on Bolt.new | Get the prompt/code for the demo
💼 Business Model: A tiered SaaS subscription (e.g., Free, $19/mo, $99/mo) based on the number of monthly game impressions or leads captured.
⭐ End Goal: Sell to an e-commerce loyalty suite (like Yotpo) for a 6–8x ARR multiple.
Rate this idea
⚡ Founders: Meet The AI Agent That Makes Small Teams Unstoppable
Warp is the #1-ranked AI terminal used by 700K+ developers and hands-on builders. It’s designed to help small teams move like big ones.
All week we’re partnering with Half Baked to showcase how Warp’s agent can help you build anything — from your own 10x productivity workflows to fully shippable products.
🖼️ Using AI to Recreate Any Photo Perfectly
The Tool: Ever see an image online and want to recreate it for yourself? Gemini can do it easily through JSON prompting. Here’s how.
Step-by-step:
Download the image you want to copy and paste the image into Gemini
Insert the below prompt into the chat window along with the image and hit enter
Extract all visual details from this image and convert them into a clean, well-structured JSON prompt. Include sections: "subject", "Attribute 1", "Attribute 2", "Attribute 3" etc.
Copy the output of step 2 into a new chat, add “create image” before the prompt and run it to create your new image.
😨 Stop Being Scared of Your Internet Bill
Scared to look at your internet bill every month? Us too. Luckily, T-Mobile will lock in your business' internet rate for the next 5 years. No more surprises.
To see if you qualify all you have to do is:
Go to this website
Enter your business address
Click “Check Availability”
That’s it. It takes 5 seconds, and could save your business
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 The Money Shot: This guy bought 88 tiny companies and built a $20B empire. A true business legend. Full story here.
📈 Trends with Benefits: Everyone’s starting to share their 2026 gift guides. Someone should really build a holiday gift guide creation platform (Half Baked idea maybe?).
💬 Prompt Drop: Someone turned Elon Musk's thinking frameworks into 15 AI prompts. Here they are.
🆓 Free Resource: This free guide from fofr (catchy username) on prompting Nano Banana Pro is really, really good. Make sure you bookmark it.
💵 Deal of the Day: Students can get Gemini’s Pro Plan free for an entire year. See terms.
🔍 Founder Finds
📹 Y Combinator recently revealed the 7 best moats for AI startups. One page summary of the video here in case you don’t want to watch the full thing!
📖 Shayne Coplan went from the FBI raiding his home 12 months ago to becoming a billionaire at age 27. This article on the deal that got him there is really great.
✖️ This tweet on “7 Predictions for the Next 3 Years” went pretty viral yesterday. Some super interesting predictions in there (poor Nvidia).
📹 Charlie Munger explains how “Inversion Thinking” helped him to become a billionaire.
🚀 Xiaomi just dropped a wild product: a smartphone with a detachable pro-grade camera lens. As if digital cameras weren’t in enough trouble already….
💬 "The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us." Phil Knight (Nike Founder)
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Self-driving Suitcase
Were you one of the millions of Americans to fly home for Thanksgiving? Was lugging your suitcase through the airport a real pain?
Introducing the RollBot™, the world's first self-driving suitcase that follows you autonomously using advanced AI tracking. Just pair it with your phone, and watch as it glides behind you like a loyal golden retriever.
RollBot™ - they see you rollin’.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
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