Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as often as Lovable raises hundreds of millions of dollars 💵
In today’s edition:
💡 Taking inspiration from a +$10M/yr podcast
🛠 How to target your competitor's audience for free
🔋 From side hustle to a +$50M business, UX audits + more
🔍 OpenAI apps, Sam Altman blog post, a16z report + more
🍻 Looking for an some at home diagnostics? Urine luck…
Let’s goooo 🚀
💸 $1,000 Giveaway: We weren’t planning on doing a giveaway this week, until T-Mobile stepped up to help us give one of you $1,000 to help you with your business. Let’s call it a Christmas miracle. To enter all you have to do is:
Click here and see if your business qualifies for their new internet offer (takes 5 seconds)
Reply to this email with either “Yes“ or “No“ so we know if you qualify or not.
Winner will be announced next Monday. Good luck!
🎙️ Acquired Podcast for Sports
Playing the long game
Available Domain: Franchised.com
The Problem: You’ve almost certainly heard of Acquired, the decade-old podcast where Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal deliver multi-hour breakdowns of the business histories of some of the greatest companies ever to be built. It’s great. But something you may not know about the podcast is that it’s a money printing machine. Harvard Business School ran a case study on the podcast (which we bought by the way) and the numbers are staggering. 1 million listeners per episode. >$10M in revenue per year (sponsoring a season of the podcast costs $1.5M). Clearly their format works, which begs the question - why aren’t more people adopting this “Conversational Storytelling” format for other verticals? That’s not even my question, it’s Ben’s. We think someone should. Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A premium, multi-hour podcast that deconstructs the history, business mechanics, and defining eras of the world’s most iconic sports teams.
🛠️ Product:
Users subscribe to the podcast via their preferred podcast player (Apple, Spotify etc.)
The core podcast feed features bi-monthly "Mega-Episodes" (3–4 hours long) dedicated to a single franchise (e.g., The Buss Family Lakers, The Chicago Bulls. The Sir Alex Ferguson Era Man Utd etc.), breaking down the ownership history, financial turning points and everything else to deliver the most comprehensive history of the franchise anywhere online.
Listeners can also buy a monthly "Season Ticket" membership which unlocks a private Slack community for discussing upcoming episodes and bonus interviews with former GMs and owners of the teams.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Check out the landing page | Get the landing page prompt
💼 Business Model: Sell high-CPM, host-read sponsorships combined with the paid "Season Ticket" subscription tier.
⭐ End Goal: Acquisition by The Athletic (NYT), Spotify (The Ringer), or Meadowlark Media for a 4–6x revenue multiple.
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📶 Business is Unpredictable. Your Internet Shouldn’t Be
Running a business means dealing with constant uncertainty. But one thing you can control is your internet provider.
That’s why we’re teaming up with T-Mobile for Business. Their 5G business internet gives companies a way to simplify connectivity and keeps teams running smoothly.
With T-Mobile for Business, you get:
Fast, dependable 5G internet built on America’s largest 5G network
Connectivity that scales easily as you add locations or devices
Real support from real experts, available 24/7/365
👉 See if your business qualifies (it takes 5 seconds).
🎯 How to Target Your Competitor's Audience for Free
The Context: Finding customers in business is rarely easy. Unless you have competitors of course, since their current users are your future customers. Here’s a clever (and slightly sketchy way) you can directly target your competitors’ audiences on LinkedIn.
Step-by-step:
Go to LinkedIn Sales Navigator and start your free trial.
Add a job title on your profile like “Intern” at the company you want to target
In Sales Navigator, use the filter “People following my company”, which becomes available since LinkedIn thinks you’re part of that company.
Export the list, enrich the data (email, role, etc), and use it in your outreach
Remove the intern job, pick another company and repeat the process
Give it a try (just don’t get caught)
The Tech Newsletter for Engineers Who Want to Stay Ahead
Tech moves fast, but you're still playing catch-up?
That's exactly why 100K+ engineers working at Google, Meta, and Apple read The Code twice a week.
Here's what you get:
Curated tech news that shapes your career - Filtered from thousands of sources so you know what's coming 6 months early.
Practical resources you can use immediately - Real tutorials and tools that solve actual engineering problems.
Research papers and insights decoded - We break down complex tech so you understand what matters.
All delivered twice a week in just 2 short emails. Join 100K+ engineers.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 The Money Shot: This cleaning side hustle became a +$50M business. Here’s how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: The ultra-rich are giving up on luxury assets in favor of new status symbols. This is why.
💬 Prompt Drop: You can get AI to conduct a UX audit of your product. Here’s the prompt.
🆓 Free Resource: Here’s how you can go from a Miro Board to a live app in seconds in ChatGPT. Check it out.
💵 Deal of the Day: Browse AI, our favorite no code scraping tool, are giving new users 50 free credits.
🔍 Founder Finds
🔍 OpenAI is allowing developers to submit their ChatGPT apps for review and listing in their app directory. Will this be as big as the App store?
💡 Sam Altman’s blog post on how to generate startup ideas is timeless.
📖 a16z’s State of Consumer AI 2025 report is definitely worth a read.
🎩 Andrew Carnegie became a billionaire working only 2 hours per day. Here’s how.
🛠️ xAI is hosting a “Grokathon” on Jan 17, 2026 in London. Worth checking out if you’re London based!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Urine Analyzer
Ever wonder what secrets your pee is keeping from you? Wish you could keep on top of your hydration without going to the doctor?
Introducing U-Scan™, the hockey puck-shaped device that lives in your toilet bowl and analyzes your urine automatically. It tracks hydration, nutrition, and other health markers - all to keep you happy and healthy. No more peeing into a cup, it’s all about the bowl.
U-Scan™ - we're taking the piss…scientifically.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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