Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as surprising as Manus getting acquired by Meta (breaking news) 🤯
PSA: We’re looking to make Half Baked 10x better in 2026…and we need your feedback here to do so (it takes 60 seconds). Excited to hear your suggestions!
In today’s edition:
💡 An idea inspired by recent news
🛠 How to find startup ideas using Google search
🔋 Nvidia’s $20B acquisition, making friends + more
🔍 OpenAI, Andrej Karpathy + more
🍻 An amazing idea for all the runners out there
Let’s goooo 🚀
💸 $1,000 Giveaway: We’re teaming up with Squarespace to give away $1,000 to one of our readers who take action this week. To enter all you have to do is:
Check out Squarespace
Build a one-page website on Squarespace (could be your personal website, a landing page, anything to move you forward) this week
Reply to this email (or any email this week) with what you’ve built
More details later in the email. Good luck!
❌ Whistleblowing Platform for Government Fraud
Wham, bam, Qui Tam
Available Domain: FraudMind.ai
The Problem: While most of us were in a food coma over the holidays, the entire internet seemed to be talking about Government fraud. That’s because this video about alleged fraud in Minnesota blew up last week, getting over 100M views. And let’s be honest, we all know the US government is hemorrhaging billions of dollars every year to fraud and other wasteful spending. But what you may not know is there’s a way for private citizens to expose fraud like this. It's called "Qui Tam" and it's essentially a bounty system that allows private citizens (relators) to sue on behalf of the government for fraud against federal programs, with these whistleblowers keeping 15% to 50% of whatever they claw back (as long as they provide additional, non-public evidence). Interestingly, the co-founder of Opendoor thinks there’s a startup idea in plain sight here, and we agree. Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A data platform that mines government spending logs to flag fraud, then automatically recruits "original source" witnesses to file lawsuits.
⚒ Product:
A backend scrapes federal procurement and healthcare databases. It normalizes the data and looks for specific "Fraud Signatures" (e.g., a defense contractor billing 200% more for spare parts than the industry average, or a doctor prescribing opioids at 5x the rate of peers).
When a target is flagged (e.g., "Company X"), the system scrapes LinkedIn and professional registries to find former employees (accountants, supply chain managers) who left in the last 12 months. It generates anonymized outreach campaigns: "Data suggests your former employer is non-compliant. You may be eligible for a reward."
A secure data room where the statistical proof (the chart) is merged with the human proof (the internal email). This "complete package" is then sold or auctioned to high-tier plaintiff law firms.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Try the demo | Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: Sell the "Qualified Leads" to law firms and get a % of anything recovered (split with the whistleblower)
⭐ End Goal: Get acquired by a risk intelligence firm (e.g., Kroll, Moody's, or Thompson Reuters) for 5-10x revenue.
Rate this idea
⚒ Stop Reading Ideas. Starting Building One.
You’ve read our ideas. This week, it’s time to build one.
We’re teaming up with Squarespace to give away $1,000 to someone who takes action this week.
The Challenge
Build a one-page website on Squarespace.
It could be your personal website, the landing page for your startup, whatever you like.
Reply to this email (or another email this week) with the live link
The best website wins $1,000.
Submit by Sunday night at midnight PT. Must be built using Squarespace.
Check out Squarespace today and use code HALFBAKED10 to get 10% off any plan.
🔍 How to Find Startup Ideas Using Google Search
The Context: Finding a validated startup idea is often the hardest part of building a business. But by using specific Google search operators, you can mine Reddit for users who are explicitly asking for AI solutions to their problems. Here’s how to discover big problems that need to be solved.
Step-by-step:
Open Google and enter the specific query like:
site:reddit.com "chatgpt" "i wish there was an app".Scan the results for threads with high engagement. Look specifically for upvotes and comments saying "Me too" or "I’d pay for this" to confirm the market need.
Investigate the comments to see if a solution already exists. If users complain that existing apps are too expensive, broken, or don't exist, you have found a potential gap to fill.
Expand your search if needed. Replace the end of the query with variations like
"someone should build"or"why isn't there an ai"to catch different phrasing.
Give it a try!
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Running a business means dealing with constant uncertainty. But one thing you can control is your internet provider.
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👉 See if your business qualifies (it takes 5 seconds).
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 The Money Shot: Nvidia just “acquired” this company for $20B. This is why.
📈 Trends with Benefits: More and more apps centred around making friends are popping up. There’s endless opportunities in this space.
💬 Prompt Drop: This ChatGPT prompt is all you need to get professional grade UI for your apps.
🆓 Free Resource: Check out Y Combinator’s guide to making the most of vibe coding.
💵 Deal of the Day: Eligible university students can get one free year of Cursor Pro.
🔍 Founder Finds
🔍 OpenAI is looking to hire a new “Head of Preparedness”. I think they misspelled “Killswitch Engineer”.
✖️ Andrej Karpathy’s recent tweet broke a lot of developer’s brains. It’s easy to see why.
📖 Jaya Gupta’s recent article on “AI’s trillion-dollar opportunity” is a must-read for anyone in tech.
🤖 Claude Code is having a bit of a moment (with some claiming its basically AGI). This is why it’s such a big deal for non-technical people.
🤝 The Onward Collective, a community for professionals who refuse to choose between ambition and wellbeing, has just opened its waiting list. Worth a look!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Running Bell
Tired of dodging oblivious pedestrians during your morning jog? Sick of yelling "ON YOUR LEFT!" until you're hoarse?
Introducing DashDing™, the wrist-mounted bell that announces your arrival like a Victorian town crier. Simply strap it on and let the gentle ting-ting-ting of brass do the talking while you focus on your stride.
DashDing™ - it rings true.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
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