Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as hotly anticipated as OpenAI’s next Super Bowl commercial 🏈
In today’s edition:
💡 An idea for a booming international industry
🛠 How to get started with Claude Code
🔋 From $0 to $100M ARR in 9 months + more
🔍 Google launch, OpenAI partnership, $42M raise + more
🍻 An idea that’ll be music to your ears
Let’s goooo 🚀
💸 $1,000 Giveaway: This week at Half Baked we’re teaming up with the team over at T-Mobile for Business to support one of you as you build your business. In order to enter simply:
Go to this link and fill out the form on the page
Reply to this email with a screenshot that the form has been submitted. In your email tell us what you’re building so we know we can help!
Good luck and get after it this week!
🏥 Medical Tourism Insurance Platform
Heal yeah
Available Domain: Medigard.com
The Problem: Medical tourism is booming right now. It’s a $130 billion industry with millions flying around the world to get longevity treatments, new fake teeth and of course…hair transplants (shoutout Turkey, the hair transplant capital of the world). But we’ve all seen and heard stories of medical treatments abroad going wrong, which is where the coverage gap exposes itself. Travel insurance explicitly excludes medical procedures, domestic health insurance won't touch cross-border care, and most countries' public systems don't cover elective procedures. The fear of "what if something goes wrong?" keeps millions from saving money on healthcare they desperately need. And right now, nobody's solving it. Here's what we're thinking.
The Solution:
💡 The Idea: A specialized insurance product designed specifically for medical tourism - covering complications, extended stays, emergency repatriation, and follow-up care back home.
🛠️ Product:
Users input their planned procedure, destination, and hospital. The platform verifies facility accreditation, surgeon credentials, and procedure-specific risk factors to generate a custom quote in minutes.
Coverage includes the gaps nobody else touches: post-operative complications (up to 12 months), emergency medical evacuation, companion travel costs if extended stay is required, and guaranteed coordination with your home country doctors for follow-up care.
Built-in concierge service connects patients with vetted local resources - translators, recovery facilities, and emergency contacts - plus a 24/7 nurse hotline that speaks your language.
🧑💻 Prototyping: Try the demo | Get the demo prompt
💼 Business Model: Premium pricing at 8-15% of procedure cost (still a fraction of domestic prices). Partner with medical tourism facilitators and hospitals for distribution.
⭐ End Goal: Acquisition by a major travel insurance company (Allianz, AXA) or health insurance disruptor (Oscar, Clover) at 8-12x revenue once you've proven the risk model works.
Rate this idea
📱Switch to SuperMobile from T-Mobile. Get an iPhone 17 Pro on us
SuperMobile from T-Mobile gives your business what it needs: unlimited premium data on America's largest 5G network, intelligent network performance, and a 5-year price guarantee.*
Plus if you switch to SuperMobile right now, you can get a free iPhone 17 Pro (with a qualifying plan) to run your business.
The best business plan on the best network.
5-year price guarantee excludes taxes & fees. Full terms at T-Mobile.com
🛠 How to Get Started with Claude Code
The Context: Claude Code, Anthropic's command-line coding agent, has been going mega viral lately. The tool has been blowing up on X, with developers sharing how it's 10xing their productivity on everything from quick scripts to full application builds. Here’s how to get started with it.
Step-by-step:
Go to Claude.ai or download the Claude Mac app and ensure you have either a Claude Pro or Max subscription.
Open your terminal:
Mac - Press
Cmd + Spaceto open Spotlight, type “Terminal” and press enterWindows - Press the Windows key, type “PowerShell” and press Enter
Copy the commands below, paste it into your terminal and press enter:
Mac/Linux:
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bashMac with Homebrew:
brew install --cask claude-codeWindows PowerShell:
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iexAuthenticate by typing
claude, choosing “Claude account with subscription”, completing browser authentication, selecting your preferred text style. Troubleshoot any issues here.
P.S. Here’s a course on the basics of Claude Code taught entirely inside Claude Code itself if you want to keep going!
🧑🎨 AI Makes Logos. Designers Make Brands
AI gives you the average of a million logos. Great brands do the exact opposite - they make choices that feel inevitable in hindsight but required guts up front.
If you want fast and forgettable, prompt away. But if you want a mark that actually means something - one shaped by taste, tension, and a human who asks hard questions - you need a real designer.
That's why serious founders use 99designs.
Get matched with a pro designer today and save $20 on a logo design contest. Offer runs through January 31st.
🔋 Founder Fuel
🤑 The Money Shot: This startup went from $0 to $100M ARR in just 9 months. Here's how.
📈 Trends with Benefits: App downloads declined in 2025, but consumer spending soared to nearly $156B. More here.
💬 Prompt Drop: Here are 10 simple ways to prompt LLMs 10x better.
🆓 Free Resource: Check out this free 20,000 word guide on personal finance for startup founders.
💵 Deal of the Day: Intercom is offering startups 12 months free of Fin AI Agent (their AI customer support bot) plus 90% off their platform in year one.
🔍 Founder Finds
🧠 Google just launched Personal Intelligence, a new Gemini beta that securely connects Gmail, Photos, YouTube, and Search to deliver a more personalized experience.
🤝 OpenAI has just inked a $10 billion+ compute partnership with chip startup Cerebras.
💰 WithCoverage just raised a $42M Series B from Sequoia and Khosla to replace traditional insurance brokers with AI.
🤖 Vlad Tenev, Robinhood CEO, says AI is ushering in a "job singularity”. Here’s what he means.
🚀 Atoms.dev just launched the first AI team that builds real businesses. Gulp.
📖 Dan Koe wrote an absolute banger on how to fix your entire life in one day. For real.
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: LolliBeats
Hate the feeling of over-ear headphones in summer? What if you could listen to music through your skull while enjoying a sweet treat?
Introducing LolliPop Star™ (get it?), the world's first bone conduction lollipop speaker. Simply pop it in your mouth and the vibrations travel through your jaw directly to your inner ear. The candy coating provides up to 4 hours of playback time.
LolliPop Star™ - it’s music to your ears.
Vote
👋 That’s All Folks!
Before you go just a few public service announcements:
Looking to sponsor Half Baked? Just fill out this form and we’ll get back to you asap.
See you soon,