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Business Ideas #354: Chargebacks, Lmyphatic Drainage...

Plus Making Millions Selling Absurd Ideas

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up business ideas as surprising as Elizabeth Holmes’ partner starting a new blood testing company 🤔 

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

  1. Business Idea💡: A product to solve a $117bn problem

  2. Drunk Business Idea 🍻: The best way to solve the dehydration problem

  3. Just The Tip 📈: Why everyone is talking about drainage

  4. The Moneyshot 🤑: Making millions selling absurd ideas

P.S: If you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked you can on our website and if you were forwarded this email you can subscribe here.

P.P.S: Half Baked is free. Half Baked will always be free. That’s thanks to the support of our sponsors. We’d love if you could take a moment to check them out.

Let’s get into it.

BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

AI Agent for Chargebacks 🔙

Fraud have mercy

Available Domain: Dispewt.com

💡 TLDR: An AI-powered agent that helps businesses automatically fight, track, and reduce chargebacks.

1. Problem/Opportunity

The Problem/Opportunity: If you run an online business, chargebacks aren’t just a nightmare. They happen when a customer disputes a charge with their bank, claiming the transaction was fraudulent, the product never arrived, or their “kid must’ve accidentally bought it.”

Chargebacks are a disaster for companies since payment processors almost always side with customers and also charge a fee per chargeback, often $15 - $50 per chargeback. Merchants can dispute the chargebacks, but this takes a lot of time and effort. Ultimately chargebacks cost businesses both time and money. That’s why it’s time to help them to fight back. Here’s how.

Market Size: Global chargeback losses in 2023 were estimated at $117 billion

2. Solution 

The Idea: An AI-powered agent that helps businesses automatically fight, track, and reduce chargebacks.

How it Works:

  • The platform monitors a customer’s Stripe/Shopify/PayPal account for incoming chargebacks.

  • When a chargeback occurs that the company wants to dispute evidence relating to the dispute is automatically pulled from their systems (order data, shipping, CRM, email logs).

  • The platform automatically generates a dispute response tailored to the chargeback reason before the chargeback deadline passes.

  • Over time the system learns from wins/losses to optimize future submissions.

Go-to-market: Start with Stripe/Shopify merchants since they are straight-forward to connect to and dispute

Business Model: Take a success fee on each successful dispute e.g. 10%

Startup Costs: You could get this up and running for a few thousand dollars with some manual processes and relying on an AI model like ChatGPT

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a fraud prevention platform like Sift

Exit Multiple: SaaS with strong net retention + fintech focus would sell for 8x–12x ARR

4. Rate the idea

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TOGETHER WITH OMNISEND

Boring Marketing that Delivers Big Results

The thrill of not knowing how something will turn out? That’s what gets your heart racing, right?

But you know where excitement has no place? Marketing.

With marketing, you want predictability. So predictable, it’s almost boring.

That’s why Omnisend is a marketer’s dream. In 2023, for every $1 spent on Omnisend’s email & SMS marketing, merchants made $68 back.

It’s not flashy. It’s not a gamble. It just works. Every. Single. Time.

At Half Baked, we only recommend tools that actually deliver. That’s why we partnered with Omnisend—because they’re the real deal.

From popups to newsletters to abandoned cart recovery, 125,000+ e-commerce brands use Omnisend to grow their revenue while keeping costs low.

Use code HALFBAKED10N & get 10% off your first 3 months.

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Alarm Water Bottle

  • Are you chronically dehydrated like the rest of us? Did reading this actually make you reach for a drink?

  • Meet the Thirst Trap™, the world’s first water bottle with a built in alarm that goes off after 10 minutes if you don’t drink any water. No more forgetting, no more excuses, no more “headaches” which seem to come out of nowhere.

  • Water you waiting for? Order today.

Vote

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Lymphatic Drainage

  • Drainage. It’s critically important to the functioning of cities, the plot of “There Will be Blood” and it turns out to our bodies too. More specifically…we’re talking about lymphatic drainage.

  • Lymphatic drainage refers to processes that encourage the natural movement of lymph fluids throughout the body.

  • Lymphatic drainage occurs naturally through exercise, hydration etc. but it can also be stimulated through manual lymphatic drainage massages.

  • Lymph build up can lead to swelling, chronic inflammation and fluid retention, which is why drainage is sop important.

Business Ideas

  • Lymphatic Drainage Tracking App: An app that helps users to track swelling and guides them through manual lymphatic drainage exercises

  • DTC Brand for Lymphatic Tools: Launch a wellness brand selling high-quality dry brushes, gua sha tools and supplements for lymphatic drainage

TOGETHER WITH SHOPIFY

He invented a Crocs fanny pack. Now it’s a HUGE business.

Matty Benedetto started Unnecessary Inventions as a joke; ridiculous products no one asked for, like spaghetti drill forks and Crocs fanny packs.

But the comments started rolling in: “Wait… can I buy this?”

He spun up a Shopify store, listed a few fan favorites, and the orders started flying in.

Now it’s not just content, it’s a real business with sold-out drops and global fans.

Start your store with a 3-day free trial, then just $1/month for your first 3 months.

THE MONEYSHOT

Making Millions Selling Absurd Ideas

No these aren’t our drunk business ideas, they’re products this guy has launched and sold to make millions.

This is his story.

Gabriel Whaley is not your typical founder.

His unconventional journey began with his enrollment at the United States Military Academy at West Point, which he later left to pursue a career in creative media.

He later found himself working at BuzzFeed where he worked on viral content and ad experiments. But over time he felt increasingly constrained by the corporate, brand-safe environment.

So in 2014 he started releasing his won viral projects online to see what kind of response they would get. The first was a project on Twitter in which users could send him 1 dollar for a piece of bad advice, which took off. To see if lightning struck twice he then built "Late Night Snap Hacks," a website filled with pre-recorded videos of late-night partying that allowed users to post them on their personal social media accounts to make their friends think they had a more extravagant social life than they actually did. Another hit.

Gabriel had a knack for going viral, so much so that in 2016 he decided to turn it into a business.

He founded MSCHF (Pronounced Mischief)

MSCHF pioneered a “drop culture” for ideas, releasing a new wacky product every two weeks, some physical, some digital. Every drop was designed to be viral, polarizing, and collectible. Think of the business as a hybrid of Banksy, Supreme, and a VC-backed art startup.

The business started releasing their idea drops, one of the earliest being “Jesus shoes”, Nike Air Max 97s which were injected with holy water to enable the wearer to walk on water.

These early drops were a huge success, and in 2019 the business raised $3.5m from Founders Fund (Peter Thiel's firm) and Shrug Capital. The business went on to raise another 8 million in funding in early 2020.

And as the drops got bigger they started collaborating with brands like Fenty beauty (Ketchup or Makeup?) and Crocs (Big Red Boot Yellow) for drops, further raising the company’s profile.

Today the business is still releasing unhinged products into the world and will continue to do so for many years to come. Who knows, maybe Half Baked x MSCHF could happen in the future. You never know.

But what we do know is that MSCHF’s model demonstrates the power of attention. In a crowded online landscape, bold, unexpected, and even shocking ideas can cut through the noise and generate significant buzz…and revenue.

They’ve weaponized internet culture, monetized mayhem and we’re here for it.

1 - 1 FOUNDER FEEDBACK

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