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- Startup Ideas #403: GitHub for X, Fibermaxxing...
Startup Ideas #403: GitHub for X, Fibermaxxing...
Plus Bootstrapping to $2M Revenue in 8 Months
Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up startup ideas as talked about as the Astronomer CEO’s love life 👀
If you want to read any previous editions of Half Baked, you can on our website.
Let’s goooo 🚀
In today’s edition:
💡 Bringing GitHub’s functionality to a new vertical
📈 The newest “maxxing“ trend among Gen Z
🛠️ Using AI to uncover your limiting beliefs
🤑 Bootstrapping to $2M revenue in 8 months
🍻 Creating the ultimate health food
🍲 Github for Recipes
Git in My Belly
Available domain: Gitgrub.ai
The Problem: According to Google, 1 in 4 internet users search for recipes every single day. But despite the search volume, searching for recipes is still a disaster. You’ve got endless food blogs with 17 paragraphs of backstory before you even get to the ingredients. No standardized format, no easy way to save and no way to make your own tweaks. And good luck trying to collaborate on a recipe with a friend or partner. Which got us thinking about GitHub (naturally). GitHub has managed to solve most of these problems, so why not build a recipe site which incorporates the principles of GitHub into it? Here’s what we’re thinking.
The Solution:
In a line: A collaborative, version-controlled platform for recipes, like GitHub, but for your favorite meals.
Product:
📝 Users sign up and get a personal recipe “repo” with a clean, standardized template (ingredients, steps, tags, and notes).
🍝 Recipes can be “forked,” allowing others to remix versions with substitutions, dietary tweaks, or regional spins.
👯 Social features like following chefs, pull requests (aka recipe tweaks), and collaborative cooking threads.
🔍 Searchable, filterable library of community-tested recipes with histories, comments, and cooking tips.
Business Model: Freemium model, free for casual users, paid pro tier for creators with analytics, recipe monetization tools, and branded collabs.
End Goal: Sell to a food media company (like Food52, NYT Cooking) for a 5-10x revenue multiple.
4. Rate the idea |
⏱️ It’s Never Too Early to Start
Dorm rooms. Middle school classrooms. Garage workbenches.
That’s where these businesses began:
Healthy Roots Dolls - now in Target, backed by Procter & Gamble
Royalty Soaps - a soap empire with nearly 1M YouTube subs
Bearbottom - an ethical menswear brand that’s donated 700K+ meals
Mo’s Bows - a handmade bowtie brand started at age 9, now seen on Shark Tank
Some of these founders stayed in school. Others dropped out. Some raised capital. Others bootstrapped. But they all used Shopify to build something real.
Start your store with a 3-day free trial, then it’s just $1/month for your first 3 months.
🥦 The Fibermaxxing Phenomenon
The Trend: Looksmaxxing. Sleepmaxxing. Moneymaxxing. Everyone seems to be doing a lot of “maxxing” these days. But lately, Gen Z seems to be focused on fibermaxxing, the trend that’s all about intentionally adding more fiber to meals. Specific? Yes. Required? Absolutely. Studies estimate that 95% of Americans are fiber deficient, so this is a trend we can really get behind. Eat more fiber, people!
Opportunities:
LMNT for Fiber: A high-dose, zero-BS, performance-focused daily fiber supplement stick brand (from edition #329)
Fiber-Fortified Baking Mixes: Baking mixes (pancakes, cookies, breads) that swap in inulin, psyllium husk, and oat bran to increase fiber levels in them
🧠 Using AI to Uncover Your Limiting Beliefs
The Tool: If you’re a Half Baked reader then you’re super ambitious, that’s a given. But super ambitious people don’t always reach their full potential. Not because of any lack of skill or talent, but because of their mindset. Here’s a cool way to use AI to identify if anything in your mindset is holding you back.
Step-by-step:
Go to ChatGPT and input this entire prompt (yes it’s super long, you still gotta paste it all in)
Answer the questions as they come back to you from ChatGPT
Analyze your results
🪄 Magically Create AI Video Documentation with AI
Tired of writing training materials, how-to-guides or other internal docs that rarely get read?
Meet Guidde, the AI tool that turns your workflow into a step-by-step video guide in seconds. Here's how:
Download the Chrome extension and hit record before doing a task
Guidde creates a video tutorial and adds voiceover, highlights clicks, and creates chapters
Share the guide instantly with your team
Perfect for onboarding, support, training and more. Join 100,000+ users already saving 12+ hours a week.
🚫 Bootstrapping to $2M Revenue in 8 Months
The Idea: Alex Slater has two big goals in life: becoming a billionaire and becoming the UK Prime Minister. Well he’s certainly on his way to the first one. His story begins in London, where Alex grew up. At 17, he taught himself to code and became obsessed with building. By age 19, Alex found himself in America, where he spent time in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Inspired by the ambition of everyone he met in the States, Alex decided to team up with his younger brother and they decided to build an app to take on one of their generation’s biggest problems…porn addiction. That was the idea for Quittr.
The Execution:
The MVP: Alex built the MVP in just 10 days, using SwiftUI, Firebase, and Superwall.
The Launch: They launched Quittr on ProductHunt initially. It was a complete flop. But shortly after launching he met Connor McLaren, his co-founder, who funded the initial paid-promos to get their early users.
Growth & Traction: The team started doing a bunch of reddit growth hacking, pushing their product in r/NoFap to get users. They then started paying for Christian content creators on Instagram to advertise their app. They monetized through selling the app for $12.99 per month.
Investment: Quittr is fully bootstrapped, no investment taken on.
The Result: Six months after launching, QUITTR had 350,000 downloads and generated $1M in revenue. To date, it’s generated more than $2M in revenue.
All of which goes to prove that sometimes a change in environment can propel you forward. Alex was inspired by his time in the US, maybe a change in environment could inspire you too?
🔍️ Founder Finds
🛠️ AI Tool: Use this tool to generate killer short form content
🎁 Free Resource: Roy Lee’s guide to generating millions of views organically is definitely worth checking out
📚 Must-Read: We may have mentioned this article before. Doesn’t matter, it’s one of the most important ones you’ll ever read.
✖️ Trending Tweet: Anton Osika’s story of how a 2 hour walk turned into Lovable is super inspiring
💬 Founder Quote: “The hardest part of entrepreneurship is staying the course when the path isn’t clear.” Ben Silbermann (Co-founder, Pinterest)
🔦 Reader Spotlight
🤖 Icanpreneur - Emil Tabakov is building an AI cofounder to guide entrepreneurs from idea to traction.
🛡️ Trueguard - Carel Martten Lechtmets is protecting SaaS platforms by detecting and blocking threats in real time.
🏥 ClinikEHR - Jethro Magaji is creating an AI EHR for small clinics to automate admin and manage records smoothly.
🛡️ IP Defender - Danny Sevcik is offering AI-powered trademark monitoring across 40+ countries to protect brands.
📡 Beaverstack - Ben Liger is helping businesses spot customer needs and reply fast with AI in online communities.
P.S: If you want your startup or project featured, click here!
🍺 Drunk Business Idea: Fish Protein Bars
Looking to get some extra protein into your diet? Tired of relying on protein bars that are closer to candy bars than healthy treats?
Introducing Fish Protein Bars™, the cleanest protein bar on the market. The only bar that’s 100% wild-caught fish, no grains, no nuts, just pure fishy goodness. If David Protein is selling cod, why not go one better and turn it into a bar?
Fish Protein Bars™, when “does this smell fishy to you” is an invitation to eat.
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👋 That’s All Folks!
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