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Business Ideas #298: Coworking, Misogi...

Plus How Three 21-year-olds Built a $2bn Business in 2 Years

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up business ideas as ground-breaking as Microsoft casually dropping a quantum computer chip? đŸ€Ż 

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

  1. Business Idea💡: Unlocking a business opportunity hiding in plain sight

  2. Drunk Business Idea đŸ»: A product every man needs in their life

  3. Just The Tip 📈: The rise of the “Misogi”

  4. The Moneyshot đŸ€‘: How three 21-year-olds built a $2bn business in 2 years

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.

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Let’s get into it.

BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Distributed Coworking Platform đŸ’»ïž 

When in roam

Available Domain: Openroam.com

💡 TLDR: TLDR: A marketplace for remote workers to secure day passes to work in places like hotels, cafĂ©s etc.

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: The world of work has changed dramatically in the past few years. Remote work, once a perk reserved for freelancers and tech nomads, is now a mainstream reality for millions. Although for some calling it remote “work” could be a stretch.

Since working from home can be uninspiring at the best of times, many people opt to work in other areas. Which got us thinking. Hotels have elegant lobbies, restaurants have quiet mid-afternoon hours, and cafes have cozy corners, all of which sit idle for hours each day. So why not turn these areas into co-working spaces? Think Airbnb for co-working spaces. They’re untapped revenue goldmines for hospitality businesses, and here’s how they can unlock them.

Market Size: The global coworking spaces market was valued at $15bn in 2023 and is projected to grow to $40bn by 2030

2. Solution âœ…

The Idea: A marketplace for remote workers to secure day passes to work in places like hotels, cafés etc.

How it Works:

  • A user goes to the site and can explore listings for remote work day passes in different places like hotels, cafĂ©s, resorts, etc.

  • Passes also include a free meal, treatment in a spa, pool access etc. to make the experience even more unique (which is built into the cost of the pass)

  • The user simply books in and pays a deposit and on the day they utilize their pass they simply go to the location, use it for the day and pay the rest of the fee on arrival

  • Establishments can apply to get their locations listed on the site

Go-to-market: Start in large cities with a high concentration of remote workers

Business Model: Charge a transaction fee on all bookings through the site

Startup Costs: You could start this relatively cheaply, the hard part will be simultaneously finding users and locations to join the platform in the early days. It’s the classic marketplace chicken and egg problem.

Competitors: There are some small companies attempting this but no-one has achieved huge scale at this yet

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Position the platform for acquisition by larger coworking companies or hospitality chains

Exit Multiple: In the coworking and hospitality tech industry, exit multiples typically range from 3x to 7x revenue

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

9 in 1 Shampoo

  • A product for all the men out there. You know you want it in your life.

Vote

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Misogi

  • Let’s face it most of us have gotten far too comfortable in our lives. Comfortable homes. Food deliveries whenever we want. The list goes on.

  • But there’s an ancient Japanese tradition that’s the antidote to comfort, and they’re called Misogi Challenges.

  • A Misogi Challenge is something you do once per year with just a 50% chance of success. It’s not about winning, it’s about finding out who you are when the odds are stacked against you.

  • Entrepreneur Jesse Itzler swears by them, and he’s built and sold five companies. Think you’re up for it? Well even if you’re not you can still build a business around this concept.

Business Ideas

  • Misogi Fitness App: Develop a fitness app that provides users with weekly or monthly micro-Misogi challenges to complete, building up to one big annual challenge.

  • Misogi YouTube Channel: Launch a YouTube channel that documents the journeys of people competing Misogi Challenges

TOGETHER WITH KIXIE

How We Sold Out Our Ad Space 3 Months in Advance

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THE MONEYSHOT

How Three 21 Year-olds Built a $2bn Business in 2 Years

In the era of AI, startups are scaling faster than ever before.

Take this team of 21 year-olds who went from $0 to building a $2bn business in just 2 years.

This is their story.

Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha are super-high achievers.

The trio met during their high school years in the Bay Area through their debate club, and when they went their separate ways to Georgetown and Harvard, they began exploring different entrepreneurial ventures as college freshmen.

Initially in 2022 the team decided to start a side project which connected engineers in India with startups needing freelance coding help. This small matchmaking service quickly gained traction, generating $1 million in annual revenue and $80,000 in profit within months of getting started, all without any external funding. This lit a fire under the team, who believed they could do much, much more.

The founders knew that by leveraging AI they could build a next-generation platform for recruiting. So in 2023, they made the bold decision to drop out of college and fully commit to building their business.

They founded Mercor.

Mercor uses large language models to automate the recruitment process including resume screening, AI-powered interviews and candidate matching. This approach enables the company to efficiently assess candidates' skills and predict their performance in specific roles. It’s a great idea, so much so that investors have been throwing money at them.

In September 2023 the team raised a $3.6 million seed round, around the same time they all received Thiel Fellowships, a $100k award that Peter Thiel offers to young people to “build new things instead of sitting in a classroom”.

As revenue scaled so too did the valuation, with the business raising $32 million in a Series A funding round led by Benchmark in September 2024, valuing the business at $250m. And just this week, 5 months later, the team closed their $100m Series B in a round that valued the business at $2bn.

As of early 2025, Mercor employs approximately 30 people, with a median age of 22, and reportedly is running at a $70 million annual revenue run rate. The business is just two years old and has achieved something most businesses never do
it became a unicorn, and it’s one of the fastest in history to achieve it.

Which goes to show that these days, in a world powered by AI, everything moves faster. Small teams can achieve great things in a fraction of the time it took in the past. And this is just the beginning.

So if you feel like you missed out on so many chances to build wealth
buying Bitcoin early, trading Gamestop, Web 1.0 etc. then you have to promise yourself one thing.

Don’t miss out on AI.

1 - 1 FOUNDER FEEDBACK

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