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Business Ideas #310: Visual Productivity, Manus...

Plus Making $20m from 3 Viral Apps in 18 Months

Welcome to Half Baked, the newsletter serving up business ideas as valuable as a dozen eggs right now šŸ„š 

Hereā€™s what weā€™ve got for you today:

  1. Business IdeašŸ’”: A new take on a classic app

  2. Drunk Business Idea šŸ»: A sports event we could all participate in

  3. Just The Tip šŸ“ˆ: The latest Chinese AI product making waves

  4. The Moneyshot šŸ¤‘: Making $20m from 3 viral apps in 18 months

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. Thatā€™s thanks to the support of our sponsors. Weā€™d love if you could take a moment to check them out.

Letā€™s get into it.

BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

Visual To-do List App šŸ–„ļø

Click into action

Available Domain: Tasksnaps.com

šŸ’” TLDR: An app that turns any photo or screenshot into a smart to-do list using AI

1. Problem/Opportunityā“

The Problem/Opportunity: We all love a to-do list. In fact thereā€™s few things in life that beat the satisfaction of crossing items off your to-do list. Although some days we donā€™t get to cross off muchā€¦

But for me using to-do lists is kind of a pain. Instead I use my photos app as one, taking pictures or screenshots of what I need to do, since itā€™s super quick. So why not turn this into a fully fledged app? Hereā€™s what weā€™re thinking.

Market Size: There are an estimated 500m global users of productivity/task apps around the world

2. Solution āœ…

The Idea: An app that turns any photo or screenshot into a smart to-do list using AI

How it Works:

  • A user takes a photo or screenshot of something and the app uses AI (OCR and NLP mainly) to infer what the task relates to e.g. if you take a picture of an empty toilet paper roll, it adds toilet paper to your shopping list

  • Tasks are automatically formatted and added to a relevant to-do list (e.g. a shopping list, a watchlist etc.) and optionally categorized by type, priority, deadline etc.

  • Tasks can be edited, shared, or synced with calendars too if required

  • Finally thereā€™s a bonus feature to quickly add an item to a list through a quick voice recording

Go-to-market: Viral TikTok-style demo videos showing people using the product will be your way to get early users here

Business Model: Freemium model where users pay a monthly subscription for unlimited tasks

Startup Costs: You could start this relatively cheaply by building on top of OpenAI and keeping the design simple

3. How Youā€™ll Get Rich šŸ’°

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a productivity app like Todoist

Exit Multiple: SaaS productivity tools typically exit at 5xā€“12x ARR, but as a consumer product the multiple would be a little lower, so 5x - 8x revenue is probably a good target here

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DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

The Lazy Olympics

  • Peter Thiel is famously an investor in the Enhanced Games, a competitor to the Olympics, which allows athletes to use performance-enhancing substances without being subject to drug tests. Itā€™s super cool idea, celebrating peak human athleticism. But what about creating a competition that celebreates peak human laziness?

  • Introducing the Lazy Olympicsā„¢, the ultimate celebration of sloth and underachievement. This historic event includes incredible events like Freestyle Snoozing, Synchronized Snacking and of course the Scrollathon.

  • The Lazy Olympicsā„¢, where effort goes to die.

Vote

JUST THE TIP

Trend šŸ“ˆ: Manus AI

  • The AI indistry has had yet another ā€œDeepseekā€ moment this week, sending shockwaves throughout the AI community. And this time the innovation in question is called Manus.

  • Manus is a general AI agent that can perform multiple tasks at once. Check it out below performing approximately 50 tasks at once, like something out of a sci-fi movie.

  • This shows the mind-boggling potential of AI and why you need to be looking out for AI tools to help you to start or run your business

Business Ideas

  • AI Use Case Database: A searchable database of AI use cases by industry, role, tool, or business function (e.g., AI in logistics, AI in legal, AI in education)

  • Product Hunt for AI Tools: Create a competitor to Product Hunt exclusively for AI tools

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THE MONEYSHOT

Making $20m from 3 Viral Apps in 18 Months

In 2025 anyone, and I mean anyone, can learn to code and build incredible software businesses.

Take this self-taught programmer who, after numerous failures, built 3 viral apps in 18 months, generating over $20m in revenue.

This is his story.

Blake Anderson has always been fascinated by startups.

So in college, he tried to start his own business. From May 2022 to May 2023, Blake worked on his college marketplace app called Holly. The app got to around 10k users, but it slowly fizzled out. A yearā€™s worth of work gone down the drain. Blake was down, but he wasnā€™t out yetā€¦

He graduated in May 2023 with no income or savings, so he had to go through an entrepreneurā€™s worst nightmareā€¦applying for jobs. He applied for 100+ jobs and internships during college, all to no avail. He didnā€™t get a single offer. In fact itā€™s worse than that, he never even got a second round interview. Feels bad man.

Blake couldnā€™t support himself so he moved home to his parentā€™s house, having to take loans from his brother for food. He couldnā€™t keep living like this.

So Blake set himself a single goal: to make $50k over the next 12 months to be able to continue to pursue entrepreneurship. He went all-in on his goal, spending 12+ hours a day teaching himself to code using ChatGPT so he could start building viral apps to make some money.

But it turns out Blake was really bad at making ā€œsome moneyā€. He made millions insteadā€¦

His first launch came in July 2023 when Blake launched RizzGPT, an AI texting assistant to help users get more dates. It was a great idea with viral potential, and Blake turned to short-form content to find users for the app. He made videos that ā€œpopped offā€ as the kids say on TikTok and Instagram and the app skyrocketed up the charts. After a few months (and a rebrand to Plug AI), the app hit a $2.5m revenue per year run rate.

Building on everything he learned from his first win, Blake decided to create another appā€¦Umax. This app allowed users to take selfies and the app would give them tips on how to be ā€œhotterā€. He followed the exact same playbook and pretty soon Umax had been downloaded more than 15 million times and was generating $5m per year in revenue too. But with ā€œA New Hopeā€ and ā€œThe Empire Strikes Backā€ out of the way, Blake still needed his ā€œReturn of the Jediā€ moment.

So he teamed up with Zach Yadegari and together they launched Cal AI, an AI calorie tracking app, in June 2024. Again, following the exact same playbook, they got Cal AI to millions of downloads and million in revenue, a truly ridiculous feat.

Blake completely turned his life around in a matter of months, and if you want to hear more on his story and his strategies for creating viral apps then this interview is well worth a watch.

What Blakeā€™s story shows is that in this day and age you can make more money than you ever dreamed of in an incredibly short amount of time. AI, as a tool, is giving us incredible leverage to build and create whatever we want. After that itā€™s all about putting in the work and wanting it badly enough.

So the only question is this: do you want it badly enough?

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