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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 š„
Hereās what weāve got for you today:
Business Ideaš”: A new take on a classic app
Drunk Business Idea š»: A sports event we could all participate in
Just The Tip š: The latest Chinese AI product making waves
The Moneyshot š¤: Making $20m from 3 viral apps in 18 months
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Letās get into it.
BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP
Visual To-do List App š„ļø
Click into action
Available Domain: Tasksnaps.com
š” 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 thereās few things in life that beat the satisfaction of crossing items off your to-do list. Although some days we donāt 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 itās super quick. So why not turn this into a fully fledged app? Hereās what weāre thinking.
Market Size: There are an estimated 500m global users of productivity/task apps around the world
2. Solution ā
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 thereās 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 Youāll Get Rich š°
Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a productivity app like Todoist
Exit Multiple: SaaS productivity tools typically exit at 5xā12x 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. Itās 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 š: Manus AI
The AI indistry has had yet another āDeepseekā 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
AI is getting out of hand š¤Æ
Manus, an AI agent from China, is automating approximately 50 tasks, creating a rather dystopian scenario
Reports suggest it is more accurate than DeepSeek, capable of simultaneously handling financial transactions, research, purchasing, etc
ā Barsee š¶ (@heyBarsee)
3:07 PM ā¢ Mar 7, 2025
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 yearās worth of work gone down the drain. Blake was down, but he wasnāt out yetā¦
He graduated in May 2023 with no income or savings, so he had to go through an entrepreneurās worst nightmareā¦applying for jobs. He applied for 100+ jobs and internships during college, all to no avail. He didnāt get a single offer. In fact itās worse than that, he never even got a second round interview. Feels bad man.
Blake couldnāt support himself so he moved home to his parentās house, having to take loans from his brother for food. He couldnāt 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 āsome 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 āpopped 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 āhotterā. 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 āA New Hopeā and āThe Empire Strikes Backā out of the way, Blake still needed his āReturn 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 Blakeās 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 itās 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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