BUSINESS IDEA | STARTUP

CRM for Investor Outreach 📞  

Track to the future

Available Domain: Raisespot.ai

1. Problem/Opportunity❓

The Problem/Opportunity: Fundraising is one of the most stressful, high-leverage activities a founder will ever do. Unless of course you include those two magic letters in your pitch deck…

But trying to juggle dozens of investor conversations, different deck versions, updates, and follow-ups is almost impossible for a founder that’s already trying to do a million other things. So why not create a bespoke tool exactly for this job? Here’s what we’re thinking.

Market Size: At any given time around 30,000–50,000 startups are actively fundraising

2. Solution ✅

The Idea: A lightweight, purpose-built CRM that helps startup founders to manage investor outreach and track conversations

How it Works:

• The founder adds investors to a visual pipeline that tracks every stage of the raise, from “intro sent” to “committed”

• Each investor is automatically enriched with key data like thesis, geography, check size, and recent investments giving full context at a glance.

• The platform drafts customized emails using this investor data which can be sent and tracked. Founders can attach pitch decks or include call booking links in a few clicks on these emails.

• Smart reminders, follow-up nudges, and automated update suggestions all keep investor conversations warm and the raise moving forward.

• The user can also buy relevant lead lists on the platform of investors that they should reach out to based on their stage, industry etc.

Go-to-market: Focus on solo founders, indie hackers, and accelerator graduates first, then expand into later stage startups

Business Model: Small subscription fee + upsell lead lists (lists of relevant investors to the startup)

Startup Costs: You could stand this up for a few thousand dollars, not too expensive

3. How You’ll Get Rich 💰

Exit Strategy: Get acquired by a fundraising platform like Carta or AngelList

Exit Multiple: You’d likely get 4x - 8x revenue on an exit here

TOGETHER WITH LIQUID WEB

Hosting designed for growth

Your business is scaling, your hosting should too. Liquid Web offers a range of solutions tailored for growth, ensuring your online presence remains robust and responsive.

• Lightning-fast VPS speeds for enhanced performance

• Powerful dedicated hosting for maximum control

• The best value in WordPress hosting

High-performance hosting minus the high price.

Because you read Half Baked, you get up to 77% off.

Learn more

DRUNK BUSINESS IDEA

Flat Earth Globe

• Are you a flat-earther? Do you trust your eyes more than hundreds of years of peer-reviewed science? Then do we have the product for you.

• Introducing the Flat Earth Globe™, the globe designed for those who know the truth about the world. Includes an extra-thick Antarctic Ice Wall border to “keep the oceans in” (you know the deal).

• The world isn’t spinning, but your head will be once you see this incredible product

• Available for purchase all around the world…

Vote

• ✅ Yes this actually exists

• ❌ Nope you totally made this up

JUST THE TIP

Trend 📈: Plantain

• These days consumers are increasingly seeking healthier food and snack alternatives, and plantains fit the bill.

• Plantains are the starchy, less sweet, cousins of bananas and are typically cooked before eating. They can be used in both sweet and savory dishes.

• They are particularly popular in West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America due to their nutritional value. Plantains are rich in potassium, fiber, and vitamin B6, and support heart health, digestion, and energy levels.

• This makes them a great candidate to form the basis of new, healthy food products

Business Ideas

• Plantain-Based Snack Brand: Launch a premium snack line: plantain chips (spicy, sea salt, vinegar), puffs, or sweet maduros in vacuum-sealed packs.

• Plantain Flour Brand: Launch a plantain flour product (great for gluten-free baking).

TOGETHER WITH KIXIE

How We Sold Out Our Ad Space 3 Months in Advance

On the outside, Half Baked is all fun and cheeky vibes. But behind the scenes, we’re locked in on sales and growth. That’s why we use Kixie to power our sales.

AI-powered dialling connects us instantly with 5X more leads, CRM integration keeps deals moving, and automation helps us close faster.

We joke around, but when it comes to business, we don’t mess around. Kixie is our secret weapon.

Book a free demo today and get 10% OFF when you mention Half Baked.

Book Demo

THE MONEYSHOT

The Founder Who Sold Two Billion Dollar Businesses

Scaling a business to a billion dollar exit is incredibly rare. But doing it twice is almost impossible.

But that’s exactly what this legendary founder managed to do.

This is his story.

Kyle Vogt is a generational founder.

He was born and raised in Kansas City and exhibited a passion for robotics from a young age. In fact at age 14 he built a self-driving prototype using a Power Wheels car, an early indication of just how talented this guy was.

Unsurprisingly he went on to computer science and electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). But at MIT the most important thing he did that would change his life forever was to respond to a random email…

It was 2006 and at the time Justin Kan and Emmett Shear were looking to work with a hardware developer to help them with their live-streaming site called Justin.tv. So they sent an email to an MIT engineering mailing list to see if anyone wanted to help. Kyle said he would, and that’s how he became a co-founder of Justin.tv.

Kyle was instrumental in building the hardware and software infrastructure to keep the site live. Justin.tv eventually pivoted to focus on gaming content, leading to the creation of Twitch in 2011.

By 2014 Twitch was the largest live streaming platform in the world and Amazon acquired the business for $970 million that year. This was Kyle’s first billion-dollar exit (we’re rounding up a little here, what’s $30m here or there really?).

After the Twitch exit though Kyle decided it was time to go back to an earlier love…self-driving cars. So he assembled a small room in a garage in San Francisco and picked up the problem he first started solving at age 14.

It was 2013 and he had just founded Cruise.

Cruise didn't set out to build a self-driving car from scratch. Instead, the first version of Cruise was an aftermarket kit you could install on an Audi A4. Think of it like a “driver assist upgrade” for highway driving.

However once the team realized that true autonomous driving was where the world was headed, they pivoted from a consumer product to build a full-stack self-driving car.

Soon after this pivot Cruise caught investor attention, raising $2m in 2014 and a further $12.5m in 2015. They spent the next 2 years developing their tech, but in March 2016 before they even managed to launch a commercial product the business was acquired by General Motors for over $1bn (estimates vary from $1bn–$1.5bn). This was exit number 2 for Kyle, and it only took 3 years.

Post acquisition though Cruise has had a tough time. Regulatory setbacks and numerous incidents, including bad car accidents, led GM to pause Cruise’s operations in 2023 and fully shut it down in late 2024. Such is life.

But what’s Kyle up to today you ask? Well he’s currently building the Bot Company, a company creating affordable robots to automate mundane household chores. Sign us up. But will this be Kyle’s third billion dollar exit? Only time will tell, but I sure as hell wouldn’t bet against him.

All of which goes to show that we all need to start thinking bigger. There are people out there building multiple billion dollar businesses across different industries. We all need to be thinking just as big and be just as bold.

So if you're sitting on an idea that feels “too crazy,” “too big,” or “too far out” then good. You might be closer to something truly special than you think.

1 - 1 FOUNDER FEEDBACK

We Need Your Help

We're on a mission to become the world's #1 entrepreneurship newsletter, but to do that we need your help. Got feedback, ideas, or thoughts on what you’d love to see next? This is your chance to help shape Half Baked. Darragh (our Head Baker) is opening up his calendar just for you. Click here to book a 15 minute call.