Julia Yu

What are the alternatives to Stripe?

Paddle

got rejected

There used to be at least some clear logic behind startup valuation.
You d take:
hours rate MVP cost.
That gave you a rough valuation floor.
Not perfect. But it was an anchor.
That anchor is now gone.
AI made MVPs almost free.
~$300. Two weeks. One person.
And if a product costs almost nothing to build
what is valuation based on now?
The answer is uncomfortable:
your product itself is no longer inherently valuable.
Investors no longer look at:
how long you ve been building
how many developers you have
how much money you ve invested into the product
Because none of that proves anything anymore.
Now there s only one question:
who is paying?
If no one is
then in their eyes, your startup is worth roughly what your MVP cost.
Here s what actually changed:
why pre-seed is now about MRR, not MVP
how investor requirements shifted
why solo founders suddenly became viable
and where moat actually lives when your product can be cloned in two weeks
Full breakdown here

https://substack.com/home/post/p...
And I have a qustion to you:
Did AI kill innovative startups and turn venture into short-term revenue games?
What do you think?

Hot take from NFX Venture Fund: fundraising is broken because of... Endless forms.
Not because you don't know the right people.
Not because you lack warm intros.
Just. The. Forms.
Here's how they put it themselves:
"Fundraising is broken. Endless forms, vague timelines, ghosted follow-ups." (This I got in my mailbox.)
Great. So they built the antidote.
You can apply if you're a Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, or Stanford student.
Or a woman in HealthTech.
No more broken fundraising! The short form is now available...
to a very specific group of people.
If you think the real bottleneck is something else, you are not alone...
What do you think actually breaks fundraising in 2026?

Drop your take below