Julia Yu

Recently, @Product Hunt published our article about how pre-seed fundraising changed in 2026.

The biggest shift of the last few years:

AI dramatically reduced the cost and speed of building products.

Because of this, the signals investors optimize for have changed as well.

In the article, I openly talk about what we see inside Unicorns Club after watching hundreds of founders try to raise funding. I even share some of the traction thresholds and benchmarks investors inside our community increasingly expect to see.

You can read the article here:
https://medium.com/@producthunt/...

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?