Starting a company has never cost less. A founder with the right AI tools can ship a working product in a weekend, stand up a website in an afternoon, and fill out an accelerator application before lunch. But that speed hasn't made it easier to get funded. Fewer seed-funded startups are graduating to Series A than just a few years ago, and startup funding has been in a downturn so far in 2026. Investors are concentrating capital in fewer, stronger bets. The question is what 'stronger' means now. Every generation of technology resets what investors should expect from founders. Twenty years ago, a founder who wasn't internet-native was at a structural disadvantage. Forty years ago, it was computer literacy. Today, AI-native fluency is the baseline ' the ability to build, test, and iterate using AI copilots, APIs, and low-code tools at a speed that would have required a full engineering team just a few years ago. Founders who haven't embraced these tools in their daily operations...
learn more
