A Startup Is Trying to Buy PayPal… Craziest Deal of 2026! | E2312 from This Week in Startups

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A Startup Is Trying to Buy PayPal… Craziest Deal of 2026! | E2312

1 hour 14 minutes Posted Jul 15, 2026 at 9:59 pm.

Eric Bahn (Hustle Fund) & Jeff Morris Jr. (Chapter One) join the show!

Stripe's reported $53B offer for PayPal

Why founders don't want to go public

Agree.com Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to https://agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life!

When is it time to burn the boats?

MongoDB AI-assisted and agentic coding is helping you build faster than ever. Start building at https://MongoDB.com/ai

Does VC need an AI revolution?

Rippling Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business.

Custom evals, open source models, and avoiding vendor lock-in

Physical AI and robotics as the next frontier

Oak's $60M seed and startup clusters chasing agent infrastructure

Escaping the Silicon Valley "think tank"

Consumer AI's missing wave

AI regulation and how to get it right

Where to find our guests and wrap-up!

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This Week In Startups is made possible by:

MongoDB - MongoDB.com/ai

Rippling - Rippling.ai/twist

Agree.com - agree.com

Today's show:

Hustle Fund's Eric Bahn and Chapter One's Jeff Morris Jr. join our venture capital roundtable directly following the news breaking that Stripe wants to buy PayPal. The possible transaction highlights how little interest today's leading startups have in going public any time soon. With host Alex Wilhelm, Bahn and Morris dug into when startups should burn the boats à la Fin, physical AI as the next frontier, the power of Silicon Valley groupthink, and how startups are approaching the first days of widespread, company-specific AI evals!

Guest links:

Eric Bahn https://x.com/ericbahn

Hustle Fund https://www.hustlefund.vc

Jeff Morris Jr. https://x.com/jmj

Chapter One https://chapterone.com

Show links:

Stripe wants to buy PayPal https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/stripe-advent-offer-buy-paypal-more-than-53-billion-sources-say-2026-07-15/

Flex https://www.flex.one/

Webflow https://webflow.com/

Oak https://www.oak.id/

Fin selling to Salesforce https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2026/06/15/salesforce-signs-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-fin/

Erebor https://erebor.bank/

"Competition is for losers" https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536

Chapter One piece on the value of software https://jamesin.substack.com/p/some-areas-weve-been-investing-in