First of all. Thank you for sharing your views on this and giving some suggestions for solutions.
As for use-cases Steem Power can have for a StartUp in the present situation, I believe there are still quite a few (although I agree with much of your critique). Some examples may be to incentivise authors to create content marketing material for buk.io. Could you also host a blog for book reviews? Or what other form of content could you host that could bring eyeballs to your product?
As for the other suggestions, there's a very significant portion (perhaps even majority at this point) of stakeholders and witnesses who agree that we need to review the role of inflation-derived rewards in a post-SMT Steem. I think this is a conversation that has to start sooner rather than later in order to build a comprehensive strategy for what Steem will be, what key value propositions it will deliver, and how it will accomplish solving some of the key problems worth solving that Steem was always intended to do.
I would be very happy to talk to you guys directly both with regards to how buk.io that use Steem to grow, and also how we can develop Steem further from here.