90% of startups fail – but some young people aren’t deterred by this infamous statistic. Between 2014-15 and 2022-23, there was a 70% increase in the number of UK university startups, with these being led by some of Britain’s brightest young minds. But as the graduate job market continues to suffer, these founders often look abroad to scale their businesses. The pattern is a familiar one, and one characteristic of an ‘incubator economy’, in which startups move to London or overseas due to a lack of funding. Does a university education remain valuable for these young entrepreneurs, or can entrepreneurship serve as an increasingly popular alternative to traditional routes to success?
Social media and startups
For content creator and Cambridge student Erin McGurk, entrepreneurship was the natural outcome of her social media experience. Beyond the hard-earned skills that come with a combined following of over 1 million on multiple social media platforms – such as negotiating contracts, having her voice heard in sales meetings, and creating engaging videos – Erin told Cherwell that documenting her university experience was the main factor motivating her to launch her business. Egoist Machines allows users to create an ‘AI passport’, in which their personal information can be transported across AI platforms. The startup is backed by Y Combinator, arguably the most prestigious startup accelerator in the world – but, speaking to Cherwell from San Francisco, she still sees the immense value of a university degree.
Erin’s appreciation for her Cambridge experience derives primarily from the opportunity to connect with like-minded people: “Without Cambridge, I wouldn’t have met my co-founder, Daniel. There’s also a sort of availability bias, as I have the privilege of meeting experts in their fields.” Erin also shared on her TikTok page that she had switched courses in her first year, shifting from economics to land economy, stating that she wanted to study “the practical applications of economics”, a choice that seems to align with her ambitions in the business world. Nevertheless, Erin doesn’t entirely reject a traditionally successful career path, such as law or finance: “These industries make the world work!” For her, the risk of founding a business was something she was prepared for, because she had her social media career as a backup and was still young enough to lack significant financial responsibilities. If anything, one of the hardest adjustments has been to American hustle culture: “The UK has a disproportionate amount of talent, but ‘San Francisco optimism’ is abundant, and quite un-British.”
For some young entrepreneurs, however, university is off the table. Ishaan Bhimjiyani, better known online as Revishaan, shocked his ‘studytok’ audience in 2023 by abandoning his Oxbridge aspirations for an entrepreneurial path in Dubai. Speaking to Cherwell, he lists a number of factors that influenced his decision, the greatest of which was his social media success. With just over 400,000 TikTok followers as of 2026, Ishaan has been creating content since before he even sat his GCSE exams. He first gained attention for his study-focused videos, from livestreaming his revision to hosting study meet-ups in London. Speaking to Cherwell, he noted that developing his image and working with brands gave him the skills he needed to start his own business. He told Cherwell: “Content creation starts as a fun hobby and slowly becomes a side hustle. I had to file my own taxes, negotiate my worth, and learn how to be brand safe.”
This business acumen, acquired from a relatively young age, was bolstered by him having the right characteristics for entrepreneurship. “You can’t get anywhere without taking risks”, he said. “Being a good entrepreneur is about what you do with your opportunities, how you communicate, whether you know your worth, and whether you can solve problems.” For Ishaan, these characteristics are enough. “People think I come from a wealthy background, but I had no family connections in this industry. A full-time job isn’t enough anymore, and the pressure on young people to earn is enormous, so side hustles often end up performing better than a main career.” This precarious situation in the UK led Ishaan to relocate to Dubai, where he enjoys lower taxes and better support for his entrepreneurial vision. “The UK really punishes business owners,” he said. “You pay so much in tax, and you don’t see where it goes, whereas countries like Norway and Finland have high taxes but plenty of support for businesses. Silicon Valley and Dubai are the best places for an entrepreneur to be.”
Ishaan doesn’t regret his choice to forgo a university degree: “Gap years exist for a reason. You can always go back to education.” He is currently the CEO of TapLab, a talent management agency representing over 100 ‘study influencers’. With an impressive display of brand partners, from Apple to Samsung and Beats, his ed-tech company reflects the very beginning of his career – in his room, livestreaming his GCSE revision. When asked about the future of his business, Ishaan firmly states that he is aiming to eventually exit and sell the company. Investing is his main passion, and has been the focus of his content since deciding not to attend university. Speaking to Cherwell, he revealed that this pivot in itself was incredibly difficult, as it struggled to resonate with his study-oriented audience. But Ishaan believed first and foremost in pursuing his passions, whether that meant revision or entrepreneurship.
Being your own boss
For Erin, Ishaan, and other content creators, taking responsibility for their online presence made the foray into entrepreneurship natural. But there are other factors at play that make the world of startups, pitching, and incubators appealing.
The barrier to entry is lower than ever, with AI tools accelerating the process of building a business. From maximising the productivity of a small team to allowing for cost-free testing, what once may have required a dedicated marketing team or extensive market research can now be done in a matter of hours with Claude or ChatGPT, the latter of which is at many students’ fingertips. Similarly important is the widespread availability of open-source AI models like Llama, Qwen, and Mistral, which can be easily adapted and redistributed with little knowledge of the technical ins and outs – a practice known as ‘vibe coding’, and heavily criticised within the industry.
Much like the iconic, rose-tinted representation of Hollywood, San Francisco and its entrepreneurial culture are increasingly common symbols in popular imagination. TV shows such as Silicon Valley, Shark Tank, and even The Apprentice hold significant cultural weight as representatives of capitalist optimism – particularly for Big Tech – that has grown in recent decades in the UK. This has occurred to such an extent that the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor has been dubbed ‘Europe’s Silicon Valley’ in government communications. Yet, the lifestyle and status of being a ‘founder’ is also increasingly glamourised. For instance, Steven Bartlett’s massively popular The Diary of a CEO podcast makes use of the jargon and self-help sheen of the Silicon Valley mindset, with The Times columnist James Marriott describing the show in 2023 as “encouraging, motivational, [and] vaguely businessy”. It raises the question of whether entrepreneurship is truly motivated by passion for a product or company, or is in large part a vanity project in tandem with content creation and personal branding. However, while there may be aesthetic motivations in getting stuck into ‘founder’ terminology and vying for a lucrative exit, much of the same could be said for traditional law or finance, in which industry rankings and generous perks are part and parcel of the profession.
But entrepreneurship is not accessible to everyone. Some of the most touching – and viral – stories are about entrepreneurs who come from nothing and have no connections, but this is very much the exception that proves the rule. Having access to wealth and connections through nepotism is often what allows individuals to take the risks necessary in business since they possess a safety net to fall back on. Even in the competitive race to attract investment, socioeconomic inequality runs rife: Y Combinator’s prestigious funding scheme includes a compulsory 3-month residential in San Francisco, in which accommodation and flights are not covered. These inequalities exist in almost every industry, but we should perhaps feel greater concern when these persist in a line of work so heavily entrenched in ‘meritocratic’ ideology.
The value of university
In many ways, student entrepreneurship also speaks to the real concerns young people have about higher education. Rising tuition fees, extortionate interest rates, and a precarious job market have markedly devalued a university degree, and the unattractive prospect of being saddled with lifelong debt makes for a poor return on investment. In January, Labour MP for York Outer, Luke Charters, described England and Wales’ student loans system to Parliament as a “mis-selling scandal waiting to unfold”. A scandal, it is. After years of paying their debts, graduates often find themselves left with higher remaining balances than when they took out these loans, a particularly concerning result when the terms of such loans were rarely advertised as being subject to change. Home ownership, children, and retirement are becoming unrealistic financial investments as a result.
More and more often, a university degree does not translate into a job at all, let alone a high-paying, high-status role. This month, a record 262,820 students were accepted onto an undergraduate course, with roughly 17,000 graduate jobs available. According to the What Do Graduates Do? 2025-26 survey, only 56.4% of first-degree graduates were in full-time employment 15 months after graduating. Of those working in either full-time or part-time employment, 10.2% worked as retail, catering, waiting, and bar staff, the second-most popular category. Statistic after statistic reveals a hostile environment for young people, but there are few alternatives, with places for degree apprenticeships being similarly competitive.
But university is not always doom and gloom. Particularly for those at Oxford and Cambridge, the institutional prestige and potential to form high-profile connections are unrivalled. In addition, Oxford and Cambridge both aim to promote entrepreneurship in their students. The OX1 Incubator, for example, has provided over £120,000 worth of equity-free funding to over 800 student founders. Cambridge’s entrepreneurial culture is perhaps even more impressive, with the city being a British biotech hub. Alongside the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs, a society which has awarded over £750,000 in funding, several colleges host their own incubator programmes, from the King’s Entrepreneurship Lab to the Trinity Hall Entrepreneurs’ Network. However, few universities can match the resources and funding of Oxbridge, and as the industrialised world’s most regionally unequal nation, the UK may be home to only a tiny minority of students who can take advantage of these programmes.
Anya Trofimova, a recent graduate from St John’s College and former Oxford BNOC, was offered a training contract in her final year. She turned it down to build her own AI startup, PRINCEPS, which aims to reshape how data centres are insured – PRINCEPS is backed by Y Combinator and recently won a £1.7 million prize at London Tech Week. While reminiscing positively on her Oxford experience, she felt that a life in corporate law was not for her. “It’s a huge privilege to have my first proper job be one in which I’m self-employed, and I certainly wouldn’t have had that opportunity had I not gone to Oxford. But in terms of making a meaningful impact, I couldn’t do that in law or policy without a good decade of experience.” Anya felt that the corporate environment was ultimately too far removed from the interesting, and often hugely consequential, cases which she got a taste of. Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, allows her to build her vision here and now. “The Oxford process facilitates this – you realise just how much you can achieve if you apply yourself.”
What’s the point?
Though it is one of the most popular industries for student startups, AI is a particularly contentious field to venture into – most AI is accessed in the cloud, hosted in large data centres which consume huge amounts of water and electricity. There are eight data centres in Oxfordshire alone, seven of which are situated in Didcot, while plans for a ninth near Bicester have recently been approved by Cherwell District Council. In a country significantly impacted by drought, and in which water bans are being introduced, reconsidering our distribution of these limited resources may be long overdue. Or, perhaps, as Erin tells Cherwell, it may be a mistake to ignore the inevitable: “There are good things happening with AI, especially in the medical field. After a rocky transition we’ll hopefully be left with these, but for now the environmental impact is disastrous.” For her, optimising data centres to be as environmentally efficient as possible is how we mitigate what is already well underway.
No one can know what the future has in store for these young entrepreneurs, but on paper, they have everything needed to succeed: a world-class education, substantial funding, and the audacity to aim high. An Oxbridge education, once a direct pipeline into law and finance, is changing, with students increasingly pursuing other ventures while still enrolled in undergraduate study. Perhaps our brightest minds could be put to better use, or perhaps they will continue to solve complex problems – even if they tend to be the problems of Big Tech’s wealthiest. In the meantime, these entrepreneurs will no doubt continue to build ferociously enviable CVs.
