Ashmit Rao

You see the billboards before even exiting the airport. “AI for X”. “Build faster with Y”. This is all you are going to see for the next week.

I was fortunate enough to attend Startup School in SF, a weekend event hosted by Y Combinator. I spent a few days in the area before and after the event, and it is a whole different world from Oxford. I want to talk about my thoughts on the city.

Before experiencing it firsthand, I can’t say I was convinced by the usual rhetoric about SF - that it’s the undisputed global hub for startups - so I wanted to see for myself.

Startup School #

While Oxford matches the level of ambition and work ethic that I encountered in SF, these are directed in wildly different places.

Despite there being 5k attendees at Startup School, each one was working on something technical and interesting. Conversations flowed easily and almost always started with “What are you building?”. From underwater drones to email for AI agents, the ideas on show were insane. Most importantly, people were actually building. It is a lot easier with AI to be fair, but I hadn’t ever seen so many people working on something real, rather than mere ideation.

Only a few times have I been in such an environment at Oxford. I don’t attend many of the entrepreneurship events as they’re not in my areas of interest, which plays a part in this. However, on the whole priorities are heavily skewed towards ranking highly in finals and internships in finance & consulting. These are obviously credible in their own right, but make the contrast with SF particularly stark.

I do also think that the academic environment, including the tutorial system, promotes academic understanding as the primary goal of your time at Oxford. There is nowhere to hide in a tutorial. It is you, another student, and an academic who works on exactly the material in front of you. If you do not understand something properly, it’s in your best interest to bring it up - otherwise it will be discovered. It suits me very well, as someone who has interests in research and wants to build something technical. But someone actively scaling a startup, at uni for the sake of it, may not benefit much. While they are typically understanding and helpful, tutors put pressure on you academically and often don’t leave much room for other priorities you may have.

Terms are short and brutal - 8 weeks of crammed content, tutorials, sheets, classes, followed by 6 weeks of so-called “vacation” (mock exams at the start of the next term, as well as the extensive self-review of content required, mean this is a facade). My first year at Oxford was by far the busiest I've been, balancing academics, sports, fitness, social life, all while trying to remain relatively healthy and well-fed. Wanting to found something alongside all this obviously makes you somewhat of an outlier. On the other hand, meeting dozens of Stanford and Berkeley students led me to believe that the culture there is wildly different, although their geographical proximity to SF probably plays a role.

The talks were inspiring, but not really eye-opening or particularly informative, although I expected this; 45 minutes would only have been enough to teach something niche, but with 5k people it could never be relevant for everyone. Intriguingly, the majority of the speakers encouraged us to stay in school, despite dropouts like Patrick Collison and Sam Altman speaking. I left most of the talks early.

A highlight for me was a breakout room for 20 British founders led by Grey Baker (a British founder & YC partner). The group was small enough to be able to extract real, personalised value from Grey, yet large enough to meet new people. A difference I observed between British founders and American founders is that Americans tend to work on “quick” problems. Since the startup culture is definitely larger and more prominent in US campuses, I think it draws people to work on whatever problem they notice, to get working prototypes out fast, and to be ready to pivot. On the other hand, Brits work on “hard” problems. Startup culture is new (but growing) in the UK, and a more risk-averse culture means only those with the most conviction try, and therefore aim at big problems.

The crowd #

What surprised me the most about the crowd was the diversity. I was expecting 90% of the founders I met to be American, but it was barely above 50%. This was refreshing to see, and helped me look at many things in a different light; for example, things that felt normal in people’s home countries influenced the types of problems that they wanted to solve in the US. Also, people care very little about your credentials there. In the UK, when I introduce myself as a student, the natural follow-up that I get is “where?” - I got that question only a handful of times in SF. The youngest people in the room were often the most impressive.

The week made me realise that the people are what give SF the reputation I mentioned earlier, which I think it deserves. But weirdly, I feel as though the ease of access to high-quality conversations with interesting founders that exists in SF can actually hold you back. It’s easy to get caught up with loads of “coffee chats” rather than actually doing what you need to. For example, when working in a busy cafe you hear all the interesting conversations people are having around you, and I’d find myself drifting from what I’m doing to get involved in these. In Oxford on the other hand, I produce my best work in a quiet, usually silent, library. You definitely have to strike a balance between networking and working.

While I absolutely love it at Oxford, the week definitely made me think about what kind of path I’d be on if I’d chosen to apply for US universities.