Y Combinator on campus
The startup accelerator behind Airbnb and Twitch comes to Imperial.
Y Combinator, one of the world’s largest startup accelerators, held a talk at Imperial’s South Kensington campus on Wednesday 28th January, as part of a five-day European tour. Speakers included two of the firm’s General Partners: Tom Blomfield, co-founder of challenger bank Monzo, and Pete Koomen, co-founder of A/B testing provider Optimizely.
Koomen created Optimizely after some time at Google and a few unsuccessful startup stunts, inspired by his co-founder’s experience leading digital engagement for Barack Obama’s election campaign. He advised attendees not to take the difficulty of a project as a proxy for its usefulness, and to focus on “fast feedback loops” instead: releasing products early to see whether customers find them useful.
Drawing from his experience building an EdTech platform in spite of his unfamiliarity with the section, Koomen also outlined the importance of “intuition” in the early days of a startup, saying founders should focus on areas in which their prior work experience gives them an edge.
Blomfield, an Oxford law graduate who co-created Monzo, one of the UK’s earliest app-based banks, was critical of the European “know-your-place” mentality which he said discouraged innovation, contrasting it with the support offered by the Californian startup ecosystem. He was also critical of top graduates’ race for prestigious but low-impact jobs, urging Imperial students to stop accumulating credentials and build something new: “Now is the best time to take risk!”
Most questions from the audience revolved around the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on coding, startups and the future of white collar jobs. They betrayed a certain level of anxiety within the startup-oriented Imperial community in the face of an unpredictable AI upheaval.
One student asked whether the technical education they received at Imperial would still make a difference in a future where apps can be created solely with an AI prompt. Blomfield identied Imperial students’ ability to “think very logically and communicate very precisely” as their key skill in an AI-powered world.
Y Combinator selects a “batch” of startups four times a year, invests in them and trains its founders in San Francisco, where the firm is based. Some famous companies that joined its accelerator programme include Airbnb, Dropbox, Twitch, Stripe, and Reddit. Applications for Y Combinator’s Spring 2026 Batch funding cycle are open until February 9th.
