Marylou Costatechnology reporter
Even before graduating from the University of Bath in 2024, Arnau Ayerbe landed a highly coveted role as an AI engineer with JP Morgan – yet he felt limited and unmotivated.
“I realized very quickly that the person to my right and to my left was going to be me in 20 years, and I didn’t want to be that,” recalls London-based Ayerbe.
His best friend from high school in his native Madrid, Pablo Jiménez de Parga Ramos, who had also landed a corporate job after graduating from University College London, felt the same way.
They joined forces with Ayerbe’s university friend, Bergen Mere, in London in 2023 to launch Throxy, which creates AI agents for sales teams.
Now all 24, the trio have raised almost £5 million across two rounds of investor funding, and have annual sales of around £1.2 million.
They’re part of a growing number of 20-somethings who have taken the leap to start their own businesses. Data from Enterprise Nation shows that, in the UK, 62% of Gen Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – want to start a business.
This is reflected in the trends seen in data from the British Business Bank’s Start Up Loan Programme. This shows that the number of loans given to Gen Z founders has doubled in the last five years.
For the young entrepreneurs of Throxy, it has been a rewarding but difficult experience.
Ramos announced that Throxy does not have a nine-to-five culture, but rather a “9-9-6” ethos of working from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week.
And Ayerbe says: “If I had known how much effort and work it had taken me to get the company to this point, I probably would have never started it.”
The founders of Throxy say that a big advantage they have in their favor compared to other generations is their knowledge of AI.
For Garcia, building an AI-based business felt natural.
“I was working on research projects with early models of Chat GPT, before they were released to the public on research, and it honestly felt like magic.
“It felt like something transformative was going to happen here that would fundamentally change the way we as humans work for the better,” he says.
Perhaps one day Ayerbe and his co-founders will be in charge of a company worth more than $1 billion (£740 million) – known as a unicorn.
Research from investment network Antler shows that the most successful AI start-ups are increasingly being founded by young entrepreneurs.
It analyzed 3,512 founders of companies that were worth more than $1 billion.
It found that the average age of an entrepreneur founding an AI unicorn fell from 40 in 2020 to 29 in 2024.
But when you’re running a business in your 20s, it can be hard to keep your customers and partners, who are usually much older, from underestimating you.
This is the experience of Rosie Skuse, who, as a new business owner in her early 20s, was often mistaken for her boss’s assistant — and had to break the surprising news that she was, in fact, the boss.
London-based Skuse recalls, “Some people wouldn’t even shake my hand. It was really hard, and I struggled with it a lot. It’s frustrating when people don’t believe it’s your company. Then I would start speaking and people could see that I knew what I was talking about.”
“Then they’d say, ‘Wow, you must be so proud – but you’re so young. That shock factor was almost like a secret weapon, because I would trick people, and they would actually listen.’
Now 29, Skuse is the founder and CEO of Molto Music Group, a music and entertainment agency whose clients include high-end names such as The Dorchester, The Savoy, Soho House and Raffles.
From among its roster of over 300 musicians, Molto Music Group puts together exclusive house bands for those venues, often also designing the stage and sets. It also works with luxury brands such as Hermès and Patek Philippe at private events.
Despite its launch in 2019 and its early customers having to cancel their contracts due to the Covid pandemic that followed, the business is now strong. Molto Music Group made its first million in 2023, and had a turnover of over £1.6m in 2025. It employs seven full-time employees.
“I don’t have any business education. It’s all trial and error and learning,” says Skuse.
“I’ve had to work a lot on my tone and presentation – and my handshake – but being young and promoting a young company can be a breath of fresh air compared to our competitors. It’s more memorable.”
But business founders who have gone before have some words of advice for their younger counterparts.
Lee Broders, 53, started his first business in IT at the age of 26, after serving 10 years in the army. He has since been a serial entrepreneur and now runs seven ventures ranging from business mentoring to photography.
According to Broders, making your first million isn’t everything – it’s all about growing a business to sustain it into the future.
“Speed can often hide fragile foundations. Developing something quickly does not always equate to stability or strength,” says Mr Broders, who lives in Shropshire.
“It’s great if you’re making over a million pounds, but if it costs £990,000, and you’re actually making £10,000 a year, that’s very different.”
Sarah Skelton is the co-founder and managing director of Flourish, a recruitment firm for the sales industry.
He started his first business in 2024 at the age of 46, and he worries that founders in their 20s may miss out on valuable leadership and management skills that can be best learned in a traditional work environment.
“It’s great that you can set up a business so quickly these days,” says London-based Ms Skelton. “But I think to be really strong in leadership, you have to have experience, which is really important here.”
She is the co-founder and managing director of Flourish, a recruitment firm for the sales industry.
“Also, when you’re growing a business, it’s really important to rely on people in the network. But of course, if you’re very young and you’re just going straight into it, where is your network?
She adds: “My network spans 25 years of recruiting candidates, selling different businesses, working in different countries. It’s really hard when you’re so young. How do you know who to trust and where to find those people?”