From Finance to AI: A Young Entrepreneur's Journey

Raymond Zhao, a 23-year-old entrepreneur, has taken a bold step away from the finance world and into the exciting realm of artificial intelligence.

A Dream of Finance

His story begins with a dream to work at Goldman Sachs, a prestigious investment bank. He moved from Australia to the UK to study mathematics and statistics at the University of Oxford, where he became interested in finance. The idea of working in finance appealed to him because of the good pay, respect, and smart colleagues.

He applied for a summer internship at Goldman Sachs in London and was accepted after a rigorous selection process. However, after a month, he realized that he wasn't passionate about the work. He worked long hours and didn't enjoy the financial markets as much as his colleagues did.

A Shift in Direction

After finishing his internship, Zhao spent some time traveling and thinking about what excited him. He returned to Oxford for his Master's degree and joined the AI society. There, he met his future cofounder, Isabel Greenslade, and together they came up with the idea for Structured AI. They built a copilot for the preconstruction engineering world, which helps engineers with repetitive manual workflows.

The Journey to Y Combinator

Zhao and his team applied to Y Combinator, a prestigious startup accelerator, for the summer 2025 cohort but weren't accepted. However, they didn't give up. During his final week at Oxford, Zhao skipped classes and went to San Francisco for an AI startup conference. He hadn't planned to raise money, but his founder friends encouraged him to try. He started talking to investors and managed to raise about $500,000. This allowed them to focus on Structured AI full-time.

They applied to Y Combinator again and were accepted into the Fall 2025 Batch. The program is intense, with founders working around the clock. They have turned their living room into an office and are working hard to build their company. They will pitch their progress onstage to a group of investors at the end of the cohort.

A Message of Encouragement

Zhao believes that the biggest risk nowadays is not taking one. He encourages others to try launching a startup if they have an idea that's keeping them up at night. He thinks that startup life can be very rewarding if you can make it work and have the appetite for risk.