Episode
Science Fair Winners Are Founding Unicorns at 3x the YC Rate | Anthony Atlas, Science Fair Fund
- Podcast
- Top Decile Podcast
- Published
- Jul 1, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1440
- Processing state
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Summary
Anthony Atlas won first place at the International Science and Engineering Fair at 17, earning himself a minor planet in the process. He spent years noticing that science fair alumni kept turning up as exceptional startup founders, then built the data to prove it: finalists who go on to start companies do so at a 15 percent unicorn rate, with over two-thirds making it through Series A. We get into how he built a 55,000-person alumni database to backtest the thesis before ever pitching an LP, what the science fair experience actually trains that translates to founding, and why the 2,000-plus alumni who volunteered to help may be the fund's most underrated edge.