# Science Fair Winners Are Founding Unicorns at 3x the YC Rate | Anthony Atlas, Science Fair Fund

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/top-decile-podcast-7851283/science-fair-winners-are-founding-unicorns-at-3x-the-yc-rate-anthony-atlas-science-fair-fund
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/top-decile-podcast-7851283/science-fair-winners-are-founding-unicorns-at-3x-the-yc-rate-anthony-atlas-science-fair-fund.md
Podcast: [Top Decile Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/top-decile-podcast-7851283)
Published: 2026-07-01T07:00:00+00:00
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Duration seconds: 1440

## Resource

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.

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## Transcript

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