Updated May 2026

The Unicorn Founder Board

Where 4,485 US unicorn founders studied and worked before they built unicorns. From Stanford GSB professor Ilya Strebulaev.

Unicorn Founders
4,485
Unique individuals across 1,665 current unicorns or unicorns that went public
Top School
Stanford
444 unicorn founders attended
Top Prior Employer
Google
237 founders worked there first

Where they came from

The schools and companies that show up disproportionately in unicorn-founder backgrounds.

Where they studied

Top 15 universities by number of unicorn founders (unique)
Stanford University444
Harvard University324
Massachusetts Institute of Technology264
University of California, Berkeley200
University of Pennsylvania130
Yale University106
Cornell University101
Columbia University99
New York University84
University of California, Los Angeles82
University of Michigan73
University of Texas at Austin71
Princeton University71
Carnegie Mellon University67
Duke University63

Where they worked before

Top 15 prior employers
Google237
Microsoft186
Stanford University159
MIT127
Facebook105
IBM100
McKinsey & Company77
Harvard University76
Apple70
Oracle69
Goldman Sachs69
Israel Defense Forces65
Amazon55
Yahoo!52
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Who they are

Degree mix, gender, and ethnicity breakdown of unicorn founders.

Highest Degree

Bachelor's Degree39%
Doctor's Degree24%
Master's Degree18%
MBA15%
Dropout2%
Other2%
Associate's Degree0%

Gender

Male93%
Female7%

Ethnicity

White78%
Asian/Pacific Islander19%
Hispanic2%
Black1%