Assertion Partly supported AI assessment confidence: 85% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Hershenson: 10% of unicorn startups have founders who attended Stanford

Mar Hershenson · #AIS: Pear VC’s Mar Hershenson on making successful founders · May 30, 2022 · at 5:37

Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner at Pear VC, shares data on Stanford University's role as an entrepreneurship machine during her talk at the All-In Summit.

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“10% of unicorns have founders that attended Stanford.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

10% of unicorn startups have founders who attended Stanford University.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

The claim that 10% of unicorn startups have Stanford-affiliated founders is a close approximation depending on whether measured by individual founders globally or by specific degree cohorts. In a 2017 Sage/Crunchbase study of global unicorns, Stanford alumni accounted for 10.2% (51 of 498) of all unicorn founders, and Stanford GSB accounted for 11% of MBA-educated unicorn founders. However, when measured at the company level for U.S.-headquartered unicorns, research by Stanford Professor Ilya Strebulaev found that approximately 18% to 20% of U.S. unicorn companies had at least one founder who attended Stanford University.

A 2017 Sage analysis of Crunchbase data found that 51 out of 498 global unicorn founders (10.2%) attended Stanford University.
A Stanford GSB study by Prof. Ilya Strebulaev found that among MBA-educated unicorn founders, Stanford GSB accounted for 11%.
At the U.S. company level, Strebulaev's research found that 18% to 20% of U.S. unicorn startups had at least one Stanford-affiliated founder.

Checked against

[1] stanford.edu [2] stanford.edu [3] poetsandquantsforundergrads.com [4] poetsandquantsforundergrads.com [5] crunchbase.com [6] tau.ac.il [7] reddit.com [8] forbes.com

"Stanford" "percent of unicorn founders" OR "percentage of unicorn founders" "Ilya Strebulaev" "Stanford" "one-fifth" OR "20%" OR "10%" unicorn founders 2021 OR 2022 Stanford percentage unicorn founders PitchBook Crunchbase "one-fifth" OR "one fifth" OR "10%" OR "15%" OR "20%" "unicorn founders" Stanford "Strebulaev" "Sage" "unicorn" "Stanford" founders percentage Stanford university unicorn founders percentage PitchBook Ilya Strebulaev Stanford unicorn founders statistics "Stanford" "unicorn" "founders" percentage "Crunchbase" OR "PitchBook" 2021 OR 2022

assessed as of 2026-07-30

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Mentioned

Stanford unicorn

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