It is our goal to encourage the next generation of leaders to build great companies of enduring meaning and value, so we launched our Atomic Internship Program for graduate and undergraduate students. Our Internship has three main pillars:
1. Value Creation
Fellows are empowered to immediately contribute and create value on 0-to-1 initiatives.
2. Community
Company building is a team sport, we host events and activities to foster community in the cohort. Fellows will invariably be the leaders of tomorrow.
3. Diversity of Thought
Diversity of backgrounds and skills creates better opportunities to learn and expand thinking.
2020 was our Internship's inaugural year. We had 567 applicants in two weeks. With only ten spots available, candidate selection became a challenging task. Our acceptance rate was on course to be lower than even the most prestigious colleges (1.76%). Ultimately we made some tough decisions and chose an absolutely amazing cohort.
When COVID hit and San Francisco went into lockdown, companies began canceling summer programs left and right. Not us. We believe it has never been a better time to start a company. Our incredible team quickly pivoted from the original plan and enabled us to host a fully-remote Internship Program. But this change raised some important questions: Can a remote Internship offer a comparable amount of value to an in-person Internship? Will the Fellows feel connected to Atomic and to each other? Would the cohort be able to learn and deliver on projects effectively?
After 12 weeks, we can report the answer was a resounding YES to each of those questions. Every week was full of CEO fireside chats from around Atomic, courses from external experts, peer to peer lessons, socials, and self-organized jam sessions to work through intractable problems.
Each Fellow provided demonstrable value in ways that exceeded expectations. From tackling huge problems, building custom web applications, re-designing parts of the conversion funnel, intensely researching and pitching companies, building out painted door tests and MVPs, to synthesizing huge data sets — Fellows quickly became important members of the Atomic Family.
We plan to continue the program next summer and cannot wait to see what the next round of Fellows bring to the table. We will begin hiring for the summer cohort starting in February. Although we are not actively looking for Fellows during the rest of the year, we do encourage anyone who thinks they’ve got what it takes to create value at Atomic to submit an application.
