Our interns have helped turn ideas into real products, changed the trajectory of companies getting off the ground, and much much more. So far, around half of our interns have decided to join as full-time employees at our portfolio companies, and some have even become founders themselves. (Yes, this often means dropping out of school.) Cindy Hao is a great example – she joined the founding team of OpenStore, which has now raised $105 million in total funding and is worth over $750 million. She described her experience this way:

"I joined Atomic to learn how to start companies from some of the best entrepreneurs in the valley. I started working on OpenStore when it was just a vague idea, and now I'm reimagining M&A with the most impressive team at a $750M company. No other internship will give you such a 0-to-1 experience. Joining Atomic was one of the best decisions of my career."

Our goal is to make entrepreneurship a career path with a pathway as clear as consulting or i-banking. And 2022 was our most exciting year yet – we received over 1,400 applications. The quality of applicants was so high that we increased the intern cohort from 15 to 25. Our current intern crew is truly impressive - they have backgrounds from managing company exits, building third-party contact tracing services for India and Brazil, and even running their own venture funds. There's zero chance I would have made the cut. :)

So what do our interns do over their summer with us? They learn at an incredible pace: our cheat codes, our benchmarks, the patterns we see, and how to translate them across industries. Every week they meet with a portfolio founder, an Atomic leader, or an industry luminary to add tools to their toolkits. And most importantly: they learn by doing. Our interns build. And build, and build, and build. Here's what intern Maddy Landon has to say:

"I've had the opportunity to work on product at an amazing Series A portfolio company as well as on discovery and validation for a B2B SaaS concept. Every day, I've learned something new. I love the variety of the Atomic internship. Atomic does an incredible job curating intern activities that range from roller skating to learning about web3."

In June, our intern squad convened at our San Francisco office and spent three days creating and prototyping new company ideas. Their task was simple: pitch a solution to 10X one of our existing portfolio companies, or come up with a new billion-dollar idea of their own. Simple <> easy. ;) Pitches ranged from home co-buying to water-based air filtration to determine livestock health from facial recognition.

No doubt that this group will start incredible companies of enduring meaning and value in the future. To our awesome internship cohort — I'm grateful to you all for bringing your insights, excitement, and hustle with you this summer!

Prithvi Balehannina, Aditya Bora, Joshua Breite, Sabrina Chandrani, Kate Cheney, Meredith Creighton, Marcus Dean, Mohamad Elgendi, Ben Haye, Alice Shang, Anna Lang, Maddy Landon, Hudson Hale, Justin Kelly, Gaurav Mehta, Sanvar Oberoi, Madeline Timmins, Shangbing Jiang, Oliver Spalding, Aryan Mahindra, Kia Uusitalo, and Celina You

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