Pat Joseph

In the business world, private companies valued at over a billion dollars are called unicorns. Like finding the mythic creature in the wild, turning your startup into a unicorn is almost impossible. Nevertheless, Berkeley graduates are responsible for nearly 80 of them. Here are just six, all founded by CS or EECS alums (and one sociology grad): GOAT is a global platform that started off selling sneakers and has since expanded into a wide variety of streetwear.

Outside a Tudor revival house on Piedmont Avenue, just steps from the Haas School of Business, the metal chairs were still wet from the morning rain. But it wasn’t the weather that delayed Ashmita Kumar ’25 from our interview. “That’s what happens when you’re a celebrity,” said Laura Paxton Hassner, MBA ’18, executive director of the Berkeley Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E).

Longtime Rolling Stone contributor and veteran environmental reporter Jeff Goodell had already published a trio of books about aspects of the climate crisis ranging from the sins of the coal industry, to melting ice sheets and the controversial idea of cooling the planet via solar geoengineering. Only in this latest book, however, does he address global warming’s most salient feature head-on.