Most members of Stanford’s class of 2026 are good, formidable, and poised for exceptional careers. Theo Baker already has one. In his first semester of school, Baker broke the story that compelled Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne to resign — work that earned him a George Polk Award, one among journalism’s highest honors. Warner Brothers and producer Amy Pascal have optioned the rights to that story. And Tuesday, with commencement lower than a month away, Baker publishes The way to Rule the World, a sweeping account of his time at Stanford and the college’s typically insidious relationship with the enterprise capital trade. Judging by early curiosity, it has each probability of turning into a bestseller.
We’ve been anticipating this one (we shared some associated ideas about it just some weeks in the past). We talked with Baker final Friday. This interview has been edited for size and readability.
You confirmed up at Stanford as a coder. How did you find yourself breaking one of many greatest tales within the college’s historical past earlier than your freshman 12 months was even over?
I arrived pondering tech and entrepreneurship was the trail for me. I joined the coed hackathon, Tree Hacks, helped run it, skipped forward to the CS weeder class. However my grandfather, with whom I used to be very shut, had handed away a couple of weeks earlier than I arrived, and he talked about engaged on the coed paper greater than anybody I’d ever recognized. So I joined the coed paper to really feel linked to him — it was alleged to be a pastime, a approach to meet folks and discover campus.
In a short time issues spiraled from there. My first few tales received extra reception than we’d imagined, suggestions began flooding in, and one led me to a pseudonymous web site known as PubPeer, the place scientists dissect printed analysis. There have been feedback, seven years previous on the time, suspecting that papers co-authored by Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, had photos that had been duplicated, spliced, or in any other case irregular. I used to be a month into my time at Stanford when that investigation started, and by the point I used to be again for sophomore 12 months, the president had resigned.
Have been you warned off the story?
A number of occasions, earlier than I’d even printed my first article. Folks warned me that Tessier-Lavigne was an individual of very excessive integrity with a sterling fame — that I didn’t need to do that, that it was going to position me in a really uncomfortable place inside the establishment. Which, in fact, was not improper. Over the course of the subsequent 10 months, because the story widened, the pushback grew steeper. Inside 24 hours of my first story, the board of trustees introduced their very own investigation. I shortly discovered that one of many board members overseeing it had an $18 million funding in Denali Therapeutics, the biotech firm Tessier-Lavigne co-founded. And the assertion asserting the investigation praised his “integrity and honor”— in an investigation that was theoretically wanting into his scientific integrity. So the investigation itself turned an object of reporting. Tessier-Lavigne by no means as soon as immediately responded to a request for remark throughout my freshman 12 months. Ultimately he started sending missives to the entire school — which included all of my professors — describing my reporting as “breathtakingly outrageous and replete with falsehoods.” After which I started listening to extra from his legal professionals.
The guide is admittedly about one thing broader, although — what you name the Stanford inside Stanford. What does that imply?
Very quickly after I arrived, I spotted there was this parallel actuality — an inside world — the place the youngsters recognized early as the subsequent trillion-dollar startup founders are plucked from the gang and positioned right into a world of entry and sources. Yacht events, slush funds, everybody texting the identical billionaires for recommendation on weekends. As Stanford has turn out to be extra well-known as the house of nice startups, it has turn out to be, based on some folks on the college, more and more troublesome to identify precise expertise. So many individuals arrive pondering they are often the subsequent billion-dollar dropout that there’s a whole system of hangers-on whose job is to separate what they name the “wantrepreneurs” — folks doing it as a result of it seems good — from the so-called builders who even have potential. It’s a system designed to smell out the youngsters you may make a buck off of as early as doable.
The title of the guide, it seems, isn’t only a metaphor.
No. It’s actually the identify of a so-called secret class at Stanford, taught by a Silicon Valley CEO. It’s probably not a category. It’s extra like a Cranium and Bones for the aspiring tech elite. Folks aren’t getting course credit score, however there are lectures, discussions, visitor audio system, held as soon as per week within the winter quarter on campus. After I arrived, it was a standing image even to comprehend it existed — that made you “rule-adjacent,” as one individual informed me. What this man Justin was attempting to do — as the scholars within the class informed me — was what everybody appears to be attempting to do: get in and community with the youngsters who may be helpful to you, younger. Solely he discovered learn how to cloak himself on this mystique and make these gifted, promising youngsters come to him, as a result of he was promising them learn how to rule the world. He promised that essentially the most good college students at Stanford would congregate on this 12-person seminar, and that the one approach to be taught these secrets and techniques was to undergo him. It’s a really poignant instance of how this technique of expertise extraction has come to present itself in unusual methods.
What does that talent-scouting system truly appear to be on the bottom?
There are VCs who make use of older Stanford upperclassmen to determine freshmen as quickly as they arrive on campus. It’s saved purposefully obscure. I’ve had folks inform me it’s seen as an anti-signal to affix one of many huge entrepreneurship golf equipment, as a result of that appears such as you’re doing it for the title — versus being in one of many secret feeder teams the place the true builders supposedly congregate. However as a lot as there’s real expertise among the many youngsters on this world, the first qualification is who you realize — whether or not you’re getting tapped on the shoulder. There was a CEO who cold-emailed me freshman 12 months, requested to get to know me. The primary time we went to dinner, we went to the Rosewood Resort, and he’s sitting there spoon-feeding his eight-month-old caviar as he casually mentions that his first-ever contract was for Muammar Gaddafi. That casualness is one thing I discover fascinating. And this complete system goes a great distance towards explaining how the large frauds develop. It begins by vesting big quantities of authority, cash, and energy within the arms of youngsters with out sufficient safeguards for when issues go improper.
You arrived proper because the FTX collapse was occurring and ChatGPT launched. What was that like to look at up shut?
The timing was nearly absurd. We arrived on the tail finish of the crypto craze — the idea after we confirmed up was that crypto was the way you had been going to make your fortune. SBF begins his descent on November 2nd. ChatGPT comes out November thirtieth. And instantly the whole lot pivots. I bear in mind being at a dinner shortly after ChatGPT’s launch, sitting with one of many greatest crypto boosters on campus, and he’s telling me that SBF was “directionally appropriate” — that was the phrase — however that everybody was attempting to determine learn how to get across the legality. And shortly, lots of those self same folks realized that AI was the brand new craze they may leap on. They informed me they may attain the identical heights as SBF, ideally with out the autumn, by benefiting from the latest new factor. Silicon Valley operates in cycles, however this one has been significantly fascinating to look at up shut as a result of the size is simply unfathomable.
Do you assume your friends are leaning into entrepreneurship partly out of hysteria concerning the job market?
Completely. The AI rush has made expertise the useful resource to mine on this modern-day gold rush — essentially the most invaluable researchers and founders are extra invaluable than ever, however entry-level positions are beginning to disappear. There’s a standard chorus amongst folks on this world that it’s simpler to boost cash for a startup proper now than to get an internship. Which is exceptional, proper? Entrepreneurship, fairly than being the non-conformist outsider factor it’d as soon as have been related to, has turn out to be an anticipated path. That modifications the character of it fully.
What’s one piece of recommendation you’d give to a 17-year-old heading to Stanford or any elite college at this time?
It’s a must to be actually aware about whether or not you’re doing what you’re doing since you consider in it and since it’s the precise factor — or as a result of it’s the straightforward factor. It’s very simple to be buffeted by traits and the tech whirlpool, to seek out your self losing away at a job you don’t truly need since you adopted the anticipated path. Following the anticipated path is approach much less attention-grabbing than going out and doing one thing for your self. I like the very best founders who emerge from this place as a result of they really feel genuinely empowered to make a distinction. You simply should watch out that you just’re doing it for the precise causes — and never simply since you need to get wealthy.
You got here right here pondering you’d be a founder. Do you continue to need to begin one thing?
Truthfully, I haven’t considered it that a lot — it’s been a mad sprint to complete the guide and get to commencement, which is astonishingly solely a couple of month away. However I feel it comes throughout within the guide that I actually did fall in love with journalism. It’s a temperament, nearly an affliction, greater than a profession. No matter I do, it can intersect with that.
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