Most members of Stanford’s class of 2026 are good, bold, and poised for outstanding 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, considered one of 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 How to Rule the Worlda sweeping account of his time at Stanford and the varsity’s usually insidious relationship with the enterprise capital trade. Judging by early curiosity, it has each probability of changing into a bestseller.
We’ve been anticipating this one (we shared some related thoughts about it only a few 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 yr was even over?
I arrived considering tech and entrepreneurship was the trail for me. I joined the scholar 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 scholar paper greater than anybody I’d ever identified. So I joined the scholar paper to really feel related to him — it was alleged to be a interest, a technique to meet individuals and discover campus.
In a short time issues spiraled from there. My first few tales acquired 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 There have been feedback, seven years outdated on the time, suspecting that papers co-authored by Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, had photos that have been duplicated, spliced, or in any other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 yr, the president had resigned.
Had been you warned off the story?
A number of instances, earlier than I’d even printed my first article. Individuals warned me that Tessier-Lavigne was an individual of very excessive integrity with a sterling popularity — that I didn’t wish to do that, that it was going to put me in a really uncomfortable place inside the establishment. Which, after all, was not incorrect. Over the course of the following 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 realized 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 trying into his scientific integrity. So the investigation itself grew to become an object of reporting. Tessier-Lavigne by no means as soon as instantly responded to a request for remark throughout my freshman yr. Ultimately he started sending missives to all the 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 attorneys.
The guide is absolutely 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 following trillion-dollar startup founders are plucked from the gang and positioned right into a world of entry and assets. Yacht events, slush funds, everybody texting the identical billionaires for recommendation on weekends. As Stanford has turn into extra well-known as the house of nice startups, it has turn into, in line with some individuals on the college, more and more troublesome to identify precise expertise. So many individuals arrive considering they are often the following billion-dollar dropout that there’s a whole system of hangers-on whose job is to separate what they name the “wantrepreneurs” — individuals doing it as a result of it appears 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 attainable.
The title of the guide, it seems, isn’t only a metaphor.
No. It’s actually the title 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. Individuals aren’t getting course credit score, however there are lectures, discussions, visitor audio system, held as soon as every week within the winter quarter on campus. Once I arrived, it was a standing image even to understand it existed — that made you “rule-adjacent,” as one individual instructed me. What this man Justin was attempting to do — as the scholars within the class instructed me — was what everybody appears to be attempting to do: get in and community with the youngsters who might be helpful to you, younger. Solely he discovered cloak himself on this mystique and make these proficient, promising children come to him, as a result of he was promising them 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 technique to study these secrets and techniques was to undergo him. It’s a really poignant instance of how this method of expertise extraction has come to present itself in unusual methods.
What does that talent-scouting system really 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 individuals inform me it’s seen as an anti-signal to hitch one of many large 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 children on this world, the first qualification is who — whether or not you’re getting tapped on the shoulder. There was a CEO who cold-emailed me freshman yr, 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 entire 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 incorrect.
You arrived proper because the FTX collapse was taking place and ChatGPT launched. What was that like to watch up shut?
The timing was virtually absurd. We arrived on the tail finish of the crypto craze — the belief after we confirmed up was that crypto was the way you have been going to make your fortune. SBF begins his descent on November 2nd. ChatGPT comes out November thirtieth. And instantly all the pieces 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 right” — that was the phrase — however that everybody was attempting to determine get across the legality. And shortly, lots of those self same individuals realized that AI was the brand new craze they may bounce on. They instructed me they may attain the identical heights as SBF, ideally with out the autumn, by profiting from the most recent new factor. Silicon Valley operates in cycles, however this one has been significantly fascinating to watch up shut as a result of the dimensions is simply unfathomable.
Do you assume your friends are leaning into entrepreneurship partly out of tension 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 worthwhile researchers and founders are extra worthwhile than ever, however entry-level positions are beginning to disappear. There’s a standard chorus amongst individuals on this world that it’s simpler to lift cash for a startup proper now than to get an internship. Which is outstanding, proper? Entrepreneurship, moderately than being the non-conformist outsider factor it would as soon as have been related to, has turn into an anticipated path. That adjustments 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 as we speak?
It’s a must to be actually acutely aware about whether or not you’re doing what you’re doing since you imagine in it and since it’s the best factor — or as a result of it’s the simple factor. It’s very straightforward to be buffeted by tendencies and the tech whirlpool, to seek out your self losing away at a job you don’t really 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 love the perfect founders who emerge from this place as a result of they really feel genuinely empowered to make a distinction. You simply must watch out that you just’re doing it for the best causes — and never simply since you wish to get wealthy.
You got here right here considering you’d be a founder. Do you continue to wish to begin one thing?
Truthfully, I haven’t thought of 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, virtually an affliction, greater than a profession. No matter I do, it can intersect with that.
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