Most members of the Stanford Class of 2026 are smart, ambitious, and poised for remarkable careers. Theo Baker already has one. In his first semester of college, Baker broke the story that forced Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne to resign — work that earned him the George Polk Award, one of journalism’s highest honors. Warner Brothers and producer Amy Pascal have optioned the rights to this story. And on Tuesday, with graduation less than a month away, Baker posted How to Rule the Worlda sweeping account of his time at Stanford and the school’s often treacherous relationship with the venture capital industry. Judging by the early interest, it has every chance of becoming a bestseller.
We expected this (we shared some related thoughts on this just a few weeks ago). We spoke with Baker last Friday. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You showed up at Stanford as a coder. How did you end up breaking one of the biggest stories in college history before your freshman year was even over?
I arrived thinking that technology and entrepreneurship was the path for me. I participated in the student hackathon, Tree Hacks, helped run it, advanced to the CS Weeder class. But my grandfather, with whom we were very close, had died a few weeks before I arrived, and he talked about the work in the student paper more than anyone I’d ever known. So I joined the student newspaper to feel connected to it — it was supposed to be a hobby, a way to meet people and explore campus.
Very quickly things took off from there. My first stories were more well-received than we imagined, the tips started pouring in, and one led me to a pseudonymous website called PubPeer, where scientists analyze published research. There were comments, seven years old at the time, that suspected the papers authored by Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne had images that were duplicated, spliced or otherwise irregular. I was at Stanford for a month when this investigation began, and when I came back for my second year, the president had resigned.
Were you warned about the story?
Many times, before I even publish my first article. People warned me that Tessier-Lavigne was a person of very high integrity with an excellent reputation — that I didn’t want to do this, that it would put me in a very uncomfortable position within the establishment. Which of course was not a mistake. Over the next 10 months, as the story unfolded, the pushback became steeper. Within 24 hours of my first story, the board announced its own investigation. I quickly learned that one of the board members overseeing her had an $18 million investment in Denali Therapeutics, the biotech company that Tessier-Lavigne co-founded. And the statement announcing the investigation praised his “integrity and honor”—in an investigation that theoretically tested his scientific integrity. Thus the research itself became the subject of a report. Tessier-Lavigne never immediately responded to a request for comment during my freshman year. Eventually he started sending letters to the entire faculty – which included all my professors – describing my report as “outrageously outrageous and full of lies.” And then I started hearing more from his lawyers.
The book is really about something broader, though—what you call Stanford within Stanford. What does this mean?
Very soon after I arrived, I realized that there was this parallel reality—an inner world—where kids were recognized early as the next trillion dollar startup founders are plucked from the crowd and placed in a world of access and resources. Yacht parties, slush funds, everyone texts the same billionaires for advice on the weekends. As Stanford has become more famous as the home of big startups, it has become, according to some people at the university, increasingly difficult to spot real talent. So many people arrive thinking they might be the next billion dropouts, that there’s a whole system of hangers-on whose job it is to separate what they call “entrepreneurs” – people who do it because it looks good – from the so-called builders who actually have potential. It’s a system designed to sniff out the teenagers you can win as early as possible.
The book’s title, as it turns out, is not just a metaphor.
No. It’s literally the name of a so-called secret class at Stanford, taught by a Silicon Valley CEO. It’s not really a category. It’s more like Skull and Bones for the aspiring tech elite. People don’t get course credit, but there are lectures, discussions, guest speakers, held once a week in winter term on campus. When I arrived, it was a status symbol, even if you knew it existed—it made you “neighborly canon,” as one person told me. What this guy Justin was trying to do—the students in the class told me—was what everyone seems to be trying to do: go in and network with the teenagers who can help you, young people. Only he understood how to clothe himself in this mystery and make these talented, promising children come to him, because he was promising them how to rule the world. He promised that the brightest students at Stanford would gather in this 12-person seminar, and that the only way to learn these secrets was to go through him. It is a very painful example of how this talent mining system has come to manifest itself in strange ways.
What does this talent scouting system actually look like on the ground?
There are VCs who employ Stanford seniors to identify freshmen as soon as they arrive on campus. It is kept deliberately dark. I’ve had people tell me it’s considered anti-sign to join one of the big entrepreneurship clubs because it looks like you’re doing it for the title – as opposed to being in one of the secret feeder groups where the real builders are supposed to gather. But as much as there is genuine talent among the kids in this world, the primary qualification is who you know — or you get tapped on the shoulder. There was a CEO who cold emailed me my freshman year and asked to meet me. The first time we went to dinner, we went to the Rosewood Hotel, and he’s sitting there spoon-feeding his eight-month-old caviar as he casually mentions that his first contract was for Muammar Gaddafi. This casual behavior is something I find fascinating. And this whole system goes a long way toward explaining how big scams evolve. It starts with placing huge amounts of power, money and authority in the hands of teenagers without adequate safeguards for when things go wrong.
You arrived just as the FTX crash was happening and ChatGPT started. What was it like to observe up close?
The timing was almost absurd. We’ve come to the end of the cryptocurrency craze — the assumption when we came out was that crypto was how you’d make your fortune. SBF begins its descent on November 2nd. ChatGPT launches on November 30th. And immediately everything turns around. I remember being at a dinner party shortly after ChatGPT launched, sitting with one of the biggest crypto boosters on campus, and he was telling me that SBF was “directionally correct” — that was the phrase — but that everyone was trying to figure out how to get around the legality. And quickly, many of those same people realized that AI was the new craze they could jump on. I was told they could reach the same heights as the SBF, preferably without a drop, taking advantage of the newest new thing. Silicon Valley runs in cycles, but this one was particularly exciting to observe up close because the scale is simply unfathomable.
Do you think your peers are leaning toward entrepreneurship in part out of anxiety about the job market?
Absolutely. The AI rush has made talent the resource to mine in this modern gold rush—the most valuable researchers and founders are more valuable than ever, but entry-level positions are starting to disappear. There is a common refrain among people in this world that it is easier to raise money for a startup right now than to get an internship. Which is remarkable, right? Entrepreneurship, rather than being the non-conformist outsider thing it might once have been associated with, has become an expected course. This completely changes its nature.
What is one piece of advice you would give a 17-year-old going to Stanford or any elite university today?
You have to be really conscious about whether you’re doing what you’re doing because you believe in it and because it’s the right thing to do — or because it’s the easy thing to do. It’s all too easy to get swept up in the trends and maelstrom of technology, to find yourself lost in a job you don’t really want because you followed the expected path. Going the expected route is much less interesting than going out and doing something for yourself. I admire the best founders that emerge from this place because they feel really empowered to make a difference. You just have to be careful that you’re doing it for the right reasons — and not just because you want to get rich.
You came here thinking you were going to be a founder. Still want to start something?
Honestly, I haven’t thought about it that much – it’s been a mad rush to finish the book and get to graduation, which is amazingly only about a month away. But I think the book shows that I did fall in love with journalism. It’s a quirk, almost an affliction, more than a career. No matter what I do, it will intersect with it.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
