Theo Baker spent 4 years investigating Stanford. Earlier than he leaves, here is what he discovered.

Most members of Stanford’s class of 2026 are sensible, formidable, 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 you can 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 likelihood of changing 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 identified. So I joined the coed paper to really feel related to him — it was speculated to be a pastime, a strategy 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, ideas began flooding in, and one led me to a pseudonymous web site known as PubPeer, the place scientists dissect revealed analysis. There have been feedback, seven years outdated on the time, suspecting that papers co-authored by Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, had pictures that have been duplicated, spliced, or in any other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 12 months, the president had resigned.

Had been you warned off the story?

A number of instances, earlier than I’d even revealed my first article. Individuals warned me that Tessier-Lavigne was an individual of very excessive integrity with a sterling repute — that I didn’t need to do that, that it was going to position me in a really uncomfortable place throughout the establishment. Which, in fact, was not fallacious. 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 rapidly 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 wanting 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 12 months. Ultimately he started sending missives to the entire college — 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 e book is basically 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 children recognized early as the subsequent trillion-dollar startup founders are plucked from the group 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 grow to be extra well-known as the house of nice startups, it has grow to be, in accordance with some individuals on the college, more and more tough 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” — individuals doing it as a result of it appears to be like 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 e book, 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 not likely 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 per week within the winter quarter on campus. Once I arrived, it was a standing image even to realize 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 will be helpful to you, younger. Solely he found out the way to cloak himself on this mystique and make these gifted, promising youngsters come to him, as a result of he was promising them the way to rule the world. He promised that probably the most sensible college students at Stanford would congregate on this 12-person seminar, and that the one strategy to study 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 really appear like 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 stored 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 may be real expertise among the many youngsters 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 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 good 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 ample safeguards for when issues go fallacious.

You arrived proper because the FTX collapse was taking place and ChatGPT launched. What was that like to watch up shut?

The timing was nearly absurd. We arrived on the tail finish of the crypto craze — the idea once 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 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 right” — that was the phrase — however that everybody was attempting to determine the way to get across the legality. And rapidly, a lot of those self same individuals 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 making the most of the latest new factor. Silicon Valley operates in cycles, however this one has been significantly fascinating to watch up shut as a result of the size is simply unfathomable.

Do you assume your friends are leaning into entrepreneurship partly out of hysteria in regards to the job market?

Completely. The AI rush has made expertise the useful resource to mine on this modern-day gold rush — probably the most useful researchers and founders are extra useful 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 boost cash for a startup proper now than to get an internship. Which is outstanding, proper? Entrepreneurship, quite than being the non-conformist outsider factor it’d as soon as have been related to, has grow to be an anticipated path. That adjustments the character of it totally.

What’s one piece of recommendation you’d give to a 17-year-old heading to Stanford or any elite college right now?

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 precise factor — or as a result of it’s the straightforward factor. It’s very simple to be buffeted by developments and the tech whirlpool, to search 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 like the perfect 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?

Actually, I haven’t considered it that a lot — it’s been a mad sprint to complete the e book and get to commencement, which is astonishingly solely a few month away. However I believe it comes throughout within the e book 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 should intersect with that.