Theo Baker spent four years investigating at Stanford University. Before he left, here’s what he found.

Most members of the Stanford Class of 2026 are smart, ambitious, and ready for a great career. Theo Baker already has one. In his first semester as an undergraduate, Becker broke the story that forced Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne to resign — an act that earned him the George Polk Award, one of journalism’s highest honors. Warner Brothers and producer Amy Pascal have optioned the rights to that story. And on Tuesday, less than a month after graduation, Baker is posting How to rule the worlda comprehensive account of his time at Stanford and the school’s often malignant relationship with the venture capital industry. Judging by the early interest, it has every chance of becoming a bestseller.

We’ve been anticipating this (we shared some related thoughts on this topic just a few weeks ago). We spoke with Baker last Friday. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I showed up at Stanford University as a programmer. How did you end up breaking one of the biggest stories in university history before your first year even ended?

I arrived thinking technology and entrepreneurship was the path for me. I joined and helped run a student hackathon, Tree Hacks, and transitioned into a weeding class in CS. But my grandfather, with whom I was very close, died a few weeks before I arrived, and he talked about working on a student paper more than anyone I ever knew. So I joined the student newspaper to feel connected to it – it was meant to be a hobby, a way to meet people and explore the campus.

Things quickly escalated from there. My first few stories were more well received than we could have imagined, and tips started pouring in, one of which led me to a pseudonymous website called PubPeer, where scientists dissect published research. There were comments, seven years old at the time, suspecting that the papers co-authored by Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne contained duplicate, interconnected, or irregular images. I had spent a month studying at Stanford when this investigation began, and by the time I returned for my second year, the president had resigned.

Have you been warned about the story?

Several times, even before I published my first article. People warned me that Tessier-Lavigne was a person of great integrity and reputation, and that I did not want to do that, and that it would put me in a very uncomfortable position within the institution. This of course was not a mistake. Over the next ten months, as the story expanded, resistance became more intense. Within 24 hours of my first story, the Board of Trustees announced its own investigation. She soon learned that one of the board members overseeing the company had an $18 million investment in Denali Therapeutics, the biotechnology company co-founded by Tessier-Lavigne. The statement announcing the investigation praised its “integrity and honor” in an investigation that was theoretically considered to have scientific integrity. So the investigation itself became the subject of the report. Tessier-Lavigne never responded directly to a request for comment during my first year. Eventually, he began sending letters to the entire faculty — including all of my professors — calling my reports “astonishingly obscene and full of lies.” And then I started hearing more from his lawyers.

The book is actually about something broader, which she calls Stanford within Stanford. What does that mean?

Shortly after arriving, I realized that there was this parallel reality—an inner world—where kids identified early as founders of trillion-dollar startups were plucked from the crowd and placed in a world of access and resources. Yacht parties, big money, and everyone texting the same billionaires for advice on the weekends. As Stanford has become more famous as a home to major startups, it has become increasingly difficult, according to some people at the university, to discover actual talent. So many people arrive thinking they could be the next billion-dollar dropouts, that there is a whole system of hackers whose job it is to separate out what they call “willing entrepreneurs” – people who do it because it looks good – and so-called builders who actually have potential. It is a system designed to spot teens who you can make money from as soon as possible.

It seems that the title of the book is not just a metaphor.

No, it’s literally the name of the so-called secret class at Stanford taught by the CEO of Silicon Valley. It’s not really a class. It’s like the skull and bones of the ambitious tech elite. People do not receive course credit, but there are lectures, discussions, and guest speakers, held once a week in the winter semester on campus. When you arrived, it was a status symbol even if you knew it was there—one that put you “next to the base,” as one person told me. What this guy Justin was trying to do – the students told me in class – is what everyone seems to be trying to do: reach out to teens who could be useful to you, young people, and connect with them. He was the only one who figured out how to hide himself in this mystery and make these promising, talented children come to him, because he was promising them how to rule the world. He promised that the brightest students at Stanford would gather for this 12-person symposium, and that the only way to learn these secrets was through him. It’s a very poignant example of how this system of talent extraction can manifest itself in strange ways.

What does this talent discovery system look like in reality?

There are venture capital firms that hire senior Stanford students to identify new students once they arrive on campus. It’s been kept intentionally vague. Some people have told me that joining one of the big entrepreneurship clubs is a negative sign, because it feels like you’re doing it for the title — rather than to be in one of the underground feeder groups where real builders are supposed to congregate. But as much as there is real talent among the kids in this world, the main qualification is who you know – whether you pat yourself on the shoulder or not. There was a CEO who emailed me my first year and asked to get to know me. The first time we went to dinner, we went to the Rosewood Hotel, and he was sitting there spoon-feeding his eight-month-old caviar while casually mentioning that his first ever contract was with Muammar Gaddafi. This show is something I find fascinating. This whole system goes a long way toward explaining how major frauds develop. It starts by putting massive amounts of power, money, and authority into the hands of teenagers without adequate safeguards when things go wrong.

I arrived just as the FTX crash happened and ChatGPT was released. What was it like to watch him up close?

The timing was almost ridiculous. We’ve reached the end of the crypto craze – the assumption when we attended was that crypto is how you’ll make your fortune. The SBF begins its descent on November 2nd. ChatGPT will be released on November 30th. And immediately everything turns around. I remember being at a dinner party shortly after ChatGPT was released, sitting with one of the biggest cryptocurrency supporters on campus, and he told me that SBF was “directionally correct” — that was the phrase — but everyone was trying to figure out how to get around the legality. Many of these same people soon realized that AI was the new craze they could jump on. They tell me they can reach the same heights as SBF, preferably without falling, by taking advantage of the latest new thing. Silicon Valley works in cycles, but this cycle was particularly fascinating to observe up close because the scale is unfathomable.

Do you think your colleagues are leaning towards entrepreneurship partly because of anxiety about the job market?

definitely. The rush of AI has made talent a resource to mine in this modern-day gold rush — where top researchers and founders are more valuable than ever, but entry-level positions are disappearing. There is a common saying among people in this world that it is easier to raise money for a startup now than to get an internship. Which is great, isn’t it? Entrepreneurship has become an expected path, rather than the non-committal, external thing it might once have been associated with. This changes the whole nature of the matter.

What advice would you give to a 17-year-old heading to Stanford or another 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 – or because it’s the easy thing. It’s very easy to get caught up in trends and the vortex of technology, only to find yourself throwing away a job you don’t really want because you followed the expected path. Following the expected path is much less interesting than going out and doing something for yourself. I admire the best founders who come out of this place because they feel truly empowered to make a difference. You just have to be careful that you do it for the right reasons, 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 didn’t think much of it – it was a mad rush to finish the book and get to graduation, which surprisingly was only about a month away. But I think it shows in the book that I really fell in love with journalism. It’s a mood, almost an affliction, more than just a vocation. Whatever you do, it will intersect with that.