Thoughts on "How to Rule the World" by Theo Baker

First shortform book review

(First published on Substack Notes, 6/25/2026)

I listened to “How to Rule the World” by Theo Baker, the Stanford undergraduate who blew the lid on the mountains of fraud in neuroscience papers co-authored by Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. It was pretty entertaining and makes a good audiobook. 3.5/5 stars?

Tessier-Lavigne does not come out looking good. He sought to downplay and deny the scope of the fraud that happened repeatably under his watch at every turn. Tessier-Lavigne never seriously took responsibility, in my view, despite Stanford policy saying that co-authors are responsible for what is published under their name. Moreover, there is evidence Tessier-Lavigne knew about some serious issues in his published work years ago (from interactions with Genentech) but decided not to act to have those papers flagged or retracted. A female graduate student who brought issues to Tessier-Lavigne’s attention was dismissed. When the board asked Tessier-Lavigne to resign from the Presidency, he had a bunch of ridiculous demands, like guaranteed funding for his lab. He ended up getting a seven figure golden parachute and is still running a lab at Stanford.

What I found most interesting about this book, however, is Baker’s description of how venture capitalists “court” Stanford students. The lavish mansion parties, dinners, open talk of “ruling the world” and “amassing capital before AI takes over”.

When I first visited SF in 2017, I met with a 22 year old who had just graduated from MIT. He said that a wealthy individual had given him a million dollars to “found a company”. He barely even had an idea, but was given the money because he was an MIT grad (and vibes, I guess). He got the million to finance his move to “the bay” and to provide “runway” to create a company.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. Now flash-forward nine years, and what I’ve learned from Baker’s book is that this sort of thing is actually very common. VCs will give large sums of money to students purely based on vibes and the fact they are at Stanford. This system seems really inefficient! But apparently this works to some degree, otherwise I suppose people wouldn’t be doing it.

I saw a VC firm not long ago that only invests in Harvard and MIT grads (tnt.so). A Google search confirms that there are “venture firms” that invest only in Stanford students, only in Harvard students…

It’s interesting how the red carpet is rolled out for graduates from particular schools like Stanford who pass a vibes check and have “high agency”. They are invited to exclusive gatherings with high-status individuals and are given huge sums of money to drop out and start companies.

When I was in High School, I bought into the notion that the top 50 schools were all roughly equivalent. In many ways, that is actually true. I don’t think the quality of the average student at a top-5 school is much different from the quality of a student at a top-20 school - statistically this is almost impossible. If we zoom in on the set of highly capable students, which is massive, which ones get into Harvard seems to be almost entirely a function of luck, connections, and affirmative action, not merit or ability. And certainly the teaching is all roughly equivalent among top 50 schools. When it comes to research, a lot of research shows that middle tier schools are better at providing structured undergraduate research opportunities and wisely investing research dollars compared to top schools.

Yet, students at the very top schools do get opportunities (from VCs, employers, fellowship programs) handed to them on a platter that are very hard to get if you go to a slightly lower ranked school. They get opportunities merely from the prestige of the school. Something smells off about this entire system!