The Stanford Freshmen Who Want to Rule the World

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/stanford-students-power/686920/

No paywall link
https://archive.md/20260424153128/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/stanford-students-power/686920/

When i was a freshman at Stanford University, I learned to shotgun a beer from a guy in a frat. Soon after, he dropped out and started an AI company. Six months later, it was valued at more than $1 billion.

For most students, Stanford is a normal competitive school, where people go to class and coffee shops and fall in love and freak out over finals. But a select few attend something else: a Stanford inside Stanford, where venture capitalists pursue 18- and 19-year-olds, handing out mentorships and money and invites to yacht parties in an attempt to convert promise into profit.

Steve Blank teaches a legendary start-up class at the school, “Lean Launchpad.” Although students have always dreamed big, Blank told me that Stanford has changed in recent years, placing more and more emphasis on the young founders who may kick back some of their future billions to the university. Today, he said, “Stanford is an incubator with dorms.”

AI seems poised to eliminate many entry-level jobs, but it has made this special cohort at Stanford only more valuable. “Our bread and butter is young students,” a VC explained once, while promising me and a small group of other freshmen and sophomores that if we ever had ideas, her firm would help us out. Investors spend all day hanging out at the Coupa Café on campus. Firms such as Sequoia, Founders Fund, and Pear VC employ talent scouts—a number of them Stanford upperclassmen—to identify the best of the young best. Then they sink their hooks in.

*snip*