Investing in Stanford Graduates/Dropouts (Pattern Recognition)

Historically, Stanford graduates/dropouts = winners. Identify the patterns.

Oct 15, 2025

A lion and lioness stroll along a dirt path. — Photo by Craig Stevenson on Unsplash

I’ve already written an article on investing in public-facing Elites: Public-Facing Elites: using Myth-Making Avatars in Investing which is probably the most important article I’ve written.

The public-facing Elites are the interfaces between the Controllers and the masses.
They are carefully selected not because they are the deepest technical minds (those remain inside state/para-state labs and defense contractors) but because they can serve as myth-making avatars - “trustworthy human front ends” for systemic agendas.

This time, we’ll narrow things down to Stanford Graduates/Dropouts.

Investing in Stanford Graduates/Dropouts

Historically, Stanford graduates/dropouts = winners.

Here are just some examples: Elon Musk, Alex Karp, John F. Kennedy, Rishi Sunak, Sundar Pichai, Mukesh Ambani, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Herbert Hoover, Mitt Romney, Peter Thiel, Cory Booker, Jawed Karim, Aaron Swartz, Dianne Feinstein, Philippe of Belgium, Steve Ballmer, Rachel Maddow, Laurene Powell Jobs, Kevin Systrom, Phil Knight, Sam Altman, Sam Harris, Jensen Huang, Ashraf Ghani, Adam Schiff, Reed Hastings, Josh Hawley, Mike Krieger, Reid Hoffman, Ehud Barak, Morris Chang, etc.

Some of the names you might not have heard, however, when it comes to public-facing Elites, it doesn’t get much closer to the top of the food chain.

Needless to say, none of this guarantees future investment outcomes.

So why/how does Stanford keep producing public-facing Elites?

0) Network centrality > curriculum. Stanford sits on the highest-bandwidth social graph linking founders, VCs (Sand Hill Rd), big tech, media, and policy.
Access to who can say yes (capital, distribution, regulators) beats raw intellect.
I’ve had to learn this the hard way — no matter how smart you think you are, if your network sucks, you are very limited in terms of what you can achieve.

1) Proximity to the deal switchboard. Walkable distance (literally) to Sequoia/Andreessen/etc., plus Big Tech HQs.

2) Selection effects. It attracts already-elite feeder streams. Output looks magical because input is pre-selected for ambition and resources.

The best engineers want to work with other best engineers.

3) Institutional funnels to state power. Hoover Institution, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford Human-Centered AI, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Radiology/Genomics, Bio-X: places where DoD/DARPA/IC/NIH money, standards bodies, and export-control policy mingle with faculty.
It’s a tech → policy two-way valve.

4) For media, boards, and Sovereign Wealth Funds, “Stanford founder” is an optics shortcut (risk offloading for the approver).

5) Successful exits donate labs/fellowships, which recruit the next cohort, which begets more exits. It’s compounding social capital.

6) Myth + survivorship bias. The brand amplifies winners and hides the graveyard. But markets respond to perceived edge as much as real edge — until they don’t.

Usually what matters is a company’s regulatory adjacency

Early DoD/NIH/NSF/DARPA grants,
Products/Services requiring government approvals (and getting them),
Intersects with regulatory and policy inevitabilities (identity, provenance, admissibility, defense).

Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos (the mega scam) also attended Stanford University.

Just anecdotally, most of the extraction scams seem to be in the “health” (harm) industry.

No regulatory/evidence path = status theater (= avoid like the plague).

You have to read networks, not press releases.

I haven’t done much research on her, but I doubt Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Sam Altman were hanging out with Elizabeth Holmes every weekend.

These scam companies/extraction vehicles usually have media support but co-mingle with lower status pleb-adjacent Elites, not the top of the food chain Elites.

You generally don’t see the top of the food chain Elites ruin their reputation by being adjacent to these obvious scams.

Check out my “Public-Facing Elites: using Myth-Making Avatars in Investing” article for more context.

Investing in Stanford Graduates/Dropouts (Pattern Recognition)

Historically, Stanford graduates/dropouts = winners. Identify the patterns.

Investing in Stanford Graduates/Dropouts

So why/how does Stanford keep producing public-facing Elites?

Usually what matters is a company’s regulatory adjacency

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