Long before Phoebe Gates cofounded the AI personal shopping assistant Phia, she was a student at Stanford University working towards a bachelor’s degree in human biology. While her transcript reflects coursework in epidemiology and health policy analysis, Gates attended one secret winter-quarter class that reportedly helped her establish Phia.
The 10-week off-the-record course, titled “So You Think You Can Rule the World?” or simply referred to as “Rule” among Stanford students, required a referral from another student and wasn’t available through the college’s official course registration, The Stanford Daily reported in May.
The course teaches “how to essentially hack any kind of power structure or bureaucratic structure and get what they want in a system of people,” a former student, who preferred to remain anonymous, told the student newspaper.
The unofficial course focused on prisoner’s dilemmas, multipolar traps, and readings by Peter Thiel and Paul Graham. It admitted only six women and six men per quarter, selected by its professor Justin Lewis-Weber, a 2020 Stanford graduate and founder of insurance technology startup Assured.
Lewis-Weber began teaching the course during his junior year at the college. Scrutiny of “Rule” includes allegations of a “cult of personality” and the inspiration for a memoir by 2026 Stanford graduate Theo Baker, titled “How to Rule the World,” published in May.
