Thousands of students matriculate to Stanford each year, many with hopes of scaling a startup to a valuation of over one billion dollars — the “unicorn” status widely coveted in Silicon Valley. Freshman Tyler Davis ’25 has other plans.
“It’s really quite simple,” Davis described. “Instead of actually building a product, I’m just gonna come up with a really, really great idea and sue the shit out of the person who inevitably steals it from me.”
Like many budding technology entrepreneurs, Davis was inspired by the critically acclaimed film The Social Network, a dramatic retelling of Facebook’s founding story. “Oh, yeah, I loved that movie,” he explained. “The Winklevoss twins are my personal heroes.” He also cited Reggie Brown ’11, who won a $150 million settlement after being ousted from Snapchat, as a source of inspiration.
While many other freshmen were busy settling in and making new friends, Davis was in his room trying to come up with a billion-dollar idea. After many long hours, he believes he found “the next big thing”: an anonymous social network for students on college campuses, “sorta like Buzz, Librex, Campfire, Loum, YikYak or JuicyCampus — but, like, way different, man.”
Despite not intending to ever build a company himself, Davis is no slacker. He has “literally binders full of plans” to get his idea into the minds of his more ambitious, technically-skilled classmates from “loudly and excitedly talking about my idea at the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center in the hope that someone smart will overhear me,” to “‘accidentally’ sending a highly descriptive email to the CS department’s mailing list.”
That said, Davis is not afraid of the journey ahead of him.
“This isn’t a get rich quick scheme — even once someone does steal my golden idea, I won’t be done. Lawsuits can take years from start to finish, not to mention months to years of private arbitration and the emotional distress caused by having to decide between accepting a multi-million dollar settlement or suing for even more money,” Davis said. “But if anyone is up to the challenge, it’s me.”
If you or anyone you know is building a product similar to the idea described in this article, Tyler Davis kindly instructs you to send an email to Katz & Steiner LLP, containing:
- Founder name(s)
- Founder email(s)
- Permanent address of founder(s)
- Liquid net worth of founder(s)
Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.