Why Anointment Decides Who Really Rises, with Toby Stuart
Guy Kawasaki's Remarkable People
Guy Kawasaki
4.5 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if success depends less on merit and more on the quiet transfer of status? In this episode, Guy Kawasaki interviews Toby Stuart, UC Berkeley Haas professor and leading expert on innovation and social networks, to break open the unseen systems that shape who rises and why.
Drawing from his new book Anointed, Toby explains how institutions — universities, investors, employers — confer credibility in ways that compound over a lifetime. He and Guy explore Silicon Valley myths, reverse anointment, and why AI may both democratize and distort fairness.
A sharp, eye-opening look at achievement, status, and the stories we tell ourselves about merit.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | AI systems, I would make the argument that they will make more fair choices. So on the one hand, |
| 0:06.3 | there's a theoretical possibility that AI could lead to a lot more equality and outcomes |
| 0:12.2 | that made choices without factoring in things like age and race and gender. On the other hand, |
| 0:18.6 | AI creates a second problem, which I think is at the moment just a |
| 0:23.2 | giant problem that we're just starting to talk about, which is that it suppresses the amount |
| 0:28.4 | of information that's available to us when we're trying to evaluate human beings. |
| 0:36.7 | Good morning, everybody. It's Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast, and we have found |
| 0:44.1 | another remarkable person to inform you and inspire you. His name is Toby Stewart. He's a professor |
| 0:53.1 | at UC Berkeley's Haas, School of Business, and quite frankly, |
| 0:57.4 | he's one of the world's leading experts on innovation, entrepreneurship, and social networks. |
| 1:03.1 | His latest book is called Anointed, and I read it, I loved it. He's quite critical about, shall I say, some of the decision-making process |
| 1:13.9 | of Silicon Valley. So his work challenges the myth of self-made founders and reveals what it really |
| 1:22.2 | takes to rise in today's innovation and digital economy. Welcome to the show, Toby. Thanks, Guy. Thrill |
| 1:28.7 | to be here with you. Toby, here we go. First of all, just out of curiosity, what school did |
| 1:35.9 | your daughter end up going? Because you mentioned her in the book. Yeah, she went to Barnard |
| 1:42.5 | College affiliated with Columbia in New York City. |
| 1:46.2 | Wow, wow. |
| 1:48.0 | So, you know, what's three, 400,000, right? |
| 1:51.5 | Yeah, give or take, give her take. |
| 1:53.9 | But that's about right. |
| 1:55.5 | I know Haas professors make a shit load of money, so I... |
| 1:59.0 | Good, so we can say shit. |
... |
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