A proposed new social network is hoping to entice millions of people to pay to get close to superstars of technology, business, and academia, according to a pitch deck sent to MIT Technology Review. The nascent site, called Column, already has major connections, per the deck: it involves the man who created the legal strategy that killed the gossip blog Gawker and says it has the support of Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel—who, however, denies it.

The presentation for Column, which describes it as “a social network to make us all smarter,” names businessman Aron Ping D’Souza as CEO and Thiel as a founding user. While D’Souza has remained largely out of the public eye, he was the architect of Thiel’s effort to destroy Gawker in retaliation for outing him as gay—an effort that succeeded when the publication filed for bankruptcy in 2016. “Back when it was widely recognized that the powerful blog Gawker had significant negative effects on society and everyone thought no one could do anything about it, Dr. D’Souza did,” the deck brags—“as a hobby.”

Other executives at the company include investor Sarah Cone—the service was incubated at her venture fund, Social Impact Capital—and entrepreneur Jake Lodwick, cofounder of video service Vimeo. Lodwick, who is named in the deck as Column’s chief technology officer, was himself a regular target of Gawker in the mid-2000s; his cousin, meanwhile, is the media entrepreneur Bryan Goldberg, who bought the rights to Gawker at a bankruptcy auction in 2018.

But the real draw for Column, which appears to be meant as a paid, invitation-only version of Facebook, is the people it wants to head up their own private communities. Thiel, who is also on the board of Facebook, is listed as “committed” in the company’s presentation. He is joined by Rob Hayes, one of the earliest investors in Uber, while Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and computer scientist Stephen Wolfram are listed as being in talks to participate.

The deck also lists people Column has connections with but has not yet landed. These include Leonardo DiCaprio, Harvard geneticist George Church, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, Chance the Rapper, SpaceX founder Elon Musk, conservative pundit Ann Coulter, self-help guru Tim Ferris, and more—a list of the rich and powerful evoking exclusive events such as the TED conferences and Davos.

The plan is for these luminaries to buy in to the service: the document suggests that Column could raise $50 million from “500 equity holders that are public intellectuals,” each paying $100,000 to invest in the site and lead their own private community (or “column”). The network itself, however, although it's subscriber-only, is not intended to be exclusive. Anyone can join; the goal is to scale, and the hope is that a paid service will nurture high-quality content instead of the toxic morass most social networks give rise to.

The deck was sent to MIT Technology Review—unsolicited and without any indication that it was confidential or embargoed—two weeks ago in an attempt to have this publication as a prospective partner.

In an email on January 19 to MIT Technology Review’s editor in chief, Cone—who is listed as the company’s creative director and board chair—named D’Souza as CEO, as he is identified in the deck. However, when contacted by a reporter a few days later, she said that the company is in early stages and details of personnel and funding have not been finalized. “Too often a woman founder and CEO is written out of the story as the media wants to focus on famous men,” she said in a statement. “I am the founder and CEO of this company, and we are dedicated to fixing information incentives online, collaborating with a diverse set of people.”

D’Souza similarly replied to a request for comment by saying that the team is still working out roles, while Lodwick said that he is now an advisor, not the CTO. Cone also said that because the Thiel investment has not yet closed, the venture capitalist is technically not an investor. When asked whether Thiel has committed to working with Column, a spokesperson said, “it’s not true.”