Saket Vora

Probably two companies you wouldn’t hear in the same sentence. Last Friday morning, I went up to the City for my final round interview with Accenture. There were a number of fellow Stanford students there, and one brightened up when I said I did my undergrad at NC State – “I’m from Raleigh!”. He went to Enloe High School, so we chatted about NC for a while. It always feels good to find fellow North Carolinians out here. The interviews went well I think, and they even had some food for us. Accenture is good about having analysts and consultants around to answer questions and talk about their experiences. Overall I had a good time.

I finished up around 2:30pm, and walked around Market St. to get my bearings. I called up my friend Melih to see if he was free for a coffee, and was soon on the MUNI down to the AT&T ballpark (where the SF Giants play). Melih is a friend from NC State – we met in the EE program but he went over to Computer Science and stayed on to get his Master’s (he has also taken many courses in economics). His father taught at NC State and is an accomplished entrepreneur. He is also an outstanding photographer and was a lead photographer for the Technician student newspaper. He came out to San Francisco at the end of summer to work at TokBox, an 18 month old startup which pioneered entirely web-based and easy-to-use video chat. This startup caught my eye a long time ago (one of the few I saw on TechCrunch that I actually went and used) and continues to impress me today. I was so glad that Melih started there — he pierced through the bubble of the NC State CS program.

We greeted each other and walked down to the Panera bread for a light late lunch and coffee. It was easy to recall why I enjoy talking with him — Melih has a keen awareness of the world (we both come from immigrant families) and is quickly able to grasp the fundamentals of almost any topic below all the surface sheen. He spoke to me about the kind of learning experiences he is getting at TokBox, and it’s immediately clear that he has a better handle on the core issues than some budding (and even practicing) webpreneurs I’ve interacted with (Simon, as I’ve mentioned before, is the same way..freakishly sharp.). There’s another quality that I like, and is hard for me to succintly describe. My friends and family know oh too well how loquacious I tend to be, but honestly, in my opinion maybe half of what I actually say is meaningful. With Melih it always seems closer to 100%. Keep an on this guy, folks. He is going places.

After lunch he invited me up to the TokBox office, housed in a converted warehouse. It oozes with Silicon Valley startup vibe — exposed ceiling, spreadout bullpen style cubicles and tables, dim lighting, an amazing breakroom and kitchen (with an enormous 12 foot long island) and a lounge with comfy chairs and a plasma TV. I also discovered that TokBox shares the floor with EventBrite, the amazing event management website that we used last year for the Krispy Kreme Challenge and that blew me away with how awesome their solution was. I love those guys.

Finally, I headed back down to Palo Alto. What a nice day in the City!