Saket Vora

Another week gone by, and I’d say things are finally firing on all cylinders. I got a lot of homework done over the weekend and on Monday, which was a big help. The two days down in Cupertino were jam-packed. I went from having just a few things to do, then was called into a meeting with Joseph and suddenly had a ton of stuff to do — all before I was to leave by 4.

On Tuesday night, we had the BASES E-Challenge and Social E-Challenge Kickoff event. I ran into a lot of friends – even Brent Rowe came. We had a panel to talk about entrepreneurship and to give students interested in competing in the business plan competitions advice. We had:

• Anne Marie Burgoyne, Portfolio Director, Draper Richards Foundation
• Debra Dunn, Associate Professor at the Stanford D.School, board member of the Skoll Foundation
• Jeff Clavier, Founding & Managing Partner, SoftTech VC
• Dave McClure, Founder, Startup2Startup

Having gone through the competition circuit and developing two business plans, I was so impressed by the panel — the perspective they offered and the feedback was great. And tip of the hat to Dave McClure to provide levity throughout. The marketing campaign outdid itself — we estimated 80 people would show up, but 160+ people showed up! We had 70 people stand the entire time, and I think there was a good amount of mixing afterward. With the combination of this BASES involvement, and of diving headfirst into greentech and energy, I finally feel like my network is humming.

A few other odds & ends:

• Dad gave a talk to the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program class about e-commerce; he enjoyed it and my spies from within said it was well received.
• I made a dish of roasted vegetables, tofu, and pasta (inspired by Luke) and it set off the smoke detector.
• I also made kirchadi (sp)!
• On Sunday Amit and I made enchiladas, and it was delicious.
• For a class, Charles is participating in a mock UN conference to discuss nuclear proliferation. He is part of the North Korea delegation and has to give a fiery speech. Professors play the heads of state and engage in subterfuge as par for the course.
• My phone was constantly rebooting this week but I spent many hours trying to fix it (mostly banging my head against the astonishingly dumb Palm HotSync software). but it’s fine now…I think the local email dB was corrupted.

This weekend should be good. Looks like some friends and I are building a Rubens tube for  a party on Saturday, also a NC State / UNC game and then the superbowl, for which I have no plans for yet.

Also, can’t forget a shout-out to Donny for scoring a visit to Georgia Tech for grad school!