Jake Obershaw ’24, History major with intended Econ or Finance minor, shares about their internship with Voltai Inc in Stanford, CA
“This summer I’ve been working at Voltai, an early-stage AI startup that was founded by Stanford students a bit more than half a year ago.
The way I ended up coming across this opportunity was unexpected yet fortunate. I first met Erfan, one of the two co-founders of Voltai, at a student-faculty get-together at Stanford that I had only ended up attending because my Dad is a professor there. Erfan and I got along well, but I didn’t think much of the encounter until I heard that he was founding a startup roughly six months later. The concept behind the startup sounded rather interesting, and after not having much luck with finding internships for the summer I ended up explaining how I could apply for the WIG and therefore work with them without costing them anything while still earning some income myself. Given the fact that they are a super early stage startup they were quite happy to have some assistance that they didn’t have to pay for.
All other interns were/are on the technical side, so I was tasked with assisting the CEO with various 
operations on the business side of things. The specific assignments I’m typically working on tend to vary, but generally involve researching potential customers for the software the company is developing, possible advisors who have extensive expertise in the industry we’re focused on, or prospective investors. As an example, recently I’ve been focused on identifying venture capitalists who specialize in our sector or adjacent ones. After finding these individuals, I’ll track down the specific startups they’ve invested in recently, then reach out to their founders through Linkedin. By doing so we’re seeking to establish connections with people who could subsequently introduce and vouch for us to the venture capitalists in question, who’d otherwise be rather difficult to get in touch with without preexisting industry connections.
Before that, I spent a fair bit of time applying for various grants and startup incubator programs, which are often quite a pain to get through. I’ve also undertaken projects like identifying online job marketplaces outside of the United States and posting software engineering positions, as well as doing various other forms of market research.
This internship has been radically different from anything I’ve done before, but I’ve really ended up loving it. Working at such an early-stage startup can definitely be intense and stressful due to constantly changing dynamics, but I’ve also found it to be quite exhilarating. In a relatively short period of time I’ve been able to learn so much about the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem as well as the value of networking and relationship building. As I previously mentioned, I’m not a very technically-oriented person, so it’s been encouraging to see how my skills can nevertheless be useful in such a context. This experience has motivated me to pursue such roles in the future, and has given me a much better sense of what I might want to explore after I graduate this year.”