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May 21, 1999
COMMENTARY
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Free For Lunch Professionals Meet Up Over The NetAparna Narayanan in New York Behind the glamour of courtroom drama and megabucks, life in a law firm often involves long hours away from home, a stifling hierarchy at work, and great levels of stress. Ketan Jhaveri, 24, a Harvard Law School student, was struck by the insularity and lack of communication in the New York law firm where he worked as a summer associate. "Lawyers find it hard to talk about issues of isolation and compromise on the job, the loss of ideals, and the relationship between family and work," he says. Jhaveri and three law school friends brainstormed on "a simple way for lawyers to expand their communities and have real interactions with people." The result: 'Freeforlunch', an online venture designed to help professionals deal with, among other things, the unpalatable truths about corporate life. Also designed to link minority professionals with common interests, the service hopes to make the corporate world they are about to enter a more pleasant place.
The free service
Scheduled to debut on Monday, May 24, the service requires the
professional who
registers online to provide basic biographical details. An
advanced
technological system developed by a Silicon Valley
programmer will match
professionals with similar interests in groups of three on a
weekly basis.
From there, the users of the service will have to establish
contact with each
other. David Wilkins, an HLS professor, describes the team as
"bright kids
with lots of enthusiasm," and says Freeforlunch provides a
much-needed forum
for people across disciplines to talk about their jobs as
professionals.
Samir Bukhari, 26, a co-founder, says the element of
randomness in the
process of matching professionals is "part of the beauty of
the service. We
assume that the type of person who might join desires to
meet people with
whom they would not otherwise have a conversation."
He dismisses the notion that Freeforlunch is just another
online dating
service. Neither will the professionals be matched according
to gender, nor
will they be paired in twos, says Bukhari. "We chose the
name partly because
it resonates with the concept of grouping three
[professionals] for lunch,"
he adds.
His own isolating experience as a law firm summer associate
made Bukhari
realize that e-mail is the most practical way for corporate
people to create
relationships. "People's e-mail communications take on the
qualities that
their professional relationships lack. In fact, people's
e-mail lives are
bursting with the richness of new acquaintances," he says.
Bukhari's parents migrated from Pakistan to Winnipeg in
Canada, where he was
born. He attributes his entrepreneurial spirit to his
father, a professor of
mathematics who started a computer company in the Silicon
Valley in the
course of a midlife crisis.
Jhaveri was born in New Jersey, the son of immigrants from
Bombay. He
inherited a passion for new technology from his father, a
civil engineer for
New York Transit. Bukhari and Jhaveri were co-presidents of
the South Asian
Association at HLS last year, and say they are "very
involved in the culture
and politics of the region."
Their minority status is an important driving force for the
Freeforlunch
team. "One of our goals is to create supportive minority
networks," says
Jhaveri. "It is harder for women and minorities in
professional jobs to find
mentoring relationships. Mostly we navigate life in the
corporate environment
on our own."
Paul Oostburg Sanz, 29, a co-founder, says minorities,
especially
African-Americans like himself, are more isolated than
others in the
workplace, and are often left out of traditional formats for
dialogue in the
corporate world. "Hopefully, Freeforlunch will enable the
creation of new
subcommunities, for example, lawyers residing in Washington
DC," he says.
Bukhari adds: "Right now there is a 'land grab' on the Net,
which is the new
locus of power and communication. It is important for us to
claim some of
that space as minorities, or the same thing that is
happening in the real
world will repeat itself in the virtual world."
The four law students have each made a small investment in
the service. To
help with the technical aspects, they hired a programmer and
a Webster
designer, both Californian residents of South Asian origin.
Although they
haven't ruled out eventually seeking venture capital, the
final year students
say their goal is not to create a money making business.
Jhaveri says, "Freeforlunch is a way to download our vibrant
virtual
communities into real life, and to help professionals build
the social ties
that are too easily lost in our society."
Oostburg Sanz adds: "Meeting professionals from other fields
will hopefully
inspire the mind in new ways and lead to ideas for
transforming the
workplace."
Testifying to the rise of the entrepreneur, Bukhari says
that about nine or
10 companies have been started by his classmates at the law
school alone.
"There is a lot of innovation here. People are looking to
bypass the
corporate setting and do their own thing."
Aparna Narayanan is a graduate journalism student at New York
University.
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