Shenba Vairavan ’24


Kountable, San Francisco, CA

Kountable is a business-to-business platform that caters to small businesses while simultaneously benefitting larger corporations. This new method of helping both parties, generally competitors, has picked up a lot of wind after Covid-19 helped show flaws in the status quo. I, along with five other interns from Williams, helped roll out the newly updated platform. Our first step for the rollout was creating a ten-page deliverable about supplier development and a condensed three-pager. We sent these pamphlets to potential clients to explain what Kountable would do for them as buyers in their corporate language. We also created templates for future deliverables. We established and began the Customer Service page of the platform to walk companies through the onboarding process. Because Kountable is international, we learned a lot about legal and tax protocol in other countries. Individually, I helped create some PowerPoints to present to the whole team about security. We also did a lot of corporate vernacular research. Kountable’s platform is new, and no language exists to describe it. So, for all the things that companies would see, the team and I researched what language they are used to being delivered. However, we used more common jargon when writing the Customer Service pages because small business owners may be intimidated and overwhelmed by corporate language. That delineation was very interesting to learn about because you don’t think about it as a customer.

Shenba smiling with laptop.
Working in my dining room because it gets the most sun!

As a prospective English major, it was eye-opening to see all the crevices of the corporate world that need writers. I would never have imagined I would have a place at a technological startup, yet there is a need for someone who can understand the technology but translate it for the average human being. This internship introduced me to potential careers that I could have utilizing my writing skills. I know that academically I love English and writing. Still, I could not see how that would give me the necessary skills in a career outside of academia or creative writing. However, at Kountable, all the interns were humanities oriented, which showed me just how varied careers could be for writers. I did learn that I would like to take an economics class or a computer science class to understand further the fields that need people like the interns at Kountable to help make their product accessible to consumers and attractive to investors.

This was a really incredible experience. I wish it had been in person, but I know that it will give me the skills to really take advantage of an in-person experience. I am so thankful to Mr. and Mrs. Case, Chris Hale ’00 at Kountable, and the ’68 Center for Career Exploration. Thank you so much for this fulfilling and rewarding summer. I have learned so much, and I could not have done it without you.