Ganesan | What Stanford students really do at Coupa Cafe 

The phrase “Coffee Chat” belongs firmly in the Stanford dictionary. On any given warm day at the Coupa Cafe at Green Library, I’d place a bet on Kalshi that you’d observe 10-15 students on these quick, mission-driven chats. 

To blindly apply judgment would be hypocritical, since I have participated in my fair share of these chats. From club recruitment to management consulting casing, I abused the LinkedIn cold-request for a coffee chat. As I started devoting time to two per week, the value of each chat seemed to diminish. I eventually landed on two central questions: are coffee-chats primarily for creating superficial relationships, and if so, is that a bad thing? 

I think the answer to my first question is yes, and that’s not for a lack of trying during these chats. Even finding a few things in common with someone in advance quickly leads to an awkward transition into questions about their career and a scripted pitch about myself. Especially when the end goal is a referral and time is finite, I’m less inclined to focus on establishing a personal connection over a professional one.

There’s a risk of overstepping or coming off as ill-prioritized if I were to try developing a personal relationship in this setting, so I err on the side of presenting as concise and cordial. But my approach tends to lead me to unsustainable connections where, despite a thoughtful follow-up email, there is no incentive or connection to keep the relationship going. 

I’ve found that coffee chats at Stanford are structurally professional, but their outcomes depend entirely on intention, and our culture of optimization often undermines the potential for genuine connection. While I’m hesitant to speak so pessimistically because other students have formed great relationships through coffee chats, I haven’t been so lucky. 

I turned to Jacob Yuryev (‘29), the class-proclaimed “Best Coffee Chatter,” for some words of wisdom. Jacob defined his approach to coffee chats with three clear prongs: 1. Meet awesome people, 2. Learn as much as possible about them and 3. Apply their knowledge to life. He believes that the key to a genuine conversation is understanding his interest in the individual and conveying his curiosity to them. Essentially, he asks himself: what about them is so interesting? As a bonus, I asked Jacob for his advice on how students could have more successful coffee chats. His answer: stop thinking in frameworks and just ask questions. 

Intentionality is what determines the success of a coffee chat, and for Kyle Sitisky (‘29), the goal was never professional advancement. At the beginning of Stanford, focused on meeting multiple new people per day. He reframed the intention of coffee chats: anyone he found kind or interesting, he asked for a coffee chat. Kyle found that each of the relationships he cultivated were 100% sustainable, and three of his closest friendships originated from these once-a-week, 15-minute conversations. Kyle’s only intention with coffee chats was to build personal relationships, not professional ones.

While Kyle and Jacob weren’t new to the concept of coffee-chats, Banks Vadeboncoeur (‘29) was culture-shocked by such short interactions as a student from Jacksonville, Fla. Her initial reaction, like mine, doubted the possibility of creating sustainable relationships in what looked like an interview. She believed a core component of the chat was impressing the other person, which inherently creates a power dynamic that blocks genuine connection.

After her first coffee chat last week, however, she realized that connection could be whatever she interpreted it to be. She found her interaction to be human-centered, especially given the other person’s offer to meet again. Although she’s not adamant about jumping into the culture, she’s willing to try it more if meetings continue to feel centered around genuine conversation. 

While Jacob treats coffee chats as professional opportunities fueled by curiosity, Kyle rejects their professional premise entirely and Banks wrestles with the power dynamic embedded in the practice.

Across interviews, I noticed that success did not depend on whether the coffee chat was professional or personal, but on whether a student approached it with curiosity, rather than an extractive mindset. Jacob’s, Kyle’s and Bank’s definitions differ, but what unites them is intention.

At Stanford, the coffee chat has become a structured ritual of ambition. It often begins with a LinkedIn request and ends with a thank-you email. But its outcome is not determined by its professional framing. It is determined by whether the student sitting down sees the other person as a stepping stone or a human being with a story.

It’s striking that the most successful coffee chats rarely seem to have an objective beyond understanding another individual. In a culture that prizes optimization, this creates a contradiction: the more strategically we approach connection, the less likely we are to find it.

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