The First Welcome in Silicon Valley: Nirman Dave, CEO, Zams

As part of The First Welcome in Silicon Valley series, I have been asking founder friends to share their stories of the first welcome they experienced in Silicon Valley. These are the people, the moments, and the gestures that stayed with them.

In this stream, Nirman Dave, Co-founder and CEO of Zams, shared three moments that defined his early steps in the Valley.

Nirman is now building Zams, his AI command center for B2B sales teams, bringing tools like Salesforce, Hubspot, Slack, Apollo, and Gong into one place. Before Zams, he co-founded Obviously AI (2020–2024), a no-code AI platform for data analysis.

>  "Murtaza Hussain was the cofounder of Streamlabs, which sold to Logitech for $200M. I cold-emailed him asking for an internship. They didn’t take interns. He gave me one anyway."

> "Asha Jadeja was the reason I ever set foot in the US. She flew me from India for the Rajeev Circle Fellowship at Stanford even before I started college. That was my first glimpse of Silicon Valley. Later, when I started my first company and needed a place to stay, she gave me hers."

> "Chon Tang was the first investor in my company. I was still in college. I had no track record. He backed me anyway."

Nirman’s story shows how the first welcome can take many forms. An internship that wasn’t supposed to exist, a fellowship that changed his path, or an investor who believed without proof. Each of these acts became part of his foundation in Silicon Valley.