Jeffrey Zhang
Co-founder
Building falas from Babson with a focus on Chinese students preparing for high-stakes English interviews — pairing AI craft with what those conversations actually demand.
About
Practice the room before it counts.
Falas started with two Babson students who kept watching the same failure: people who could do the work still lost the interview in the first two minutes. Cal Poppink — from San Francisco, now building in Lisbon — had sat through enough career and admissions rooms to see that students were practicing the wrong thing. Jeffrey Zhang was watching Chinese and international students prepare for high-stakes English interviews with flashcards and scripts that collapsed the moment a real person asked a follow-up.
They built falas so rehearsal would feel like the room. School covers college, graduate, IELTS, and visa conversations. Work covers the internships and first seats that actually hire — banking, markets, consulting, real estate, the Big Four, product, and the human questions every employer still asks. The point was never a longer question bank. It was an interviewer who listens, pushes, and tells you whether they would advance you.
Counselors, alumni interviewers, and operators sat with the product while it was still rough. That is why a Work interview opens like a first round, why School feedback sounds like a counselor and not a rubric, and why we will not listen during a real interview. Falas is practice. The live room is yours.
People
Who has worked on this.
Founders, and the counselors and practitioners who shaped how falas listens.
Cal Poppink
Co-founder
Studying entrepreneurship at Babson. From San Francisco and now based in Lisbon, building falas with Jeffrey — product and development rooted in education.
Cynthia Pekarovic
Student Futures Counselor at Oeiras International School
Helped shape how falas prepares international students for university interviews — counselor expectations, IB and application context, and the gaps students hit before they sit down with an interviewer.
Andy Poppink
Stanford Alum & Admissions Interviewer · CEO, Leasing Advisory, EMEA & APAC at JLL
Helped ground falas in how alumni interviewers actually listen — what strong answers sound like, where candidates lose the room, and how to practice for that realism.
Erin Graves
Former Harvard & MIT Professor
Helped set the bar for academic rigor in falas feedback — clearer pedagogy, sharper coaching, and standards that hold up under real scrutiny.
How it works
What we measure, and why.
You pick a real seat — a Goldman markets intern, an Oxford college interview, a JLL leasing conversation. You sit a one-way video screen under timed conditions, then a live interviewer who can follow up. We record the camera and the microphone for that practice session only. We do not sit in on real interviews, and we do not claim to represent any employer we name.
The grade is not “did you sound confident.” It is whether a first-round interviewer would keep you. That is why we score ownership and specificity as hard as delivery, and why a Work report is written in that firm’s voice instead of a generic coach’s.
From your voice
What you say
We transcribe the session and look at the substance: whether you owned the story, structured it, and answered the actual question for that seat. Prestige-only “why this firm,” résumé recitation, and “we” with no “I” are the misses first-round interviewers already hear.
From the camera
How you show up
Presence is part of the job. We look at eye contact, hesitation, posture, and pace — the same cues a person across the table uses to decide if they trust you in a client meeting or a college interview.
From both, together
What they would conclude
The report is written like an interviewer talking to a colleague: would they advance you, what was specific enough, and the one or two things to fix before the next round. Not a dump of scores.
Then you walk in ready.
Start with the human questions, or go straight to the firm you are interviewing with.
Start practice