Alvaro Morales
On a foggy Saturday in July, Alvaro and I meet by the Dragon’s Gate, the iconic green-tiled arch that marks the entrance to San Francisco’s Chinatown. I ask him if he knows anything about the establishment that is just a few steps away, an art gallery called Michael Fine Art & Antiques. I want us to go in because, quite frankly, the place just does not make sense. At the nexus of what is perhaps the most iconic and the most touristy part of town, there is this gallery, filled with bronze statues, semi precious stones, rugs, tapestry, and luxury chess boards. It’s as if we entered some alternate reality in which Tim Burton and Michelangelo and Salvador Dalí decided to be a throuple, went bankrupt, and had to sell their art collection to a pawn shop.
“This place has got to be the least Chinatown thing about Chinatown,” I say to Alvaro, as we stroll past an ornate, life-size statue of a woman.
“Isn’t it crazy?” he laughs.
“The weird part is,” I add, “that I somehow like it.”
After a few bemused glances at the gallery’s bizarre collection, I suggest that we go across the street, pointing toward Café de la Presse, a cozy French bistro, and get cappuccinos and a French Toast because I haven’t had coffee yet, and I know that I will need the strength for all the walking we will do today. The reason we are meeting in this part of town is that this is where Alvaro lived when he first came to San Francisco for a winter externship in 2013, when he was a sophomore in college.
“I got the rosiest picture of San Francisco, my first time here,” he says when we sit down at Café de la Presse. “It was the precipice of the tech boom back then. Chinatown and North Beach felt so unique to me. It just wasn’t something I had experienced in the U.S. before.”
Alvaro and I have known each other since 2011, back when we were both international freshmen at MIT; fresh out of high school and new to the country. He grew up in Lima, Peru, where most of his family still lives, and though he has always known his ancestry was fairly diverse, he didn’t know just how much. That was until many years later, when he submitted his DNA to 23andMe and found out just how cosmopolitan he is: 78% European (Italian, Spanish, and Anglo-Saxon), which he knew, but then there was the surprising and non-trivial percentage—5.4% Chinese.
“I guess that explains my love for international cities,” he laughs. “Plus, I went to a British school when I was in Lima. Took me forever to learn how to spell color without the ‘u.’”
Lima, where a large chunk of Peru’s population lives, was an odd place to grow up. For one, the city is known for its wide wealth disparity, which means that people’s experiences of the city are widely different. And then, Alvaro says, there is also the aspect of having been born in the fresh aftermath of Peru’s domestic political terrorism. He’s referring to the period in the 1980s when the Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla group, also self-named the Communist Party of Peru, terrorized the country with bombings and assassinations. During that time, Peru was in the grip of fear, and daily life was shadowed by high likelihood of violence. The Shining Path’s founder was captured in 1992, just before Alvaro was born, and the country entered what Alvaro calls a “post-terrorism period.” While the violence subsided over time, Peru continues to be plagued by organized crime. When Alvaro was ten, just as an example, kidnappings became a common occurrence.
"In the midst of all that chaos, my parents always made sure my sister and I had a happy childhood,” he says. “They were very present in my life, and they ensured we had good education and access to what we needed, so I also got to have really good memories.”
How topical that he brings up his parents, because Alvaro is now a father himself. He and his wife Ayesha have a boy named Milo, who is just about to have his first birthday in September. Ayesha is also part of our college crew, which is how the two of them met, and it is such a powerful moment when I realize that a decade ago, we were going out to bars, and now Alvaro and Ayesha have a kid.
“I am loving every second of being a new dad,” he says. “That said, I will say, this experience really brings to surface the gender inequality that exists in parenthood. I don’t think I fully understood just how much a mother does until I saw Ayesha go through all of it.”
“And, I bet it is also not easy given that you are the first in our friend group in the city to have a kid?”
“I would not say that it makes things hard,” he answers. “Our friends are still around, they visit us often, they help out. But maybe it is fair to say that I wish we had more friends who are parents just because it’s a shared experience that helps form a community. I have been independent for so long, having moved from Lima at such a young age, but I am starting to notice that I crave a community.”
After the cappuccinos and the French toast, Alvaro and I make our way up Telegraph Hill, toward and up the Peter Macchiarini Steps, a spot that holds a bit of nostalgia for Alvaro since he lived just below the steps during the 2013 externship. The steps are named after Peter Macchiarini, a local sculptor and jeweler who was a fixture of the San Francisco art scene in the mid-20th century, known for his avant-garde jewelry.
“I still love coming up here,” he says as we gaze at the city skyline.
“Do you feel like you miss this vibe, now that you’re in Ingleside Terrace?”
“Oh, Denis,” he cracks up. “I freakin’ love living in Ingleside Terrace. It’s very suburban, and I feel like I get to detach from the hustle of the city. I also feel that having Milo is making me better at setting boundaries with work, so when I come home to Ingleside, I am really, really home.”
From the Peter Macchiarini Steps, we make our way toward City Lights Booksellers & Publishers to check out a few books. Not only is Alvaro an avid reader but he also minored in Literature when we were in college, which, I think, is not something that people know when they first meet Alvaro, a Silicon Valley software engineer-turned-tech founder.
He embodies many of the qualities—efficiency, scrappiness, innovation—that are venerated by the modern tech community, and yet, he is profoundly bohemian at times, highly attuned to and appreciative of both emotional and aesthetic influences, which makes him a bit of a maverick. A kind, eloquent, and easygoing maverick, but maverick nonetheless.
For the record, his favorite books are:
Pride and Prejudice (1813), by Jane Austen
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), by Thomas Hardy
Notes from the Underground (1864), by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Trial (1925), by Franz Kafka
Master and Margarita (1967), by Mikhail Bulgakov
100 Years of Solitude (1967), by Gabriel García Márquez
Conversations in the Cathedral (1969), by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), by Junot Díaz
Steve Jobs biography (2011), by Walter Isaacson
A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), by Amor Towles (Alvaro notes that he read this one while in Moscow, at the café across from Hotel Metropol, where Towles’s story takes place)
Elon Musk biography (2023), by Walter Isaacson
“Did it ever cross your mind to go in this, I guess, more philosophical route after college?” I ask him as we peruse the bookshelves in the subterranean part of the store.
“Not really, to be honest. Academia never meshed with my sense of urgency. I knew I loved tech the moment I came here for the externship. Things move quickly in tech and decisions are made fast. Timeline is never in terms of months. It’s in terms of days. But, it did take me some time to feel settled in the city. I didn’t click with the scene at first.”
“Really?”
“Definitely,” he nods. “I mean, the city shuts down at night, everyone goes hiking and skiing, which is not my vibe. I like going out, I like seeing the energy of the nightlife. That’s why I loved New York when I did a summer internship there after I finished my Master’s. I am very much a city person.”
“Don’t forget the camping,” I smirk.
Alvaro laughs.
It’s about time we go for another bite, and Alvaro wants to take me to Dim Sum Bistro: a tiny, hole-in-the-wall spot that used to be called You Dim Sum. I don’t know what I was expecting when he said the name of the place, but the moment we step in, I know I have momentarily become a nuisance.
“People would yell at you when you ordered,” he says, amused. It’s clear that no one is yelling today, but the energy is still there. The place is crammed. People put in orders at the speed of light. Someone says an order number. The food appears at the counter in a blitz. If I linger in the establishment even just one second longer, the assembly line will malfunction and chaos will ensue. So, I step aside and let Alvaro order.
We grab our dumplings and make our way up, toward the Pioneer Park and the Coit Tower. The moment we leave North Beach behind, the atmosphere shifts. The lively, cramped energy of Dim Sum Bistro gives way to the quiet, forested path leading up to the tower. It feels like stepping into a different world, a refuge surrounded by trees and faint sounds of birds and of rustling leaves. We find a spot with a stunning view of downtown San Francisco glistening in the afternoon sun, and we settle in to eat. Tourists around us wander up and down the steps, taking selfies, and presumably taking a break from San Francisco sightseeing. It is, surprisingly, my first time by the Coit Tower, and in this moment, I feel just as much of a starry-eyed tourist as everyone else around us.
“Okay, Alvaro,” I sigh, “is it bad that I am still hungry?”
“I could split a burger,” he says, amused. “I have a place in mind.”
“Oh!” I light up. “And we grab some Cokes as well.”
The place he has in mind is the renowned Sam’s Burgers, one of Anthony Bourdain’s favorite burger places. It’s a spot that Alvaro discovered during his externship but one he hasn’t visited since, and now, I get to relive the experience with him.
When we get there, the line is out the door, and I can’t really tell what we are waiting for, because no one is there to put our names down or to take orders. When the doors finally open, a group of people leave the place quietly, and immediately, our line enters in a procession as if it’s some military operation.
Inside, the vibe is comical. The place is narrow, intimate, and dead quiet. The guy behind the bar is wearing a balaclava, moving hamburger buns, and not saying anything. People are trying to find seats, some at the small dining tables next to the wall, some at the bar counter. Alvaro and I sit at the bar, not sure what to say, what to do, or how to behave.
“Well,” I whisper to Alvaro, “this is intense.”
“Right?” he cracks up.
The guy with the balaclava starts taking orders, with the speed and brevity of a drill sergeant. Alvaro and I order one burger, two portions of fries, two Cokes, and I emphasize to the balaclava drill sergeant that we want cans from the fridge, not fountain Coke. He looks at me, unfazed, says nothing, and grabs two Coke cans from the fridge. Our burger and fries arrive shortly, and I am on the verge of a laughing fit because the whole experience feels like a scene from a sitcom.
It’s all very much on point because Alvaro himself is a devoted TV and film buff, and he is the best type of TV and film buff—the type who loves and appreciates a mix of high-brow and low-brow, from niche indie films to smash-hit TV series.
His favorite TV shows, in ascending order of the year in which they premiered, are:
Seinfeld (1989), produced by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld
The West Wing (1999), produced by Aaron Sorkin
Desperate Housewives (2004), produced by Marc Cherry
Grey's Anatomy (2005), produced by Shonda Rhimes
Parks & Recreation (2009), produced by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur
Veep (2012), produced by Armando Iannucci
Schitt's Creek (2015), produced by Eugene Levy and Dan Levy
The Jinx (2015), produced by Andrew Jarecki
Succession (2018), produced by Jesse Armstrong
The Bear (2022), produced by Christopher Storer
House of the Dragon (2022), produced by Ryan Condal and George R. R. Martin
And his favorite movies, in ascending order of their release year, are:
Reservoir Dogs (1992), directed by Quentin Tarantino
Braveheart (1995), directed by Mel Gibson
The Blair Witch Project (1999), directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
The Lord of the Rings series (2001-2003), directed by Peter Jackson
The Dark Knight trilogy (2005-2012), directed by Christopher Nolan
The Departed (2006), directed by Martin Scorsese
Inside Man (2006), directed by Spike Lee
Inglourious Basterds (2009), directed by Quentin Tarantino
A Quiet Place (2018), directed by John Krasinski
Parasite (2019), directed by Bong Joon-ho
“How did you become such a fan?” I ask him.
“Funnily, my parents always wanted less screen time for me when I was a kid,” he says. “Which, I guess, made me love film and TV even more. But, in general, I was always really into anything that had to do with acting. I mean, as you know, for the longest time before college, I strongly considered becoming an actor.”
“Which is,” I add, “actually the most opposite thing of the direction you ended up going in: computer science.”
“Right?” he laughs. “It was always between computer science and acting. Ultimately, with acting, I felt that you, as yourself, are the product and that it would, therefore, be hard to dissociate from work. That always made me a bit uncomfortable.”
That’s not to say that Alvaro is a 9-to-5 type of guy. He might have escaped the intensity that comes with being an actor, but he inevitably found the other type of intensity, the one that comes with being a co-founder of a tech company. Alvaro is a co-founder and the CEO at Orb, a B2B tech company that provides other businesses with the infrastructure to align monetization strategy to product usage, to automate the billing process, and to optimize for pricing and packaging. He and Kshitij, his co-founder and the CTO, met at Asana as software engineers and, after four years of working there, decided to quit their jobs and do what many others dream of: start their own business.
Orb is a big part of Alvaro’s life now, and though Alvaro and I have never worked together in a business setting, I know that he is someone who takes work seriously, who likes to get things done, and who makes decisions quickly. And, I also know, from the many years of being friends with him, that he does not take himself seriously. In fact, if you closely inspect the list of his favorite TV shows, you will get an accurate picture of his sense of humor: observational comedy sprinkled with a lot of absurdity. I have always wondered how he continues to be this way, even with so much responsibility on his shoulders.
“Is it hard?” I ask.
“Honestly,” he answers, “the hardest part of running your own startup is learning to manage your own psychology. One day, you can have one client call that goes really well, then another call later that goes horribly. Learning how to balance the highs and the lows is critical and it’s not easy. That’s something I had to learn.”
Alvaro and Kshitij founded Orb in 2021, and the company already has 30 employees and is backed by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms, including Menlo Ventures and Greylock Partners. Kshitij focuses mostly on the engineering side of the business, and Alvaro mostly on the go-to-market side. So far, in line with what I would expect from someone as down-to-earth as Alvaro, the company’s brand has been all about transparency, clarity, and lack of pompousness. You will often see videos of Alvaro, Kshitij, and their team discussing what actually matters to their clients: billing, pricing, infrastructure, tech. I guess a simpler way to say what I want to say is that it’s obvious the company was built by nerds, not by bros.
“I know you’ve mentioned this to me before,” I say, “but I am curious if company’s culture is something that’s still your top priority?”
“Hundred percent,” he says. “It’s really important to me that Orb never becomes draconian, one of those places with a hire-and-fire culture. Feedback and growth have always been important to me, and I want the teams at Orb to have that experience as well.”
We finish our food and leave Sam’s Burgers. It’s already 3.30 pm, so we start walking down Columbus Avenue toward the Financial District. I ask Alvaro how he and Kshitij decided to work together and, what’s perhaps even the bigger question, how they even got to this idea. After all, pricing and billing and data infrastructure are not what one would call watercooler convos.
“I think the connecting thread between me and Kshitij,” he says, “and why we ultimately wanted to work together is that we both love finding points of leverage, which was a lot of our work at Asana. It’s this principle in systems thinking, which is really about: if you can find a way to apply a small change, maybe a small fix, that can produce a compounding benefit over time for the entire system, you have found a way to build something that will scale very efficiently.”
“Interesting. So, this type of problem is so particular that you can frame it as an interest? Like something people explicitly want to work on?”
“Oh, yeah,” Alvaro answers. “It attracts people who like to work on problems of scale, on infrastructure, on things that enable others. It’s not necessarily sexy or glamorous but it makes the jobs of other people much easier. And that is a very particular mindset to have. As a result, it’s a very specific set of people who want to be in this type of work.”
“Do you and Kshitij operate similarly?”
“Definitely,” he answers. “We both care deeply about being customer-centric, and we both share that sense of urgency I talked about. It’s maybe a result of both of us being impatient.”
We stop at the intersection of Kearny St and California St in FiDi. Alvaro has to call a car and get home, and I have to make my way down to the Montgomery train station. It’s always odd being in FiDi on a sunny weekend day. It feels intrusive, as if the city is asking for just one, measly two-day break from us yuppies, and here we are, in the heart of the money-making quarters on a Saturday afternoon.
“Do you enjoy this chapter of your career?” I ask Alvaro. “Being a founder and scaling a startup?”
“It’s funny, people always ask me that,” he smiles.
“Us plebeians want to know, Alvaro.”
“You know, I don’t think I have ever been able to attach the word ‘enjoy’ to this chapter. But, am I fulfilled?” he pauses for effect, and then nods. “Yes. Absolutely.”
