2020 and NonStop, a recap…
By: Sumit M
Tags: 2020, Startup, Technology, Software, Software Development

2020 was marked by a few important milestones in my life, two of which were:

I (along with Sneha) became a 4-year old parent to my daughter Ramaa

I (along with Saurabh) became a 5-year old founder of NonStop io

As a parent, this year was an eye-opener to come to a happy realization that parenting is more about learning than teaching. Collectively it is called ‘educating’…may something else too! I realized that the last 34 years of life experiences are insufficient to describe the world, relationships, human behavior, our existence as a species, and the meaning of all of it to my little one. More of this in upcoming stories… 🙂

As founders of a company turning 5-years, we had our share of watershed moments this year. The year began with a bang with an acquisition offer. For that moment it made us feel special! However, a more crucial realization was the milestones we needed to set for ourselves (including the team). We ended up not going through the acquisition but used the valuation process to set and design an action plan to achieve the milestones for the upcoming years (and are on track to achieve the same!).

NonStop’s new address!

As the team grew we felt the need for a bigger workspace where everyone could work together. Hence, in late 2019 we moved to a new workspace, and by early 2020 started working full-time from this new workspace.

Team NonStop & our new address!

We made some of our best team-memories while working out of this office.

The team thoroughly enjoyed this experience while it lasted…little did we know what we (the humanity) had in store for the rest of the year!

Covid19 & our transition

By mid-March’20, India started feeling the heat of Covid19, and like millions of other businesses, we too got concerned over the situation that would transpire due to the unfortunate events occurring throughout the world. Covid19 and its impact on business and life have been talked about a lot, and I do not feel the need to reiterate the negative side of it. The team at NonStop, however, did an excellent job at getting acquainted with the ‘new normal’. More about NonStop tackled Covid19 here.

Weekly huddles @ NonStop io

As a technology company, we tried to do our part by working on and envisioning a prediction and insights platform for mitigation of future pandemic situations. We tried making sense of data (Covid-19 India) and tried to build relationship graphs; for instance, the travel patterns that give a stark insight as to which destinations are the most vulnerable, and which flights could’ve been prioritized for screening etc.

Graph representing Covid19 patients (India) and their travel history

Five years NonStop!

Yes, we turned 5 in 2020. Over these five years, as a co-founder, I had many learnings, a few of which were via books, podcasts, interactions with individuals…but the most relevant ones were the ones which I experienced in real. A few of all of the above include:

Stay true to your foundational values…they define you and your organization You won’t get rewarded unless you demonstrate to have specific knowledge Value-driven entities tend to last long Client (expectation) handling is a very creative process Pricing your service right is also a very creative and intelligent process You will always be biased…don’t let this come in your way of ‘doing’ things People management is one of the toughest responsibilities to handle successfully You’ve to give respect to gain respect You have to embrace accountability in order to get rewarded with responsibility Appreciate the network and its effects on your business, and be in the right kind of network Inspiration is perishable — act on it as soon as you’re inspired Create an environment that has space for the individuals in the team to express themselves freely Priorities: Clean Code has to be the top priority of the engineering team. Clean Communication has to be the top priority of the management team. Clean Documentation has to be in the top-3 priorities throughout the organisation Do not allow the team to be interrupted or pulled away to do other things. Combine the uninterrupted time with a tough but extremely powerful policy: “Teams have to ship the work within the amount of time that is predecided” The best companies aren’t families. They’re supporters of families. Allies of families. There to provide healthy, fulfilling work environments so when workers shut their laptops at a reasonable hour, they’re the best husbands, wives, parents, siblings, and children they can be. If startups can’t sell anything, they start lowering prices to bring in more volume. But at that point, it only becomes a race to the bottom.

Core Principles of NonStop

This 5-year journey has helped me appreciate quite a few human-traits…empathy, pursuit-of-happiness, power-of-the-collective, humility, patience, and trust were some of them. A small thank-you note that I penned down during our AHM:

“I owe all my thanks this year to the ones who against all the odds decided join, and remain with NonStop. I am completely aware of the fact that there are times when you would not have agreed with my point-of-view. Many-a-times I fall short of my capability to achieve the dreams-n-visions that we dreamt together as a collective. Inspite of all these shortcomings, a few select set of people decided to stick around together for some more time of their lives with me and Saurabh. These set of individuals left behind their egos (in all positive sense), and short-term aspirations. They inherently believed that they would achieve something better than their peers in the long term (be it satisfaction, flexibility, or being part of something new). They (knowingly or unknowingly) understood the inherent value (and risks) of being the building blocks of something small, which could one day become big. They believed in constructive criticism, pursuit of happiness, achieving excellence, uncompromising attention to detail (even when there is no watchdog). But above all, (I’d like to believe that) these individuals found NonStop worthy to be spending their life’s time at! Now that I think of it…it is almost like helping a sapling grow…one can either doubt its ability to grow and leave it midway, or can water it, tend to it, and hope that one day it’ll grow into this huge tree. In the span of last 5 years, NonStop has witnessed (a few) people departing for greener pastures, some we had to let go too. But, the individuals who have decided to stick around for some more time — To them I say: Thank you for this belief… This belief that this rollercoaster will be worth the penny spent This belief that NonStop will grow big…and with it you too… This belief that you stand to achieve something valueable in life apart from materialistic gains… This belief that it makes sense to be in the company of such foolhardies… This belief that together we can walk longer (than faster)… To all the people at NonStop — Thank you from the bottom of my heart”

One of the most important learnings for us was:

Think hard about the thing you want to do in life; make sure it is ethically and practically the right thing to do, and then stay invested in it for the long term.

Technology & First Principles Thinking

It took me 2020 to come face to face with the concept of “First-principles thinking”. Thanks to the views of many leaders, I got a chance to read, listen, and understand this concept to the best of my ability. It also gave us as a team to witness a few fantastic speakers to come around and talk about technology and life in general. We named this talk-series “Technology & First Principles”, where leaders from many fields of tech. shared their experience of what it means to approach building tech from a first-principles approach.

Beyond NonStop

Over the course of this year, we also realized that at times we learn/experience certain things outside NonStop, that could impact our perspective towards life in general, and one’s role at NonStop to be specific. With an intention to learn and share such impacting/thought-provoking events we might encounter in our day-to-day lives we started an internal channel to log these stories. One such story is as follows

“The busy bee has no time for sorrow”

27August 2020

Today evening while strolling, Ramaa (my daughter) and me found a large dead queen bee on our terrace.

That got us talking about how bees are one of man's best friends.

After listening about all the things bees do for us, Ramaa thought for a while and then said, "Dada, we need to make her a house, so that any more harm should not come to her"...and then she got busy building a resting place for the queen bee, while I sat there motionless...speechless

It gave me a very different perspective on empathy.

What I learned that day was, ‘There is need not be a particular reason to be kind…rather there need not be a give-n-take relationship to be kind…we could just be kind — because we can!’

#RamaasAdventures #Empathy #QueenBee I couldn’t fathom the idea of making someone comfortable even after death!It gave me a very different perspective on empathy.What I learned that day was, ‘There is need not be a particular reason to be kind…rather there needbe a give-n-take relationship to be kind…we could just be kind — because we can!’

— — — —

My heart goes out to the people who had to face unfortunate life-events this year. I truly hope that 2021 will bring the much-needed positivity, hope, and happiness we collectively as human beings are longing for…bye 2020, welcome 2021 🙂

Peace ✌️