I’m glad I’m writing these posts as I’m getting a nice opportunity to look back at my time at this wonderful place. Most importantly, my days are happier as I’ve decided to make a wish list of a few things I would like to do before I leave..
This is THE toughest post of them all just because of the sheer enormity of the contribution that Nineo has had on my life as such – not just my university days. Of course, it was never the company or the idea, but the people.. It has taken a LOT of reflection to come up with the 3 biggest things I will remember as there are so many. But, here goes..
Background:
Nineo.com was a dot com start-up dedicated to helping people find work they love. The business model has largely been scrapped thanks to a successful realization of the goal, without generation of any revenue(The story of many a dot-com, I dare say). The website now just consists of a page which talks about 27,0000 students and 9000+ projects. I applied to Nineo thanks to a senior of mine I was inspired by – 3 months into my 1st semester. And ever since then, spent my waking hours at the office till I decided to take a break from work 3 years later in July, 2009.
1) 15000 sign up target: I’m proud to say that I had a big part to play in the 27,000 student number. However, the achievement of that number was anything but easy. The toughest time was when we were a website with 3,000 students and one fine day, my mentor said to me -‘You have 3 months from now.. To hit 30,000 students’.
I was all of 18 years and 4 months then and such numbers sounded fictional. Nevertheless, I decided it could be done and somehow sat on it for 2 months. One day, things came to a head when my mentor basically told me that I better start doing else there would be ‘serious’ consequences. That was one of the many days I felt I was on the brink of being let go from the company. But, I realized later that it was never the case.. It was just in my head. That aside, I basically had a team of 3 who worked day and night signing people manually (as 2 months of ‘thinking’ had not resulted in any smart ideas) and we did hit my mentor’s intended target 15,000 right on the dot of our deadline – 12 midnight, September 29th.
Now, during this period, I had given my 3 teammates hell as I was a perfect example of an unhappy moping dog who was trying to ‘inspire’ 3 others. These things changed though with time as I had time to reflect on this and..
I learnt a BIG lesson in proactivity. A lot of the suffering I felt was self-inflicted. I had just looked at this target as one I was doing for my ‘boss’ rather than one I was doing for myself. Years later, I am very proud of the part I played but during the time, I had adopted a slave-ish mentality. It was one of those turning points.. I had a tough few months then but I also grew up a lot..
It was not the last of my tough times at Nineo. I had a very challenging period between January and June 2009 after which I decided to take a break.. More on that in a later post.
This second tough time practically was the making of the person that I am today. The sign up challenge was like the appetizer.. :)
2) Hard work and 9,999 failures: One of the biggest things I realized during this time was the value of hard work. I was working with people who had achieved more than I could even comprehend at that time and what I realized was an unfaltering willingness to work hard. More so, we also tried out hundreds of ideas at Nineo – almost none of them ever worked but I don’t remember ever being down because an idea never worked..
Failure was seen purely as an opportunity to get better. And as long as we were keen and hungry, there was ALWAYS a way.
Learning: At school, there is a lot of funny marketing about smart people who get good grades. There are rumors like ‘he barely studies/he barely needs to touch a book’ which I used tend to fall for. There’s no substitute to hard work. As my grandfather puts it, think straightforward! If you want something, you’ll have to sacrifice to get it..
And winners do..
3) ‘Tough, yet so gentle’: This is a people thing. I guess, at Nineo, the focus was entirely people which is why the people who came and went became much much better for it, even if the company didn’t (which itself was a big learning in business). The most amazing thing that I noticed was the ability of this special mentor to be tough, but yet so gentle.
He was a person who would never take ‘no’ for an answer. I was always stretched, always challenged, always made to look beyond what I could see, always hammered for talking too much, taking too much attention, lacking planning and organization, approaching tasks randomly with just execution and no thought, never using my brain among many other things..
When I look back now, I’m just glad that I got that treatment. I am someone who needs a whack when it comes to it.. And I got plenty of that. The difference was there for the people close to me to see..
Learning: Every hard hammer was balanced with a lot of love and care. I always knew a tight hug was on its way.. I had lot of tough times, but I never doubted that these came out of care..
In short, Nineo was not like a normal internship (as you might have figured by now). Nineo accounted for half of my university experience. I did not quite lead life like a normal student would – I used to be permanently dressed in formal shirts (usually in shades of blue.. Haha) and black pants. I worked all the way from Monday to the early hours of Sunday morning. The number of times I’ve walked back from Science to PGP at crazy hours is countless..
And.. Today, I can’t thank everyone at Nineo enough for making it so special. It takes years of pressure to make a lump of coal into a diamond. And I always felt that pressure with loads of love, care, trust and belief..
Let’s hope the results are coal-like..
A Learning a Day 