Wow Our Last Post Was From February! But We’re Still Here, Promise.

25 Jul

This is what happens when I can’t think of a better title.  And when you realize that half the company wasn’t even a part of NextDrop when that was posted (which is completely crazy, let me tell you.)

 

Things are fun.  Crazy, awesome, fun.  It’s a great time to be working at NextDrop (and guess what, we’re hiring! And if you’re awesome and you don’t see a matching skillset, we’ll make a job for you anyway- yes, that’s how we roll). ANYway. I digress.  The point is, it’s been awesome times at NextDrop High.  I have to say, one of my proudest moments at NextDrop came last week, when we were presenting to the Chairman of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (because, yes, we now meet with them on the regular!) and they saw their own data for the first time.  And they started to DO something about it!  In the meeting itself, making plans! YES! Making change! One government utility at a time! It was…incredible.  It was such a rush.  And the best part? They were asking us for MORE STUFF.  More data, more analytics, more predictive models.  When does that happen?  Apparently when you work at NextDrop.  And for the record, they’re a great group of people- they really want to make good things happen.  I love working with them.  Backing up, we actually signed an MOU with them in May to monitor their water supply, and it’s been a wild ride ever since.  If you live in Bangalore, you should be hearing about us soon.  We’re making a push to recruit residents (because actually, the utility itself is asking us to collect citizen feedback- so cool, right?) And if you just want to say hi, or want to re-imagine the Bangalore water supply network, let us know/drop us a line!

Another cool thing happened when I started talking to all the people that work at NextDrop.  I wanted to crowdsource a vision statement for NextDrop- why do we exist? Why does everyone want to work at NextDrop?  And it was crazy how similar the answers were.  And it was pretty enlightening too, because I didn’t think about it before.  But.  The main reasons people love NextDrop are that you basically have the freedom and learning/growth potential of a startup, but the incredible real world impact of a traditional non profit.  They basically said they loved it because it was the best of both the worlds.  The vision for NextDrop was not just an external one, but an internal one as well.  (Not your typical vision statement eh?) Learn something new every day right? Who am I to argue with organic sentiment?

But that made me so, SO happy.  When I quit my job and moved to India about 3 years ago (and wrote this first blog post) I don’t think I could have imagined, in my wildest dreams, what a great group of individuals NextDrop would comprise of.  And now, when we’re working as a unit, I still blows my mind thinking about what the sum of our differences can create. It creates magic.  Pure magic.

And it’s just beginning.  I still feel the same way I did 3 years ago.  Scared. Not sure if I’m doing the right thing.  But I do know one thing now that I didn’t think about then.  That we have an amazing team.  And we’re only going to get better.  We work hard, we make lots of mistakes, but we learn from them, and we get better for it.  We stick by each other in good times and bad, and we help each other out.  It’s such a rush.  I’m so honored to be a part of something great.

And I think that maybe, just maybe, we’re going to put a dent in the universe.

I can feel it.

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