We all know what Einstein did when he rose above the ordinary to achieve the extraordinary. And the advancement in technology, thankfully, has given us a platform to achieve the impossible today. There are many innovative minds who travel the road less travelled to make a difference, and one of them is Maulik Sailor – cofounder and CEO of Notchup.
Here we will get to know more about the story of the company and why he is now determined to change the future of work and to build high-class tech teams all over the world.
Maulik, can you tell us how it all started and how you met your co-founder?
"We were introduced by a mutual friend in 2009 when we went on a trip together. After that, we kept in touch with each other. Prakash and I ventured into a start-up together in 2012—Innovify, a web-3 product development studio. We both ran that business for ten years. We both understood the changes in the industry, the challenges of agencies, and the opportunities opening up. And that's when we decided to start Notchup in the year 2020.”
What motivated you to start Notchup? What was the problem you wanted to solve?
“We witnessed several problems and trends we were dealing with at that time. Modern product-led tech companies have ever-changing priorities and are often slowed by the time-consuming and expensive hiring process. Additionally, forming a high-performing team takes a long time, and high investments are a luxury for a few companies. On top of that, we witnessed that competent talents are not limited to one geographical area. Many do not want to work from 9-5 anymore. Instead, they want to maximize their earnings with the bonus of work-life balance. Also, web – 3 was emerging with many decentralized business models. And then, the pandemic hit.
And so, we thought it was perfect timing to launch Notchup to solve the below problems:
Is this your first venture, or have you started companies in the past?
“Yes, we worked on Innovify in the past. It has been a great learning experience to work with fast-paced start-ups like Landbay and Zilch. Innovify built MVPs for them with the help of global talents we recruited for the project.”
Have you always worked within the tech industry? (Tell us a bit about your background)
“I have been a product manager working with software engineers. However, I have worked in various industries, such as music, gambling, payments, publishing, financial services, eCommerce, and R&D.One significant experience I had in all my roles is that my tech teams were always distributed in different geographical locations. So, you can say the tech teams have always been borderless and remote-first.”
What is your advice to companies who want to build a remote-first company?
"It’s the 21st century, and the world is more interconnected than ever before, and I think many current companies are hypocrites. They want access to global markets but do not want remote talent. However, I have been lucky to work in multinational teams since my first job.
With current ICT, it is possible to collaborate with anyone, anywhere in the world, quite easily. So, the notion of always needing someone face-to-face to collaborate is flawed. Frankly, I think there are certainly some benefits to in-office working and in-person collaboration. Still, I find that in-office work can be very unproductive, with very high costs to employers.
It is a similar argument if you want to buy groceries in a local shop or order online. We have all witnessed the trend of many businesses moving online. Hence, I believe it’s only a matter of time before most companies will become remote first and decentralised. So be prepared for it.”
What is your advice to companies who want to build global tech teams? What challenges might they face?
"The primary challenge the companies would face would be selecting a particular geographical location. There are plenty of hot locations for finding remote tech talent. However, there are some nuances that one needs to look at, such as skill availability, working culture, pay scale, local regulations, ease of making payments, internet connectivity, etc.
Once you decide on the location, you need to figure out your recruitment strategy and sources to attract the talent. On top of this, there might be a lot of other overheads and processes that could slow you down. So why take all the hassle?
Instead, sign up to Notchup, define your ideal team setup and monthly budget, and let the platform do all the work.”
How do you see the journey ahead for Notchup?
"I think there is a long roadmap ahead for Notchup. Our vision is to disrupt the current employment models and make them borderless, flexible, decentralized, and equitable. Our current focus is to create enough liquidity on the platform for clients and talent to find each other according to their criteria and transact faster.
As we achieve this, we are starting to plan for our talent network to become a decentralized autonomous network (DAO) so that our community members have their incentives aligned to the network's success. I guess we are just getting started on the borderless and flexible part.
And eventually, we will move away from traditional employment models and adopt value-based creator (teams) and consumer (client) models, in which they transact equitably for mutual success.
We are essentially disrupting the traditional consulting businesses and creating a playbook to decentralise the Knowledge Economy and make it more equitable. “
Who has been most influential in your journey with Notchup and why?
"It is difficult to answer as plenty of influential leaders have shaped our thinking over many years. Some of the most prominent for me are Ratan Tata and Bill Gates.
Ratan is a highly respected chairman of Tata Group, known to be a community-driven business, having a net positive impact on its employee communities.
Bill Gates may not be a popular choice, but I find him very smart in establishing Microsoft as a leading software company and in his vision and strategy to ensure that personal computing is accessible to everyone worldwide. At Microsoft, Bill Gates was known to be incredibly detailed and hands-on. He would get on the floor to discuss low-level programming issues with his development team and resolve it himself.”
What does Notchup have that your competitors do not have?
"First, we are differentiating by enabling our Teams feature, which allows individuals to self-organize as a team and execute a client project end-to-end. This primarily enables the talent to not only work as and when they want to but also with whom they perform their best.
Second, we are developing our innovative algorithm to enable dynamic team matches for the project to be delivered.
Third, implementing the entire governance of the team and our talent network as Decentralised Autonomous Organisations—effectively sharing our success with our talent network.
Fourth, developing a community of our tech talents to share knowledge and advance the shared goals of decentralized governance.”
What is the current funding status of the company, and what is the next step in the funding roadmap?
"We bootstrapped the start-up and raised $275K pre-seed from known angel investors. We are now actively raising our seed round and will follow this with a significant Series A round.”
Most significant trends in product team recruitment according to Maulik
Maulik Sailor is the founder and CEO of Notchup. Maulik’s deep-seated passion and love for entrepreneurship have motivated him to create Innovify and Notchup. He has rich experience working with world-class industry leaders like Nokia, Microsoft, the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, Betfair, and Visa.
With Innovify and Notchup, Maulik plans to pioneer an innovative process connecting tech teams and organizations to minimize downtime and save costs.
If you are ready to build your tech team for the future – book a conversation with one of our experts today.
