Hamid Shojaee, the founder of Axosoft and PureChat, is letting his entrepreneurial colors show once again.
This time he’s not starting a software company, but shifting his focus towards the Arizona tech ecosystem as a whole. He announced his three-pronged plan in a YouTube video posted earlier this week.
First, he and his wife, Lawdan Shojaee, former CEO of Axosoft and current COO at GitKraken, are investing $10 million into 100 Arizona startups through their group AZ Disruptors.
Second, he’s restarting AZ Tech Beat, a tech news website he opened in 2012 and shut down in 2016. Third, he’s launching a new podcast to talk with entrepreneurs, investors and other innovators across the state.
For Hamid Shojaee, who grew up in Arizona, this is both personally fulfilling and supportive for the rest of the community.
“I love entrepreneurs, I love software, I love tech and this is sort of like bringing all of these things together," he said in an interview "And my wife is very much on board and supportive and wants to make an impact with me on this.”
Shojaee said his wife is keen on bringing more women into technology and they aim to do that with this fund. AZ Disruptors is accepting pitches on its website, both for startups seeking funding and other investors looking to get involved. He said his email has been "blowing up" since the release of the video.
Arizona is short on people willing to lose money in startups, according to Shojaee, especially compared to places like Silicon Valley where the tight competition forces investors to look at earlier stage companies.
“Even if we lose this $10 million, that's OK. It was a risk worth taking to see if we can make a dent in that problem.”
Shojaee started AZ Disruptors in 2011 and launched AZ Tech Beat in 2012 to specifically cover local tech news. It eventually cut all of its paid staff in 2016 and completely shut down. That experience brought him to a realization.
“This is not something I can do on the side,” he said. “I shelved the idea in 2016 and said I'll come back to it when I exit my companies.”
He did just that in November last year, took a month off and he’s been focused on invigorating the tech scene in the new year.
“If we can continue that momentum, and five years from now we can say, 'look at all these companies that have come about as a result of our activities,' and we've been able to seed some of them early, get them off the ground on the earliest stages, get them to their next level, that would be a huge sign of success.”
Perhaps most importantly, Shojaee and his one employee are in the midst of a vital task: Finding a theme song for the podcast. The first episode is expected to drop next week.
