Hamid Shojaee used to go to the library with his wife and work on a company that did not yet pay his bills. Lawdan was studying. He had a laptop and a problem left over from his day job: keeping track of what a team of software developers was doing. Microsoft Consulting Services employed him. The evenings belonged to a small program called OnTime. There are more glamorous places to begin a software business, though a library has the advantage of discouraging premature victory speeches.
The first version went online in August 2002. People could use it free, send feedback and watch it improve. A later version charged larger teams. By January 2004, enough had happened for Shojaee to leave Microsoft and work on it full time. The company became Axosoft, based in Arizona. His first programming help amounted to four hours a week from a friend who also had a job. It was a modest staffing plan, with very little room for meetings about the staffing plan.
This was his second attempt at independence. He had already spent five years in a startup that could make impressive demonstrations and still struggle to make money. The library laptop carried some expensive experience. Over the next two decades, his companies would make tools for developers, file transfers and conversations between businesses and their customers. The recurring question was how much attention to give an idea before asking it to earn its keep.
Four products, very few customers
Shojaee was born in Iran in 1973. His family moved directly to Tempe, Arizona, toward the end of 1983, when he was ten. By his teenage years, he wanted a software company of his own. At Arizona State University, where he studied computer science, he kept asking his roommate to brainstorm businesses. In 1995, they found an opening around newly affordable fingerprint readers. They left college to pursue it. His degree remained unfinished.
The possibilities multiplied quickly. Fingerprints could verify who collected a child from day care, record employees clocking in and out, or identify club members. The young company developed several applications and even assembled hardware. It had plenty to show investors after ten months, but few customers. An experienced board member eventually forced a decision about what the company should become. They settled on time and attendance. By late 2000, Shojaee had had enough of repeated fundraising and diminishing influence, sold his shares and joined Microsoft.
In recalling that first investment, he offered a wonderfully economical defense of youthful judgment: “Yes, it was horrible, but we were 22.” He had exchanged half the company for a $300,000 promissory note. He also said he would have accepted the terms again rather than never start. The regret was specific; the appetite survived. That distinction helps explain why his later career contains both a lesson about focus and so many experiments.
“Yes, it was horrible, but we were 22.”
Hamid Shojaee, recalling his first financing deal
A full-page advertisement for a very small company
At Microsoft, he saw how a large software business executed and competed. His consulting work involved helping enterprise customers manage development projects. OnTime grew from the tools he wished he had for that work. The path back to entrepreneurship began with a need he could test himself, then with other developers who would tell him where the product fell short. There was a paying audience before he handed in his notice.
While his salary covered his living, he put the product's revenue into advertising. When monthly revenue reached $6,000, he bought a $6,000 full-page advertisement in MSDN magazine. The page made a tiny operation look established. He also tried early Google advertising. Customers arrived online, downloaded the software, tried it and paid as their teams grew. The business could meet a buyer without first acquiring an army of people to call that buyer.
The early revenue figures rose quickly: about $50,000 in 2003, just under $300,000 in 2004, then $800,000 in 2005. Growth brought its own decisions. Shojaee later thought he had kept staffing too lean. Subscription software also changed the timing of cash coming in, as customers paid smaller sums over longer periods. He had learned to survive without investors; he still had to learn how much capacity a growing business required.
Small team. Paying customers.
Thirty days to wander
Axosoft competed in a market that included Atlassian. Shojaee emphasized usability and the Scrum community, making educational material alongside the tools. Within that focused business, he made a deliberate allowance for wandering. After major releases, developers could spend thirty days working on unrelated products and unfamiliar technologies. An experiment had a place in the calendar. It did not need to become the company's permanent identity on its first morning.
TransferBigFiles and Pure Chat came out of those experiments. GitKraken, a visual tool for managing Git repositories, also had its origins in a thirty-day project. Its usefulness was closely related to Axosoft's existing audience: developers trying to do their work with less friction. For Shojaee, a collection of trials eventually produced another product people wanted. A deadline gave curiosity somewhere to go and gave the company a moment to decide what deserved more work.
The office supplied a less solemn version of the same temperament. In 2012, Shojaee was described arriving on a Segway and sharing a workspace with five employees. Teams worked in rooms named for figures in science and engineering, with no private offices. Nerf battles appeared on YouTube. There was also a candid assessment of the product: its pricing had been confusing and its interface had needed improvement. A toy arsenal was apparently compatible with admitting the software needed fixing.
Five weeks to explain ten minutes
His short Scrum tutorial shows the work behind that concern for usability. Shojaee wanted an introduction without a product pitch. The first script sounded, even to him, like a tedious lecture. Angelo Coppola delivered an unflattering review. Shojaee returned to the whiteboard, paired explanations with visuals and brought in artist Derek Harju. The team kept revising the drawings, the script and the recording. A brief lesson became about five weeks of work by three people.
He even cut jokes he found insufficiently funny. This is a useful qualification for anyone who intends to teach project management. The updated video, made with videographer Shane Rymer and released in February 2012, later exceeded 1.1 million views by Shojaee's July 2015 account. Its attraction was straightforward: someone had done the editing so viewers could get an introduction in under ten minutes. His software and his teaching shared a practical interest in making complicated work approachable.
The chat window gets a company of its own
Pure Chat launched as a product in 2012 and became a separate company in 2014. Shojaee took the CEO role there, while Lawdan became CEO of Axosoft. The shift put one of the experiments at the center of his working life. It also made the couple's business partnership visible in two different leadership jobs. On his blog in 2015, he welcomed the fresh perspective Lawdan brought to Axosoft and celebrated her team's It Was Never a Dress campaign.
Pure Chat served a different everyday problem: a visitor arrives at a business website with a question, and somebody needs to answer it. The service combined live chat with information about visitors. Shojaee experimented with prices and with giving chat away while charging for analytics. By a 2017 interview, he reported more than 4,000 paying customers and roughly $1.3 million in annual recurring revenue. Those figures belong to that period, when a team of nine was testing how to turn a widely useful widget into a durable business.
The two businesses reached transactions in 2020. Resurgens Technology Partners announced its Axosoft investment in September; GitKraken had acquired more than two million users worldwide since its 2016 release. Ruby announced its purchase of Pure Chat in October. For Ruby, the chat software and Artibot technology fitted a business built around customer engagement. For Shojaee, the companies created room for a different kind of work, without requiring him to lose interest in software.
Resurgens announces a strategic equity investment.
Ruby announces its acquisition of the chat business.
Putting the next bet close to home
In 2021, Hamid and Lawdan announced plans to invest $10 million in Arizona startups. Shojaee also launched AZ Tech Podcast and renewed AZ Tech Beat. Money and conversations addressed different needs in the same community: founders needed capital, and the people building companies locally deserved attention. He had come to Arizona as a child and built his career there. His explanation for the geographic focus was personal: “Arizona has given so much to me.”
AZ Disruptors set out an investment approach spanning early prototypes, businesses with happy customers and companies ready to scale. Its published typical checks ranged from $25,000 at the earliest stage to $250,000 for the later stage. These were intentions, with different expectations for each point in a company's life. Someone who once arrived at a fundraising meeting with several demos and few buyers was now distinguishing between an idea, customer evidence and readiness to grow.
He also returned to founding. Savvy Trader, incorporated in 2022, put him back in a CEO role. His public interests in investing had been visible for years in writing about Tesla and other technology businesses. By October 2026, he and Dustin Alper were co-hosting Buy Hold Rant, discussing portfolios, earnings and market developments. The name leaves room for disagreement. Building software and arguing about the businesses behind stocks now occupy the same working life.
Hamid and Lawdan's planned investment in Arizona startups.
A blank square, one more experiment
Another project makes the old curiosity visible in miniature. With 100Tiles, Shojaee directed an AI assistant to build a website without writing the code himself. The result is a daily drawing grid. People claim squares, draw and nominate eligible U.S. nonprofits. Each qualifying tile adds $10 to the day's donation pot, up to $1,000. The nonprofit attached to the most-loved tile can receive that pot, subject to his approval. He committed up to $100,000 for 2026.
The grid begins again each day. It is a small, concrete use for his interest in new ways of making software: give people something to do together, attach a purpose to it and see what they make. The founder who once tried too many products has continued to make room for another idea. He has also learned to put boundaries around the invitation. This time, curiosity gets a square, a daily reset and a reason to show up tomorrow.