A letter from the Founder

I started Azumo to follow a dream. Ever since I graduated from college, I had always wanted to start a company. As a former investment banker in Silicon Valley, I advised large and fast growing technology and software companies. Many of these companies were at the forefront of the technology revolution but were challenged to consistently find talented software engineers to build and maintain their software products. So I thought: if these companies had trouble finding great talent, wouldn’t it be true for other businesses as well?

Azumo is based on a belief system

core values for a nearshore software developer
Follow a set core of values
talent is everywhere core values for a nearshore software developer
Find talent anywhere
diversity matters core values for a nearshore software developer
Create a free & open environment
share in the value we create core values for a nearshore software developer
Share Ownership

Honesty: For our customers, we strive for complete transparency. We charge by the hour. We do this so the client can see down to the minute what anyone from Azumo is doing on their project. We track and measure our own productivity and hold ourselves accountable first.

Education: I have always believed that education is the secret to opportunity. Everyone at Azumo is given the chance to expand beyond their comfort zone and take on course work and engagements that can expand their skills. After all we are technology providers and technology doesn’t standstill so neither should our skills as a technology company.

Freedom: Last is freedom, which is the bedrock foundation for any people based business. Without freedom there is no opportunity to act on curiosity or take risks.

This understanding comes from my own background and so that is why Azumo is a distributed company.

We don’t offer software development services or cloud management services remotely because its cheaper. We do it because great developer talent is everywhere. Great sales people are everywhere. Fine managers are everywhere.

If you can create a culture that allows these folks to work with each other, you could uncork a massive opportunity for each one of them. In our daily life we use Slack, Google Hangouts, Jira, and a bunch of other tools to communicate with each other internally. And we do the same with our clients each and every day.

This realization was more recent, and came from a talk given by Oprah Winfrey.

During the discussion she was asked how she manages her team and inspires them to work for her. Oprah’s response was perfect: she hires smart, motivated people and gives them the space to soar.

Having met with 1000s of companies in my career, I had come to understand that this is something I wanted to make sure were in place if I ever got the chance to start my own.

I believe that everyone at Azumo should share in the growth of the company. I want everyone on the team to have an owners mentality.

So with that in mind, everyone at Azumo can earn a stake in the company.

One of the great lessons from technology companies is that they recognized the risks they were asking of potential employees to join their fledgling start-ups. They issued equity as a way to compensate for possibly lower cash compensation and created an incentive for their workforces to work harder.

We are for breakthroughs

As a services provider, I also have to recognize that our market has bifurcated between marketplaces and traditional services providers.
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Software developers and their time are not commodities. And while the freelance market offers individuals globally a chance to improve their lives to a degree – the lifestyle introduces a tremendous amount of uncertainty into their lives.

For instance a developer through one of the marketplaces could be paid well for their services for 6-8 months out of the year – but what about the rest of the time? Typically these folks find themselves looking for jobs the rest of the time creating stress and anxiety for them and their families. While the marketplaces can provide a contract for the developer they cannot provide a career. On our website you may have read the words “empathy for the developer.” The marketplaces treat developers hard earned skills as commodities and do nothing to differentiate one from the other to the customer. In other words the marketplaces present customers the choice of “here’s Developer A and Developer B … you choose who you like. Good luck with your project.” In no part of that transaction is there a relationship. There is no empathy.

On the other hand, the traditional services providers have all grown based on an industrial age idea of organization. Essentially they gathered all their resources at a single site and produce widgets for delivery to market. That industrial age idea of production has worked for nearly 150 years. Most companies – even tech companies – still relied on this idea of the company to compete.

The global pandemic has demonstrated for good that knowledge workers no longer have to organize themselves in the same ways we did in the 1800s. We don’t have to sit around in rows of cubes or super-hip standup desks in an office to get things done or communicate anymore. We can work productively from anywhere. We can share ideas or brainstorm together from anywhere. Azumo is a distributed company and we have been so since our founding in 2016. We take advantage of the global base of energetic talent and the ubiquity of communications tools to create value for all of our stakeholders.

Photo of an African American founder and CEO of a black owned software development company

Who is Chike Agbai?

Chike Agbai is the CEO and Founder of Azumo, a fast-growing nearshore software development company. A graduate of Stanford University, Chike spent nearly 20 years as an investment banker on Wall Street, covering enterprise software companies.  In his time he advised on over $100 billion in transaction volume working with companies such as Oracle, Salesforce.com, and Dell.

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During his time as a banker, he recognized the convergence of big data, cloud computing, and mobility as a unique opportunity for companies of all sizes to build intelligent applications. This insight inspired him to start Azumo in 2016.

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Under Chike's leadership, Azumo has grown into a multi-million dollar business, servIng a diverse universe of clients, including industry leaders like Facebook, Discovery Channel, and Zynga, as well as innovative startups and middle market businesses. Azumo's mission is to make advanced software solutions accessible to businesses everywhere through its outsourced software development model, helping them leverage technology to automate, optimize, and grow efficiently.