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Welcome to "INNOV-8 presents Entrepreneurs in Tech," where we delve into the minds of trailblazing innovators who have left an indelible mark on the technology world. Join us as we explore the journeys, challenges, and triumphs of these visionary entrepreneurs, uncovering the strategies and insights that have propelled them to success. From disruptive startups to industry titans, our podcast showcases the diverse stories and groundbreaking ideas that shape the future of technology. Tune in for inspiring conversations and actionable takeaways that will ignite your entrepreneurial spirit and drive innovation forward.
Bob Shami (00:00)
Welcome to Innovate Presents Entrepreneurs in Tech. Today, we're delighted to have our guest, Shiji Uzo, who is the president and CEO of Ampa Cash Corporation. Shiji, thank you for joining us today. Could you please start by introducing yourself and provide us with a little bit on your tech background and experience?
Chiji Uzo (00:20)
Thank you very much for having me, Bob. Yes. Well, where do I start? Currently I'm CEO of Ampecage, like you said. My background, educationally undergrad, had a dual major in applied statistics and finance. I did an MBA in finance at Rutgers University. I was one of the premier class for what later became the quantitative finance school. And I started a PhD in mathematics, but I dropped out.
to work because I was given an opportunity to a path to citizenship with the first company that hired me. But right now I'm working with AmpliCache and we're trying to, we have a lot of innovations which I hope we'll talk about on this show.
Bob Shami (01:01)
absolutely. We're going to dive into it. It's very intriguing. And let's start by you sharing your journey with Bank Austria, New York. Yes, you became an executive.
Chiji Uzo (01:03)
Yeah.
Yeah, Bank of Stranding, York. Yes. All right. So yes, I became an executive. I was very fortunate. What happened was, I mean, in PhD program, my advisor, based on the strength of a paper, says, you know, there's a bank, this foreign bank operating in New York that might want to hire you. And they are likely to, at the time I came from Africa, I came from Nigeria, you would be able to get a green card as an alien of extraordinary ability. And I said, what about the PhD? says, hey, you can always come back and finish
So since my advisor was supporting it, went. was very fortunate. I got the position. I got a green card fairly quickly. And I got very intrigued. So that was actually the start of my journey in tech. Because remember, my training was in finance. Yes, I had statistics. But when I got there, I discovered that banks are the largest consumers of technology. The services they offer, you go and you write a check. You go and you withdraw money.
is technology that powers it. Everything is powered from the backend. And I was on the trading floor, they were doing trades and I got really fascinated. I said, I'd like to understand the technology. So they gave me, I did technology stuff. did stuff on the, I had a portfolio for trade finance, apart from working on the trading floor. We're doing what you call Monte Carlo simulations. It's, it sounds great, but it gets boring very quickly.
So I decided to make a switch. I decided to switch to full -time technology and just become a technology executive. Because I felt from finance. I was in finance, yes, and it was unheard of. People say, well, I'm from finance and technology. It's very unusual. But that was the move I made because I believe that technology drives business. So when this guy's right -brother invented the aeroplane, it could fly.
Bob Shami (02:41)
From finance. You were in finance. Remember that. Yes.
Chiji Uzo (03:00)
So I'm looking for something we could use this for transportation, move people from one part of the world to the other. You know, once you have the tech, sometimes you can figure out how to drive, use it for business. So sometimes you have a business and say, we have a technology that can drive it. So I'm a big believer in the fact that technology drives business. So after I Bank Austria, my next position, I didn't feel I was strong enough in technology. I wanted to get involved on this. And it's I went to work with Solomon Smith Barney.
and I went straight into engineering, technology. didn't go higher for getting into finance. went straight into technology. Again, had to do with trading because those guys use a lot of the trading floors, trading securities, buying bonds, stocks, uses a lot of technology. And so that's why I cut my teeth and I worked, I learned a lot. remember my background is, at the time was called Solomon Brothers. It wasn't called Smith Band.
Bob Shami (03:50)
So you work for Smith Bonney.
Salmon Brothers, okay I remember. Yes,
Chiji Uzo (03:56)
was Solomon Bronson at the time. It was really good. I worked for them. It was great experience. And then I worked for them for about a year and a half. And then I got hired by Deutsche Bank in global engineering. What happened is it's a close -knit society. And when I was in Solomon, I was part of what they call the SOC group. So if you have any problem across the firm that has to do with engineering as it relates to business,
you come to us and we'll give you the solution. So I got a good reputation. I went to Deutsche Bank. Again, they had two or three training floors. I was part of global engineering. So I got quite a bit of experience in understanding technology, but not just technology on its own. How it drives business. It's an important connection because you could just go in and be doing stuff that how does it drive business? I come over and I click and I want to buy a piece of stock, I want to
What is the technology behind it? How do you report that trade? How is that transaction completed? How can I do this for a million people without a hiccup? That was my experience.
Bob Shami (05:01)
Wow. So from Austria Bank, New York, then to Salmon Brothers and from Salmon Brothers, Deutsche Bank. We're talking only the top financial houses. And then you went also worked as a technology leadership position at Merrill Lynch.
Chiji Uzo (05:07)
German bank. Yes, very fortunate.
Exactly. Actually, what happened before I went to Maryland, I took a consulting gig with Credit Suisse. Credit Suisse. They sent me to Japan. had the, I got a reputation at the time. They say, that guy is maybe because, maybe because I'm a minority and there were very few minorities in senior executive positions in those days. said, wow, what's happening? So, honey, so young, what's the story here? So, you know, it can cut both ways. It can help you sometimes, but more often than not, it's not. But yeah, so I went to,
I was sent to Japan because they had some regulatory issues and they were wondering can this be fixed by technology so that people don't have to go on filling forms by HANA. Is there some way to look at this integrated, do the reporting technically? So I did that. was in Japan for a while. was interesting. Then when I came back, I had an opportunity in Maryland, again, a good reputation. yeah, was lucky. was lucky. was lucky. was lucky. Things just happened.
Bob Shami (06:10)
Jobs just rain on you. They rain on
Chiji Uzo (06:17)
They wanted me to build, at that time low latency trading was very big so when you perform a trade, if you can cut one millisecond from the time it takes from the trading floor to the exchange, one millisecond, that's one thousandth of a second, it translates into 250 million dollars a year.
Bob Shami (06:37)
Well, one more time. Repeat this one more time.
Chiji Uzo (06:40)
If you can reduce one millisecond from the round trip time from the trading floor to the exchange, one millisecond, it translates into $250 million a year. It's incredible. So that's what you call low latency trading. You want to optimize the hell, just move close to the exchange, whatever you need to do to get that additional time. And that was fun.
Bob Shami (06:54)
Wow. Wow.
Chiji Uzo (07:06)
That's really interesting. They gave us a team because the amount of money in it was huge. So they give us a team, brilliant guys, math, physics, hardcore people. It's very interesting. It's fun stuff. yeah, so I was very fortunate in that respect.
Bob Shami (07:17)
Unbelievable. Well, you know what? Your knowledge and your experience and knowledge, that really made you lucky.
Chiji Uzo (07:27)
I was, yes, was fortunate. But I was, again, we'll talk about this later, but I came to believe that if you're in tech, if you want to do tech, you have to be somebody that's willing to learn. You can't say, I'm too old. No, I'm not interested. No, I just want to learn my thing. I just want to be an expert. You have to be curious about learning different things. And that really helps a lot. When I was, and this thing came back to help me later. So when I was in
in Deutsche Bank. was a senior guy, didn't have to be on call, I said I want to do calls, I want to see what you guys are doing with maybe databases or network infrastructure. said, Chi Chi, what is happening? But all those, because I was curious, and those things helped me a lot later in my career.
Bob Shami (08:11)
Interesting. What was your experience managing critical infrastructures for stock trading and investment banking?
Chiji Uzo (08:18)
One of the things that comes across is that you always need a good team. You need a good team. You can't do it all alone. You need a good team. And you have to know that the team would have to have different people with different talents. For example, at one time, maybe because of my background, I used to put a big stock on formal education, formal schooling, as a PhD from this. But later on, I got to see
just being creative and curious. There are people that bring different things to the table, different things to the team, go a different perspective. They may not have a PhD in math or whatever, but you need a composite team that has different features. And that's one of the key things I take away. It changed my perspective, the way I lead. don't feel that people bring different things to the table, different elements, and that's, you have to have experience to see that.
Bob Shami (09:14)
So again, you went to work for TD Emitrade. Yes. And how did that, you and you were enterprise architect. What does that mean? Enterprise architect.
Chiji Uzo (09:18)
Yes. So what happened then? Yes, yes, yes, yes. So what the enterprise architect does is he's somebody that looks at a business and say, what services are we developing? What services are we offering to our customers? All right. What technology are we using to deliver these services? Can we improve upon it? Can we improve the services
we use to deliver our services, as opposed to someone that's actually building, you know, what the kind of stuff you do on the training floor. The enterprise architect has to have a business view. So at that point in my career, I felt I now understood technology very well. I already had a background in finance. So integrating both of it, it couldn't have come at a better time for me. So I would look at things and say, okay, what's your technology stack? So basically as an enterprise architect, you say, what are you guys doing? What are you guys offering in terms of services to your customers?
and how are you offering this? So one of the things that happened, one of the reasons why they hired me was they came over and the management had made a decision and said, look, we want people to be able to buy their stock directly without going through a broker. We want them to come to the TD Ameritrade and just click and buy stock or buy bonds or buy options. We want them to be able to transact and eliminate the middleman commission. And that commission, we can pass it on to the user and make it cheaper for them to transact. So, okay, great service.
Bob Shami (10:32)
Yes. Eliminate the middleman commission.
Chiji Uzo (10:43)
But the thing is, do we have the technology to build this? Because when you're doing transactions, you have to offer it well to the consumer. also, there are reporting requirements, there are regulatory requirements. And they wanted somebody who could see the whole thing, and that's why they brought me in. So we built Trade Architect. Trade Architect was the backend that did this, permits you to just go click, click, click, buy. So that was an interesting experience.
Bob Shami (11:08)
Okay, I'm gonna say this from a viewer, an interviewer, and a listener point of view. A person in your status who highly educated, extremely experienced in the finance and the tech world, which is a combination that runs the world pretty much. Obviously doing that and learning and working and having, you're an entrepreneur, you're not just somebody who wants a job in security, you're an entrepreneur.
Chiji Uzo (11:24)
That's correct.
That's correct. Yeah, that's correct.
Bob Shami (11:34)
an entrepreneur 100 % you know and entrepreneur not just somebody having their own business or not an entrepreneur who's somewhat always innovative always learning more and working and advancing himself and you are absolutely 100 % so I don't know what you were making it's your business but from what I hear a person with that kind of combo and working for these type of institutions you could make in the millions you can't
Chiji Uzo (12:03)
Half a million base and then you'll get stock options and things like that. You make a decent living. You won't starve. Yeah, you can make more. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Bob Shami (12:05)
At least. And more even.
Yes, and some you can make more. I mean, if you continue working up and high, you'll definitely make more. So what motivated you and what initiated is like, hey, you know what? I want to go into deep learning, algorithm, trading and payment solution and, you know, and start your own. But you also work for another company, Amcard. That's before even, I mean, you literally went through the whole top institutions.
Chiji Uzo (12:31)
Yes, yes.
Bob Shami (12:38)
before you took the turn and say, you know what, I'm gonna open my own. I'm gonna struggle more now. I got to this level. I'm gonna take these things, take the gloves. I'm gonna start my own thing. I'm gonna bootstrap what I wanna do. But why? But let's talk about Amcard first. What motivated you to go that route with deep learning and trading?
Chiji Uzo (12:53)
Okay.
what happened was my professor raised money. He raised money, says he convinced people as a professor. The same professor who gave me, he's always sharing off in my life at the right time. The same guy who helped me with my initial job with Bank Austria. He had now retired left, but he raised money, he a great reputation, and then he had funds. He says, listen, Chi Chi, you have a lot of experience. I want us to build something different. And I said, what is it? He says,
A lot of the way people do this traditional stuff is nonsense. They tell us traditional things. says, the money I have, I want to invest in startups, number one. And I want to invest in, I want to have algorithms that can make better predictions about what you should buy and what you should sell. I said, okay, that's good. I can build the infrastructure to do that, do the trading. But the algorithm portion was interesting. And look at why. He says, look, if you go to a VC and you say, want money, he'll say, he'll ask you,
What is the total addressable market? What's your team? What's your sales projection? They ask you lot of ridiculous questions because those things are not, say how strong is your team? Some of the people that Microsoft, when they started out, the guy was a teenager, he had no experience. He teamed up with somebody. So a lot of those things they're asking for are really nonsense if you look at it. Are those things real predictors of which startup will succeed? So myself and Professor Ying, we believe
A lot of those things they do, those traditional things are false. It's not true. They're not good predictors of who would succeed. So what he wanted us to do was to look at the history and use machine learning to say, what are the real things that determine which startups will succeed? That's number one. So he could put his money on those startups. Says all those traditional things, you have a good team here. So if it was just a team, all these big companies would not do badly because they have enough money to hire the best teams, but a lot of them still tank.
So and then he felt the second question was, is there some way to have an algorithm that can predict the stocks that we buy? It's not going to be 100 % accurate, but even if it is 70 % accurate, you will make a fortune. And that's what we're trying to do when he invited me to and I very thrilled. said, yeah, this is interesting. Let's give it a
Bob Shami (15:07)
Hmm. Okay. I guess the train doesn't stop there yet. It did not stop there. I think I probably need a day to read your resume. You know, you went to work for AWS as an innovative technology solution and designer. What did you do there? Tell us about that experience.
Chiji Uzo (15:20)
that's great so what happened with actually worked out yes so what happened was we we we had when we're at TV America somebody had come to pictures and says look there's this thing called the cloud it's coming it's going to change technology cloud what exactly you talking about but yeah planted a seed you know as I had talked explained a lot of things that we didn't even think was possible in those days everybody's own
like 3045 data center spent millions of dollars. So when I got a call from AWS, I said, listen, we're looking for somebody you have a lot of experience, know, big name companies and things like that. And I said, what will I be doing? I said, you'd a solutions architect. I said, you know, know, design things, but again, it's going to be business focused because at this point I didn't want to do technology in isolation. had to be, I had to see the business. Sorry, the business benefit.
So they invited me and then they gave me a fair amount of responsibility. They treated me well, but I had responsibility for I was a subject matter expert for three things. I said that with IOT, Internet of Things devices. So one of the things they wanted to do is like you have a hand washing machine in a bathroom. When the soap runs low, they want the machine, they want that soap bottle to order. Call Amazon and order and say I need more soap. They wanted
They wish to act intelligently on their own without human intervention. That's one. Two is wanted to do, if you're doing machine learning, they wanted it to be accessible to people who don't have to have a PhD in math. You want to design something and say, listen, I want to see how can I get more traffic? What's been happening to my music business? What do I need to do? They want anybody to be able to click, click,
That's what I was posing. I make it easy. You don't have to be some whatever. Make it available to lay people. So I worked with a team on designing SageMaker. SageMaker is something. SageMaker, S -A -G -E -K -I. It's available to lay people. You don't have to be a deep -touch guru. So you can just use it and get some machine learning information. So those are some of the things I was proud of. We did a couple of other things. We did some things apart from the IoT. did...
Bob Shami (17:18)
SageMaker.
Chiji Uzo (17:34)
A couple of a lot of somewhat more technical, like bring your own IP and things, but that's making machine learning accessible to a lay person was something I'm sort of I felt like my contributions were useful
Bob Shami (17:48)
Interesting. And how long you stayed with them? Five
Chiji Uzo (17:49)
Yeah. Five years. I was at AWS for quite a while. It was a good place.
Bob Shami (17:57)
So by working for all these big institution houses, then to for the professor for his own company, you know, and then Amazon, working with all of these places, didn't you see a gap there or some, some kind of miss something missing and you keep noticing it over and over and over, whether it's Maryland, you know, or Salmon Brothers or Austria, New York bank.
Chiji Uzo (18:14)
Yes. Yes.
Correct.
Bob Shami (18:25)
You know, all of these big institution, you know, trading houses, banking, banking investment companies. So what was the thing that clicked in your head and working for Amazon that there's a problem, there's a gap, there's something missing there. And you know what it is, but maybe you don't want to share it with anybody. Said, you know what, I'm going to build it myself. And I think I will become successful because I see what's missing. I see the problem there, but nobody's addressing
They shoving it under the rug. And I think I'm going to do something about
Chiji Uzo (18:57)
I think there are many such products. I have to be honest. There are many things where I saw gaps and I said, gosh, there's an opportunity here. There's an opportunity here. But why I focused on FinTech? Because I feel, first of all, what happened? Why did I need that? I got a call from Hitachi. Hitachi, Sony, one of them. They called me and said, we like your patents. We want to buy your patents. And I said,
Bob Shami (19:20)
Wait a second, they like your patent for what? For AmpaCache?
Chiji Uzo (19:24)
for no for payment yes one of the path is for the upper cash upper cash we
Bob Shami (19:28)
So you applied for the payment even way before.
Chiji Uzo (19:32)
way before I was doing whatever I have an idea I say well this is good I write it apply live it you know because in my work I was getting so many ideas about how to do different things because I was in trading wanted to do a trade large volume wanted the cost to be very small how could you optimize this I get an idea I'll file right yes our trade market is well you have to put a little more detail so that somebody can build it so if you
Bob Shami (19:47)
your trademark it the idea not the cons not the actual just the idea in
Chiji Uzo (20:00)
I have something that can make payment transactions very, very cheap. You have to describe it enough for somebody to be able to build it before they'll give you a patent. yeah, so whenever I had an idea, especially I had those ideas, I usually want to file after I leave that company. So a lot of, if I work for a for two years, once I leave all the ideas I have, I'll file it while I'm not working for them. So they will come and claim it. then, you know, that's every time I have an interlude.
Bob Shami (20:07)
Yes. Yes.
Chiji Uzo (20:27)
I would follow if I was working as a consultant. No, well, writing it, it's a bit pricey, but but there are ways that if you're like a small company on independent person, the fees you have to pay to the government are quite low. The bigger you are, the more you have to pay. So they have things at least within the US to make it slightly cheaper for individuals, but it's is still somewhat expensive.
Bob Shami (20:29)
Is it expensive to file such idea just in writing in text?
True.
Chiji Uzo (20:54)
If you file a patent and you have an attorney, they would say they could charge you if they want to, maybe $5 ,000 to $8 ,000 just for the filing. then the patent office, no, shouldn't do, you need an attorney. Let me explain. The attorney writes the claims. So you write the invention, you discover the, okay, let me give you an example. So you go to some place, people are sitting down on the floor.
Bob Shami (21:06)
And if you do it yourself, how much would it cost you without an
Chiji Uzo (21:21)
sitting down they don't know anything about chairs so you say look what are you guys doing to sit chair what are you talking about you tell me hey listen you can there's this thing you can have it has four legs you can sit on it ants don't have to bite you have a back is comfortable so you describe it four legs a thing a chair and you write it and you want to the patent if you file the patent that way and they give you a pattern for a chair with four legs and some other person does a chair
three legs, he hasn't infringed on your patents. You see, so the problem is the attorneys will read your, what you call your specifications, what you've said.
Bob Shami (21:58)
and come up with the possible, every possible scenario that could arise. Got
Chiji Uzo (22:01)
Exactly. So when they are filing for it, they will file for a chair with one leg. Even though you've described what you've described the chair with four legs, they'll say it's an embodiment. When they file the claim, they'll say we're claiming a chair with one leg so that nobody can infringe. That kind of specialized knowledge, you need a patent attorney for
Bob Shami (22:16)
Mm -hmm.
Chiji Uzo (22:21)
That's the problem. So you can write the description of what you want to do but the claims the attorney has to do it. They are trained to do
Bob Shami (22:29)
So how many patents you filed? Just curious like what all of your ideas?
Chiji Uzo (22:33)
We have five patents issued. We have three pending. They are related to payments. And those are the things we all put. Those patents have all been assigned to Ampercash. And so, yeah.
Bob Shami (22:44)
And all of these ideas came through you, through your head, while you're working for all of these institutions, whether it's investment banking, trading, or bank, you know, financial institution, amazing.
Chiji Uzo (22:48)
through my head. You get different ideas. That's correct. That's correct. That's correct. That's correct. And so we put it into Ampercash. And one of the advantages that Ampercash has with all these things is we can process a payment transaction at a fraction of the cost for a regular provider, like a debit card or credit card and all that. Yeah.
Bob Shami (23:09)
So, you know, we started talking about Ampercash, your new entrepreneurial endeavor. Let's dive into it. Can you break it down for listeners, viewers, for everybody to understand what is Ampercash, what is it role, and what makes it so special, different than other payment processing portals that are available
Chiji Uzo (23:28)
Excellent, excellent. Yes, I'll do that. Let's say you go to store and you want to buy a piece of gum for 75 cents. You bring out your credit card. They'll say, nope, minimum $10. Why do they do that? Because if you do a 75 cent transaction, after the merchant pays his fees, he doesn't make money. The processors who process the transaction don't make money. When you process the normal method of processing transactions involves many parties. have, if it's a credit card transaction, there's an acquirer.
a network provider, there's a visa, there's a bank that issued the card. Each of these people they all have to share a part of the fee paid by the merchant. So if the fee is small nobody makes money. So if your transaction is under two dollars generally it's not profitable. That's the problem. That's the key problem with traditional payment methods. Now if I'm buying the gum from a store and the guy says I'm not accepting your credit card I can give him a dollar and collect change. But if you're doing the transaction online you
can't give them a dollar online. You need a payment method. And right now, there are no payment methods that can handle five cent transaction or 10 cent transaction profitably. AmperCash can. That's the key thing we offer. Our cost of processing is so low that you can do small transactions. No, no. What happens is AmperCash, you would load money. I don't like to use the 10 wallet. You can load money from your bank account, from a prepaid card, from your debit card. Once you put it in,
Bob Shami (24:28)
-huh. Yeah.
So Ampere cache uses cache.
to your Camp and Pocache account.
Chiji Uzo (24:57)
into your Ampakash account and from there you can now do small transactions profitably. Anybody you pay the fee is very low. Apart from small transactions, yeah, by phone. no, don't need, you just put it on your phone and you're ready to go. Now if you want a card, if you also want a debit card, we'll send you a debit card. You can now use the debit card, swipe it anywhere and it takes the money out of your phone.
Bob Shami (25:05)
And how you use it? By phone or by credit card? You guys issue a card
does the person who's taking the card, let's say you go to 7 -Eleven and you want to spend 75 cents or a dollar and they say for credit card is $5, $10, you cannot spend a dollar or two. And do they have to take Ampa Cash or Ampa Cash everybody takes it? Or I mean, how does it
Chiji Uzo (25:34)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No, no, what happens? Okay, so the merchant who wants to accept them per cash has to sign up. You sign up online. There's no charge. There's no cost. But when you sign up.
Bob Shami (25:50)
Got it, got it. So both the user and the retailer both have to, or the merchant, know, the user or the consumer and the merchant both have to be signed up. The consumer has to download it and have money in it and the merchant has to also have a deal with you guys, sign
Chiji Uzo (25:55)
both sign up.
Yep. Sign up. Okay, the two things about the sign up is this. If you're a merchant and you sign up, you can still accept all other forms of payment. You can accept Demi -Cash, Credit -Cash, whatever, Ampli -Cash. The only difference with Ampli -Cash is you can do small payment, large payment, and the fee. If somebody buys something for you for $500, the fee you pay with an Ampli -Cash purchase is 50 % lower than the fee you pay with any other method. That's number one.
Why you raised an important question. We are offering Ampercache primarily to content creators, musicians, artists. We have a site called Pay2Stream, a platform that Ampercache owns. Why do we do that? Because if you have users, you can come over. They can pay you $0 .05, .10, $0 .20, $20, $200 for your content. And if they pay you with Ampercache, we don't charge a processing fee.
We tried it flat 10 % platform fee, is less than all the other platforms at 30%. Some even charge 80%. And that's it. That's it. So we think that the Ampercash with our pay to stream platform will give content creators. That's our main focus. We want content creators to be able to generate revenue. People spend time creating videos, music, things, and they can't make money from it. Some of them have 100 ,000 followers, but the people can't pay them. That's what Ampercash does.
Bob Shami (27:25)
Hmm, interesting. Interesting. Very, very... So where did you notice this gap? it... What part of your journey in the corporate world?
Chiji Uzo (27:34)
Yes, we knew about this when from TD Ameritrade they were saying, gosh, when everything was based on lowering cost, lower the cost, the pricing cost is too much, we have to do this, do this, even though the person wasn't really going through an intermediary at the front end, at the back end, we're still going through those intermediaries, the cost was going up. So it became obvious to me that if we
a method that could reduce the cost of transaction processing. We could make a fortune especially online. Think about it, if you're online now for someone like you with music, almost the only way you can make money is through advertising. You have the product, you're making music, some people like the music, some people might even want to tip you and say, you know what Bob, I like this stuff, here's 50 cents. But if it gives you 50 cents and you have to pay the credit card company 65 cents,
You say, keep your 50 cents, I'm running at a loss, you understand. So we think, for example, if you had, let's say you had 100 ,000 followers on your system and 50 % of them, that 50 ,000 people said, we'll give you 50 cents a month. You make $25 ,000 a month, free and clear. You can't do that by credit card. That's the problem. That's what we're solving. Yep. Yep.
Bob Shami (28:51)
Now you mentioned content creators could use it. How content creators would benefit by signing up to Ampercash?
Chiji Uzo (29:01)
Look at what happens when you don't you just sign up on pay to stream, sign up on pay to stream and say, and once you are on pay to stream your content, we do some, you know, you're a merchant, you just signed up. Not only can you accept that per cash directly, but you can drag and drop your content onto pay to stream this drag and drop it and say, we'll give you two choices. You can see this content. If you want to see it, it's 25 cents or 50 cents, or you can say it's free, but it's tipped to view.
If you want to see it, it's free. But tip something. Tip me $0 or $0 or $0 Just tip me something. Tip to view. So that means that any of your content on pay to stream, if anybody accesses it, you make some money. You make a little money. That's the model. And the money you make, we're not charging you for it. The payment processing is free. That's what we are offering. We think content creators, we actually have content creators lined up.
Bob Shami (29:38)
Mm
Chiji Uzo (29:58)
with a total of 25 million users who want to go on pay to stream. But right now we are raising money to onboard those users, to be able to onboard those users. have. No, onto AmpliCash. if you're like a content creator and people want to come buy your music, you hey, go buy my music. On Pay to Stream, we only support payments with AmpliCash because we want to be able to support everything. When the people come over and sign up, we do some onboarding stuff out the back that costs some money.
Bob Shami (30:07)
On board and way. On to Ampecache, or?
Chiji Uzo (30:27)
that's what we are raising funds for but we think that content creators are going to get a fair shake it's going to be really profitable for
Bob Shami (30:35)
Hmm. But that would have to do it a pay to stream.
Chiji Uzo (30:38)
They just have to sign up with Pages Stream. There's no cost. There's no cost to sign up. Just go sign up. In fact, we support foreign content creators. If you're in some place, foreign content creators, it's difficult for them to open a bank account. They don't have a social security number. We worked with a partner. We have a partner. If you go in, they'll sign up. If they can help you get a bank account, get a company. But before you even get that, we'll you a hand. can accept fees. Sorry.
Bob Shami (31:03)
Yeah. No, it's okay. It happens.
Chiji Uzo (31:06)
You can accept payments. So so pay to stream is we think it's going to really help content creators video music still images live Performances live concerts. You can stream your live concert then people will pay you as and they watch it Donations if you're if you ever want to Red Cross to donate money They'll tell you $10 minimum because of the fee but with abacus with the fee for all of them for
Bob Shami (31:17)
Wow.
Chiji Uzo (31:32)
nonprofits and charities so if you give them a dollar they get the whole dollar so they are willing to take any amount you donate. So that's what Pay2Stream does. We think it has good potential.
Bob Shami (31:42)
Pay to stream, absolutely, absolutely.
Chiji Uzo (31:44)
www .paytostream
Bob Shami (31:46)
Are you also guys part of a pay to stream?
Chiji Uzo (31:51)
PagesTrim is owned by Apacash.
Bob Shami (31:52)
So this is your platform. Yes.
Chiji Uzo (31:54)
is our platform. It's our content creation platform. That's correct. So once you sign up on PagerStream, you automatically emerge and you have all the benefits of AmpliCache.
Bob Shami (32:01)
And how many users you have on now active users, you said.
Chiji Uzo (32:05)
we have about slightly less than 4 ,000.
Bob Shami (32:08)
4 ,000 amazing and I need to tell what kind of content is on pay to stream
Chiji Uzo (32:12)
Anything if you go on pay to stream now, we have people who sign up for video We actually we are actually slowing down because we have content creators who have a million followers and they say look We can bring 50 % of our followers tell them to go get out the cash But the problem is we have a cost every time we onboard a user it costs us three dollars and 40 cents
Bob Shami (32:32)
So why you don't wanna upload more users or content creators?
Chiji Uzo (32:36)
Users know we want to put more content creators But this content creators have their users who will sign off ramp a cache to pay them And if a content creator has a million you follow as the onboarding cost for a million followers is 3 .5 million That's that's the problem. We get the money back as a user buy stuff, but upfront. It's expensive That's the that's the the stumbling block for us for right now
Bob Shami (33:01)
And that's so you focus in more on content creators, really.
Chiji Uzo (33:04)
content creators is what we're focusing on because we think that's how we get our users. The content creators make money. Everybody's happy. know, you know, yeah.
Bob Shami (33:11)
So you're not pushing the platform anywhere else right now, yet.
Chiji Uzo (33:17)
Not, not for now. No, not now. No, we want to just, we think the content creator market is you.
Bob Shami (33:21)
So you're focusing on your own. So you didn't just build the technology. Now you also build another technology to connect with, which is focused on basis, solely focused on content creators.
Chiji Uzo (33:32)
Exactly, exactly. That's the market we're going for. I would believe, look, we think, I don't know how much you know, you own some platform and they charge you 30%. Every money you give them, if you're on, for example, if you're on Audible, make your book on Audible, when you get paid, Audible takes 60 % of whatever you get paid for. I mean, some of the stuff is, I've been a content creator, and said...
This is a huge gap. should make it more equitable. Yes, we should make money, but let the content creators make money too.
Bob Shami (34:01)
Shiji, you know created two different businesses and you combined them together, but you literally created your own streaming, you know, user generated content platform like YouTube in a way or like TikTok.
Chiji Uzo (34:13)
That's correct. That's correct. And you see what we think is the band tic -tac. A lot of people are looking for a home. But the important thing, we will make money, but we really want it to be fair. Pay it flat 10 % platform fee. Whatever money you're paid, there's no other processing costs. You just make money. If somebody pays you $0 .05, that's it. Yes.
Bob Shami (34:33)
So you only take 10 % out of whatever they earn, the content creators. Even if you have advertisers and you have all of this.
Chiji Uzo (34:41)
We don't charge any of that thing. It's just whatever you get is free. We're trying to make it ad free. But if you want to advertise, that's fine too. We just want the content creator to generate revenue. They'll bring us users. Everybody does well. I don't want to sound like I'm just an idealist. But I think the content creator spends time. You spend time creating the content. You spend time making your music. spend time. should be a lot of you could be a content creator and have a million followers.
Bob Shami (35:01)
Yes. Yes.
Chiji Uzo (35:09)
and you can't survive. You generate $500 a month. You don't even know how much you're going to get. They have an algorithm that tells you,
Bob Shami (35:11)
No, and you don't know how much much And you don't know How much you think youtube and other platform like they take out of the you know How much no out of what they earn from each content creator how much they pay them 20? They pay the content creator from what they
Chiji Uzo (35:27)
Look, you know the content creator on YouTube? You need 1 ,449 views to make $1. 1 ,449 views to make $1. Yes, you need to have 3 million views and 1 ,000 subscribers before you qualify for income. And when you get the income,
Bob Shami (35:39)
Then you need to have a minimum. I don't know how many subscribers
Wow, unbelievable.
Chiji Uzo (35:53)
It's an algorithm that will say, you know what, people didn't click on your notification button. They didn't click on the subscriber button. You're not getting money. That's why every time you go to YouTube, they're always begging. They say, please click on my notification button. Please click on my subscriber button, because the revenue model is not good for the creator.
Bob Shami (36:10)
Very interesting. Love the concept. Love the concept. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Pay to stream. Now paytostream .com or
Chiji Uzo (36:10)
I would like to change that.
Pay to Stream, that's it. It's for content creators. Yeah, www .paytostream .com, that's it. And then once you sign up, we automatically are an AmpliCash merchant and everything is done for you. Yeah, that's it.
Bob Shami (36:24)
And
Amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. Now you have more patents or all the patents that you have pending, are they all related to pay to stream or they're related to Ampercash?
Chiji Uzo (36:41)
Well, it's a split. So one of the things that happens with pay to stream is this. So like your music, for example, if the only way to listen to your music shouldn't be through a video or a phone, somebody can stream your music by just scanning a QR code and pay simultaneously and get the music on their phone. That is what we call remote pay. That's a patent. It's supposed to help people on pay to stream. So right now, we have five patents.
Bob Shami (37:03)
Mm
Chiji Uzo (37:09)
for pay to stream and Apple cash but we have three more patterns for the pay to stream. We really think the content creator should benefit and we have the technology to make that possible.
Bob Shami (37:18)
Mm -hmm. Very interesting, very creative, and amazing actually invention. Very innovative. Shiji, know, are you, it seems like you're still not fulfilled. No.
Chiji Uzo (37:24)
Thank you.
Well, I have. just keep moving. Technology is fun and things are going to change. Things are coming. But yes, I enjoy what I'm doing.
Bob Shami (37:38)
What's next for you? What's next for Shiji? The next endeavor that he's working on.
Chiji Uzo (37:42)
I want to make this content creator thing big, and percussion content creation big. I think that FinTech, with all the changes that are happening, especially with AI and things, there's a lot of opportunity. FinTech obviously, but in technology generally for business. I think there's opportunity there and I'd to see where I can do this. And I mean, we can always make money, but if you make money, are you also making a contribution? It makes it just as, you know, really...
Bob Shami (38:10)
You know, you said something but we really didn't touch on it. You said Hitachi came in or Sony or insurance. They wanted to buy your Ampa cash, what do call it? Pant, yes. So what happened to
Chiji Uzo (38:17)
to add.
Patents, yeah, yeah, yeah. So no, we didn't want to sell. The reason is this. The payment space is dominated by deep pockets. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, banks, Google Pay, Apple Pay. They have a lot of money. What is missing is the technology, right? So we felt that the technology, have five patents. It's a moot that can protect us. Otherwise, you will do all the work and some big company will come in and take the whole thing.
So the technology is some sort of protection. don't know if you remember when, you know, before the iPhone, they had the Blackberry. Blackberry was a big thing at one point, but they took people's patents and they had to pay first, they paid 600 million, then they paid 350 million, then they paid 175 million. They ended up paying a billion for patent infringement. So we think that the patents protect us.
And so people are more likely to, the big companies are more likely to either partner with us or do something. But we need that protection. That's why we didn't take the offer to sell the patents. But the thing is that if people, if something, God forbid, we do badly, we can always liquidate the company, sell the patents and pay back everybody. But that's the idea.
Bob Shami (39:29)
Wow, wow. lot of our users who's gonna be watching entrepreneurs in tech and our viewers, they're gonna be inspired by your ability. You came here, you went to college and you got recruited immediately and you got sponsored. You know, for the path to citizenship, first you're a green card and then the offers didn't stop from one large institution to another. And
Chiji Uzo (39:55)
I was very lucky. was very lucky.
Bob Shami (39:56)
Yes, and then say, you know what, I'm going to hang the corporate hat or the corporate jacket and I'm just going to do my own, you know, create something to do with the entertainment industry to fintech to entertainment tech. And you put them both together. What advice you would have for other, you know, entrepreneurs who starting their journey
Chiji Uzo (40:10)
Sure.
Bob Shami (40:20)
They're gonna listen and watch the show and they're be extremely inspired by you Gigi Really? I'm inspired by you actually, know such stories always motivates me and keeps me going forward What you know what advice you have for them and what to do is and don't know what to avoid obviously you said never stop learning and that's a very very great advice because Knowledge is wealth knowledge is
Chiji Uzo (40:26)
Thank you.
Yeah, that's where we go.
I think there's a lot of opportunity for young people, anyone who's starting out, not just young people, old people, anybody who wants to be entrepreneurial. It's just that you have been willing to say, I'm curious, look, there's a gap. Look at a company like Stripe. Stripe does exactly what regular big payment companies do, it's credit card processing, but they try to make it easier, make it easier to pay people. If I'm a garden yard sale,
hardware accept a credit card payment, put something on your phone, swipe. They didn't change, they didn't reinvent anything, they just saw a gap. And the thing now is with technology, you can fill in a lot of gaps. There's something my father used to tell me, he says, there's a statement he'll say, the greatest thing since sliced bread, greatest thing since sliced bread. Okay, the person who invented sliced bread, he didn't invent bread, he didn't invent slicing, he didn't invent knives, but he's the first person that put them together.
add slicing put it together wow we got something new so package it that salad make it up ready to eat so open it exactly
Bob Shami (41:40)
package it and sell it. Make it available. Ready to eat. Just open it and you don't even have to slice it. Just slap in your whatever, cold cut vegetable sandwich, whatever you want to eat, cheese. Yes.
Chiji Uzo (41:51)
I'm home free. Exactly. So there are lots of gaps like that, but you have to be willing to do the work. And technology makes it easy to exploit those gaps. In the past, if you wanted to do something, had to be a big company, had to raise a few hundred billion dollars to do. But now, you can do all sorts of things on your own, so long as you're willing to learn and do some of the work and get people around you.
that can support you. really think it's a great opportunity. I think we live in a great world right now. A great opportunity for people who want to start up.
Bob Shami (42:20)
Interesting. What's the future holds for technology?
Chiji Uzo (42:29)
I think it's fantastic. Again, I have to clarify. It's technology in relation to business, not just technology on its own. That's helpful, you want to say FinTech, exactly. How do we use this technology to do stuff? I think the direction, think that AI is going to give us very friendly menus. So you don't have to punch things. can just say, I haven't talked to Bob in a while. Hey, Bob, send Bob
Bob Shami (42:37)
Yes.
Well, let's say Finter.
Chiji Uzo (42:58)
500 bucks and let me know when he gets it. Things would just change. We'll have voice driven menus. We're going to have significant reductions in fraud because of AI. AI can do all kinds of things. We even use it for impact cash. You can identify people that are trying to do fraud.
Bob Shami (43:14)
What if people figure out how to, because everything is prompt, whether it's in text or it's in audio, what if they figure out how to infiltrate that through the proper prompting words
Chiji Uzo (43:31)
It's possible, but the thing that AI is constantly evolving. AI is so much smarter than we are now that if you see look, the world chess champion Magnus Carlsen is so brilliant. He's so far ahead of everybody, but AI will take him, him a Ruka and beat him. So AI is so much smarter, even now for some specialized things that maybe, I mean, know, the first set will always try, but it's going to take them a while to be able to game the system. So as AI gets better,
Bob Shami (43:47)
Mm -hmm.
Chiji Uzo (44:00)
there'll be less fraud, transactions will become easier. One of the reasons why I really believe in entrepreneurship is one, okay, you can make a ton of money, of course, that's always a motivator. But you can also do things that interest you, and you can address things they say, no, this is not fair, let's make something more equitable. You have the power to do things, introduce a product that makes change. You can do stuff.
and make money while doing it. it's a double draw. You make money and then you change things for the better. I think you can't beat that. You can't get that working for a big corporation. You can make money. Yes, you can make a lot of money, but you can't really change things. You can't say, well, listen, I want to make certain that everybody in this village can use the app on to get inclusive for the underbanked. You can do that with entrepreneurship, specifically in FinTech. The opportunity is huge.
Bob Shami (44:29)
No, absolutely.
Amazing. When somebody comes up to you and says, hey, AI is taking our job, what's your answer to them? Right
Chiji Uzo (44:57)
Well, it will take some jobs. It will take some jobs, but you can just... It's not going to replace all the jobs. Rearrange, reorganize, lend something and position yourself. AI is not going to replace human beings. They will take some jobs. That's not... No doubt. But you can use it as a tool. For example, AI is making great music now, but it doesn't make great music on its own. You can combine it and do something and say, AI collaboration with a human.
Bob Shami (45:24)
Use it as a tool. Use it as a Yes. Enhancement, advancement.
Chiji Uzo (45:26)
Use it as a tool. Use it as a tool. Don't approach the thing with fear. Look at it and say, how do I learn with this? How do I combine this? Like I said, one of the things that I now do is I respect in my leadership processes, creativity, curiosity. The person says, how can we use this? They say, it's coming to take our jobs. I'm going. Make some adjustment. You can make it and use it as a tool and enhance stuff.
I think there's opportunity there.
Bob Shami (45:55)
I look at it this way, AI ain't gonna take your job. The person who knows how to use AI, they're gonna take your
Chiji Uzo (46:02)
Exactly, even know. I think you said it better than I did. That's it. That's correct. That's correct. That's correct.
Bob Shami (46:08)
You know, but we both agree on it. Well, Shiji, it's really an intriguing, interesting interview. I would love to go more. but, you know, but it's really great. Absolutely. Definitely. You know, extremely, I don't want to use the word inspiring. It's motivating actually. And you great, you have an interesting journey and very motivating journey and amazing really and insightful and informative. Well, thank you for joining us today at
Chiji Uzo (46:16)
Yes, no problem.
Bob Shami (46:34)
innovate, know, presents entrepreneurs in tech and be sure to follow us on social media until next time stay innovating and stay curious or I should say you know what keep innovating stay curious and take care.
Chiji Uzo (46:49)
Thank you very much for having me. Much appreciated.
Thank