Growing Up Sumazi

Written by Osayi Endolyn Tuesday, February 21 2012

Sumaya Kazi has a list of accomplishments so long; it’s almost as exhausting as it is impressive.

In the past few years she has been named one of America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs by Business Week, a Young Person Who Rocks by CNN and was honored by UTNE Reader alongside nonprofit directors, activists and artists as one of 50 Visionaries Changing Your World. Kazi’s success is impressive because of the determined sense of purpose she pours into her work and her ability to inspire others to put her dreams into action. It sounds exhausting because Kazi is just 29 years-old — and she shows no signs of slowing down despite the difficulties of leading an entrepreneur’s life.

“A lot of my friends call me the single mother that can’t find a babysitter,” she says with a wry smile.

Kazi’s current baby is Sumazi, a social media network committed to connecting users to people they don’t know, but should. Built to take advantage of the relationships created on established networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Sumazi’s job is to get you in front of the right people at precisely the time you need to meet them. The startup calls it “connecting intelligently.” If Sumazi was indeed a baby, it sure learned to walk fast. In January, the Wall Street Journal mentioned it as one of several young companies tackling the problem of usefully connecting one’s social and professional networks. And that is how Kazi sees herself — she’s a problem-solver.

Kazi’s path to entrepreneurship can be traced back to 2005. She was working at Sun Microsystems as one of their youngest leaders in social media and global communications. She realized that she knew a lot of creative, smart young people who were doing incredible things in the world. Many of them shared a similar background to her, coming from South Asian homes -- Kazi is an American born of Bangladeshi parents. She also realized that she never seemed to hear about any of these feats in the news. It was bothersome.

“I had some frustrations about not seeing young people in the news, not reading about nonprofits in the news, not seeing people of my ethnic background in the news. And then one step further, the only stories I heard were about doctors, lawyers and engineers,” she says.

So she put together a team to solve the problem.

The solution was The CulturalConnect, an online publication that profiled successful young people across various ethnic and professional backgrounds. Kazi began with her own South Asian heritage by launching the DesiConnect, then expanded to include West Asia, Latin America and Africa.

“We started doing interviews and profiles. One publication turned into two, then into five. It was awesome,” she explained.

One feature of The CulturalConnect became the inspiration for Sumazi.

“We had a tool called the Connection Point. It encouraged people to introduce themselves to the people we were interviewing. The idea was really simple,” Kazi explains. “Most times you read stories about people they seem inaccessible. We thought, you know, let’s bridge that gap.”

The experience was eye-opening for Kazi. Suddenly people who had never heard of each other before were finding mentors, organizations they were excited about and nonprofits they wanted to support. People were connecting across culture, across region. The seed had been planted. She just needed an opening. By 2010, Kazi got one.

She remembers, “Sun was being acquired by Oracle. I saw a technology opportunity. What if there was a way to help people get connected not just by ethnicity, age or industry, as with The CulturalConnect, but because of their passions and interests, location, education or work experience?”

A survey was created and sent out. People reported that they already knew how to connect to those in their circle.

“But,” Kazi pauses for emphasis, “they said, ‘I don’t know how to get connected to people I need to know.’”

A California native, Kazi lives in San Francisco, and the Sumazi offices are located in the South of Market (or SoMa for short) neighborhood. The walls are essentially white boards scribbled with ideas in various shades of dry-erase marker. Although SoMa is known for catering to the dot com rush, Kazi knew early on she had to think differently than the average startup.

“We didn’t build the company in a very traditional sense. Most Silicon Valley companies are really engineering-heavy. We were more vision and product, like, let’s design something that we think could work and then grow it from there,” says Kazi. Her decision was based in part, by what was available to her. “I’ve learned you have to do more with less.”

When Kazi's team competed in the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield, Sumazi won the Omidyar Network award for Startup Most Likely to Change the World. Spend a few minutes on Sumazi’s website, and it’s easy to see how.


Users are invited to state what they’re looking for, connect a contact with another who needs help or declare themselves “the one.” There’s even a tool to assess the impact of the connections each user makes — like the branches in a family tree, users can watch their networks grow, practically in real time.

One entrepreneur, Amit Gupta, was in need of a bone marrow transplant. Sumazi organized its own drive and also sought out others that wanted to help. Gupta ended up finding a match through nationwide efforts that benefited from Sumazi’s connections.

In addition to individual seekers, Kazi says Sumazi has attracted the attention of nonprofits like Build.org. Sumazi enables those organizations to leverage their own networks, so they aren’t just looking for help but making connectors out of their own people. User by user, the Sumazi community thrives on the intention that each person can contribute to and receive from the whole.

Seeing others flourish in newly created relationships has been a rewarding experience for Kazi.

She adds, “Once you identify a connection it starts a chain reaction. People spread the word. The connector feels good; they take more action.”

Problems get solved. But it hasn’t been perfect, this entrepreneur lifestyle of hers.

“It’s not at all glamorous,” Kazi says matter-of-factly. “You really have to have thick skin,” she goes on. “You’re constantly being told what you need to be doing or how you need to improve or all of the different things that you didn’t consider.” But Kazi didn’t make it this far by waffling in self-doubt, and in the world of web-based technology there’s no time for second-guessing. The outlook is always forward.

“I think when you’re a founder it’s really important to listen but then to cut through the clutter and make decisions. One thing I’ve learned is that I can’t doubt myself. Indecisiveness is the knife that will stab a company.”

Yet she persists because there are more problems to solve. And because she’s in love with the process — not just the outcome but with the impact that the trail she’s blazing has on others.

When Kazi was younger there were no models of success for entrepreneurship that looked like her. The safe route that her parents preferred was in becoming a doctor, lawyer or engineer. To them, those professions were proof of success. But through The CulturalConnect, Kazi received press mentions, awards and invitations to speak at universities and conferences all over the world. She stood out as a young, female, minority entrepreneur in technology. She became her own proof.

Kazi was invited to Malaysia to speak at the World Islamic Economic Forum. “I took my American story to places that had no ecosystem for entrepreneurship, especially for women. I also spoke in Jordan, Bangladesh. That was fascinating because most women had no access points for being an entrepreneur, and I was suddenly someone they could talk to.”

Back at the SoMa Sumazi headquarters, Kazi is ultimately in the business of helping people help other people. She references the baby her friends joke about, the one she’s building. The baby Sumazi.

“I have to nurture it, take care of it and cultivate it. I have to make it strong,” she nods. “I’m always thinking of new ideas, which can be a bad thing because I’m the kind of person who wants to execute them!”

Kazi is that, and she is also the kind of person to create the kind of world she wants to live in. Fortunately, the one that she envisions is one the rest of us want to live in, too.

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Osayi Endolyn is a California native living in Atlanta, Ga. She received her bachelor's degree in French from UCLA and is earning a master's degree in writing from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her work has been featured in Atlanta INtown Paper, SCAD’s graduate writing journal Document and Quilt Stories, a podcast series inspired by the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Her art criticism essay was selected for publication in Feminist Art Workers: A History, slated for 2012 publication. Endolyn was recently awarded a writing residency from the Grinnell Area Arts Council in Iowa, where she continued work on her first book, a creative nonfiction look at the culture of the U.S. Marine Corps. (http://osayiendolyn.com)