Own Your AI Before AI Owns You with Syed Hussain of Shiza.ai

Monika Proffitt

Hello and welcome to The Prophet Show. This is Monica Proffitt, your host. I'm here with Saeed Hussain. He is the CEO and founder of Shiza, which stands for a whole bunch of cool stuff. So Saeed, thank you so much for joining us today.

Syed Hussain

Thank you Monica, thank you for having me on.

Monika Proffitt

Yeah, thank you for sharing your human intellect, not as a zonal agent, but that's what CHESA stands for. It's going to be fun to actually talk to you how this kind of whole started. looks like you've had a very, very long background that's actually pretty varied, not only in founding companies, but also pizza delivery, all kinds of things. So we have a lot to get into here.

Syed Hussain

I that's probably the best thing to start off with. One of my favorite jobs ever. As I mentioned earlier, this is when I was in high school. One of the rare jobs where I actually was employable.

Monika Proffitt

Well, I'll tell you, this is like the one job you had before you basically launched a company while still in high school, right? So like you're either, or did you do both? you like, boots dropping and driving pizza delivery and then also launching a company at the same time? Were you one of those people or did you actually just switch and you were like, forget it, I'm never working for the man again.

Syed Hussain

Yeah, you know, no, actually, that that I so I've been back and forth, right? Working for the man. And, and, yeah, well, I don't know, as an entrepreneur, I think I think generally to the outside world, it appears like you are the man. But the reality is, you're an insane man.

Monika Proffitt

in the man. an man. That is true. mean, that is one thing. We actually met up at the Last Bit Angels pitch event, so I do know firsthand.

Syed Hussain

Shout out to Ben Angel, Joyce, Michael Turpin.

Monika Proffitt

Yes, definitely shout out to them. They're amazing. here in New York, we've got our Fit Angels meetups coming more often. So that's where I met you and I got to see you are a pretty insane, yeah insane. Like we had two minutes to pitch the most complicated thing and you were like, 15 seconds to spare. How about that? I was like a minute 45. What? What? It was well done.

Syed Hussain

Well done. Well, look, if you can't do those kinds of things, then the reality is you'll call yourself an entrepreneur.

Monika Proffitt

Does this go back to your self-bullying protocol for yourself? You're like, as long as I get a little bullied every day, I'm kind of getting better. It's like sharpening yourself.

Syed Hussain

I think bullying is probably one of the most important things that could have happened to me. And I try to surround myself with people who can continue to bully me. Adversity is so important. And I think the other thing also is that, you know, our definition of bullying has changed too, right? I think the standard for bullying has gone down so far. that it's like the world that you and I grew up in. You put us in today's bullies and to me it's like a comedy show.

Monika Proffitt

God, absolutely. mean, and you have kids, right? You have to like listen to the kind of the trigger warnings that happen before anybody even just like says how they're feeling that day or something.

Syed Hussain

Oh my god, so so so my kids have to deal with a real bully and you're looking at a rat man That's a real bully that they have to deal with and and you know who's a who's actually a worse bully than I am My wife, right? She puts on this sweetheart persona. She is a savage. She's an absolute savage, right? So brutal honesty is something which is which is part and parcel of our household and That's something that we always let these kids know and we've told them we said look. I mean if you can survive If you can survive growing up in this environment, then by the time you go out into the real world, you're going to dominate. Like you're going to absolutely destroy. Right. So we're really what we're doing is by by bullying our own kids in this in this household, we're creating the future leaders.

Monika Proffitt

So you were bullied as a kid, also it was a bullying part of what led you to wanna launch your first company. has that sort of been almost like the fire under your ass? And you're like, okay, I'm just gonna go, I have to go, go, go because I've always had people chasing me.

Syed Hussain

Yeah, yeah. mean, so first off, when you... It's funny, the world that we're living in, where everyone wants to sort of give you a shoulder to cry on and, you know, it's like, my God.

Monika Proffitt

You say this just with like the worst look on your face, like a shoulder.

Syed Hussain

Because it's annoying. Because it's annoying. That's why to me, I'm just like, like, I started rolling my eyes. I'm like, my God, here we go. But it's, it's people are always trying to give you this, this sort of, you know, they're trying to express empathy, which by the way, anyone that tries to express empathy, they're actually not being empathetic to you. They're, they're just, they're they're doing it as a selfish mechanism to make themselves feel good. That's it. Because if they really empathized with you and if they really cared for you, they would give you the absolute brutal truth, which is that you have no one else to blame except for yourself. Right. So, you know, so you take a look at someone like this, right. A practicing conservative Muslim immigrant Indian never went to college. Right. five foot six inches, this Adonis of a body, right? That I've been blessed with, right? You name it, right? And it's like, bring it on, bring it on. when you're growing up, especially when you're growing up in the hood, which is where I grew up and I grew up in Elizabeth, Elizabeth, New Jersey. So shout out to Elizabeth. Kids are brutal, right? And we're not talking about the kids of today. These are kids of... of back then where when bullying actually meant something, right? And it was real bullying.

Monika Proffitt

like bullying wasn't just like, they verbally abused me. It's like, no, if you didn't come home with a bruise or like something.

Syed Hussain

If they verbally abuse you, that was like, would come home and thank the Lord that that's what happened. It was a good day today. I'm about like getting your ass kicked out in the, you know, out in the playground. And one of the most valuable lessons that I learned very, very early on was my dad. My dad told me, and he said, said the best way to deal with a bully is to punch him right between the eyes. And you'll see very, very quickly how, you know, how fast they stop being a bully. which is something that I took to heart, right? And he also caveated that by saying that, make sure that you're the one that's always fighting the bullies, but you're never the bully. So to me, that sort of helped build this persona, right? It made me be, I got into combat sports as a result of it. That was something I was always very, very fascinated by. And again, when you can walk around and know that you can defend yourself,

Monika Proffitt

Yeah.

Syed Hussain

That gives you lot of confidence, right? You could walk, I could walk into any board meeting today. I could walk into any sort of a uncomfortable situation. And if I know that I could whoop your ass, right? I have to worry about, yeah, it's a different sort of personality, right? That goes into that. So I think that that certainly helped shape it. And then that combined with the fact that, you know, my parents always told me, especially my dad, right? It's like, no one, no one cares about what's going on in your life.

Monika Proffitt

It feels a little different.

Syed Hussain

Right? So so make something out of it. If you can't make something out of it, then you have no one else to blame but yourself. And that's something that that was a lesson that I took to took to heart. Right. Just just full on accountability. That and then the fact that, you know, we grew up dark poor. I'm a child of I'm a child of immigrants. I myself am a fob. I'm actually like my accent throws a lot of people off where they're like. They're like, you're an American. Actually, I'm not an American. I'm an American in the sense that yes, of course, but I'm an immigrant, right? I wasn't born here. I'm not even first generation. I was born in India. I came here when I was four. for those that don't know, a fob is fresh off the boat. So I'm definitely, I was a fob who just happens to have lost my Indian accent.

Monika Proffitt

I knew you were going to fake one of those for a second. Just to check.

Syed Hussain

That's actually the real one. This accent, the American New Yorker, that's the fake accent. So, you know, that, and again, you know, just the fact that, you know, when my parents came here, it's not like they were, they came with like this professional career or whatnot. So they had to, my dad was a hustler. He had to figure out ways to make things happen. And he was the, that's where I got a lot of my entrepreneurial spirit from. and then, you know, growing up dirt poor and trying to figure out problems for yourself, right? Cause no one else is going to do it for you. That sort of forced me into, into becoming a very entrepreneurial and being, being very, very creative.

Monika Proffitt

a little bit like ironic then because like you when you think about AI so many things about AI and that's what you're you're deeply working in now are about making life easier for humans and you're like no no make it hard if it's hard it's gonna be good you're gonna use iron sharpening iron and I'm gonna make this entire company that's gonna be based on like technology that's hopefully gonna make everybody's life even better so like it's interesting it's almost ironic that you are you're actually using AI to make things easier for humans to some degree but can you break down exactly like does it I mean I don't think you've made like a protocol that's like, yeah, you thought it was easy, now we made it so much harder. I don't think that's gonna go to market well. So what are you actually doing with this shared human intellect? It's not like just a bullying agent, is it? I mean-

Syed Hussain

Well, yeah, yes, it's going, so we're basically what we're doing is we're building automated bullies. Because the soft, the soft weak world of ours needs a good hard, strong kick in the ass to take us to that next level. So that's what we're doing.

Monika Proffitt

That's what we mean. Done, okay, Shiza,

Syed Hussain

Done. Shiza, our slogan is Shiza, don't fuck with me.

Monika Proffitt

Yeah, exactly.

Syed Hussain

no, know, Monica, you bring up a really interesting point and this is something that I actually, you know, I struggle with all the time. And I think most people are just not as honest, about, about these things, which is that, you know, are we really making life for humans easier? or are we making things for humanity more difficult? Right. And, and, that is something that, that, that I struggle with. And here's what I mean by that. So I think collectively for what it is, the things that we're, we're, sort of building. And I'll go into. what it is in just a bit. I think philosophically, think this is a very important point to lead into. And one thing that you know about me, Monica, is I'm brutally honest, right?

Monika Proffitt

I mean you couch everything, it's hard to know what you're really thinking, you know? You've been on the bush for so long.

Syed Hussain

I'm a brilliant politician, aren't I? I got a future in politics for sure. So it's like what we're building out, forget even what it is that we're building out. Let's just take AI as a general concept where things are going into. Collectively, for humanity, it's going to be a massive boon, right? It's going to take us to places that we never imagined, right? So collectively, it's going to be a massive boon. Individually, I think it's going to turn us into a bunch of idiots. And that is the real sort of danger, right? That collectively as humanity, it's going to make us leapfrog over generational mass innovations. But individually, it's going to turn us dumber. and dumber and dumber. And of course there's always going to be the exceptions, but those exceptions are going to be the ones that are going to push us to that next level. But the vast majority of us are going to suffer as a result of it because it will lead to, like you said, it will look, what does automation do? Automation does lead to lead, lead to a laziness, right? There's certain things that we end up losing out on myself.

Monika Proffitt

If I was arrested today, I wouldn't even know what number to call. You have one phone call. Who would I call? I haven't memorized a phone number in a very long time. know what I mean? Like, shoot, what is a phone number that I've actually memorized?

Syed Hussain

We lost that ability, the ability for us to be able to do calculations, right? it's like today, if I can see someone who can do like, you know, simple calculations in their head and, know, automatically you're like, oh my God, that guy's a savant. No, he's not. He's probably like, talk to your dad, right? Talk to your grandfather about it. And they were doing that when they were in fifth grade.

Monika Proffitt

How about just like read read cursive? I mean, I've been writing in a journal I'm written in like 60 journals now I didn't realize I was gonna be writing in a dead language that nobody could read and it's true like I can sit at a bar next to anybody as long as they're like under 35 They cannot read a single thing. It's like you can't anything nothing. No nothing. Absolutely nothing

Syed Hussain

I actually, you know, it's funny. I've actually lost my ability to write in cursive. I...

Monika Proffitt

You're one of the dumbasses of which we speak, sir. I am just pleasured to meet you.

Syed Hussain

Yes, 100%. So that's actually one of my superpowers also, right? So one of my greatest strengths is the recognition of my weaknesses, right? And one of the greatest weaknesses that I've recognized is that I'm a moron, right? I'm an absolute moron. So what is it that I do? If I know and I recognize and I'm self-aware of that, then what is it that I do? I surround myself with people that are a lot smarter than I am. And that's really the reason behind why I'm able to do the kind of things that... that I'm able to do. And I think that ties back into what we were talking about with AI, right? It's the, those sort of the recognition of those components, That we're individually, if this is where it's going to lead towards, that's a danger with any kind of technology. Take a look at, take a look at social media, take a look at mobile technology, take a look at any of these technologies. Yes, collectively it has, it's taken humanity, forward by orders of magnitude. But the question is individually, are we the same? Are we as smart? Are we as strong as what we used to be generations ago?

Monika Proffitt

Well, you just mentioned something that's interesting to me. Okay, so in this, just to continue on this AI tangent, I'm not even talking about Shiza yet. We haven't even gotten to the real meat of it, which is very cool. all right, so that idea that you're as smart as the five people, you're the most like the five people that you're around the most. like, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room, right? So if you're trying to make sure that you're always not the smartest person in the room, like I wanna be the moron. As long as I'm a moron, I'm the lucky one. That's what I want. But if with AI, if you can have all of this knowledge at your fingertips, then potentially you are now always in the room with someone who is smarter than you, which is the idea. mean, unless it's just going to shine you on and make you feel smart, which of course it is kind of doing now, but as it refines and refines, you could actually turn this into these five very potent people that could help sharpen you as well. could be the room. AI could provide us with the room that we always want to or should be in.

Syed Hussain

Well, AI can lead us to think that we're in that room, right? Because it's so eloquent at spewing things in a way where it's like if I'm sitting around a bunch of people who've got amazing vocabulary, right? But if that vocabulary is at such a high level, that I don't even know what it is that they're saying. I'm never even gonna question what it is that they're saying. I'm just gonna take it. That is one of the dangers of AI. And this is one of the reasons why we need to ensure that there's accountability and there's traceability for what it is that it's saying.

Monika Proffitt

And not just accountability and traceability, but it seems like, you know, what you've done with Shiza is you sort of help people to monetize their AI, but also their own knowledge. So you do have like this proof of origin to the stuff to kind of, is that like your, was the idea to kind of reduce how much of like just the general AI spew was going to happen. So we have like an actual human being behind this. Can you explain a little bit about how Shiza works and like the human piece of it? Cause it sounds like that monetization piece is really interesting, but to be the origin piece of the AI, that I'm told, that's a new take on it.

Syed Hussain

So we started off by talking about artificial intelligence, And immediately in the word intelligence is implied in the word. So what this mass rise of AI is going to lead to is, excuse me, this influx of all this intelligence coming in. So similar to like today, where we are, there used to be a time if we go back, let's say five decades ago, any company that had access to more information had a significant advantage than a company that didn't have access to that. Then comes this thing called the internet and all of a sudden there was an information explosion.

Monika Proffitt

It was a big equalizer, really. That's It was no longer massive.

Syed Hussain

And then what started to happen was that we started to, instead of there being a lack of data, we started to drown in data. Then came this concept of, well, now let's start having filtered data and let's start having curated data, which then gave rise to things like social media and all of these niche channels that started to come in. What? AI is going to do is it's going to have this explosion in all of this intelligence, right? That's there. And going back to your example around always being surrounded by all of these intelligent people, right? Or all of these intelligent notions that are there. In that instance, what becomes the rarity. The rarity actually is always the thing that's going to have the most value, right? Any asset that's going to have the most value is going to be a rare asset. So today intelligence is held as being valuable because it's a rarity, right? There's not that many people. People think that they're intelligent, but there's not real intelligence, right? But what's, and this is something that I say all the time and people think I'd say jokingly, but I actually don't. The novelty of humans, right? It's very, very easy. to replicate artificial intelligence. But what's not so easy to replicate is what I call genuine stupidity. And genuine stupidity is something which is novel to human beings alone. And that genuine stupidity is the reason why we tend to do the kinds of things that turns into intelligence. And a great example of genuine stupidity is the person you're interviewing right now. Sure. What am I? I'm a founder. I'm an entrepreneur. Oh wow. Oh my God. That's so, it's so glamorized in society. That's so sexy. That's what I want to be. That's what I want to be. Oh my God. This guy's a visionary. No, he's not. He's saying the kind of things that entrepreneurs do and finders do. There is no better word to describe it except genuine stupidity because I'm going against everything that logic would dictate, right? You're building a company. There is a 99 % chance of of failure and not just any kind of failure, massive failure, right? Massive collapse. And it's going to have an impact on me. It's going to have an impact on my loved ones, on my wife, my kids, right? Any logical person, intelligent person would never do this. Would never do this, right? Only someone who's genuinely stupid would do this to think that, you know what? Yes. It goes against all possibilities, but I'm going to be the one to do it. Right. those kinds of things that will end up becoming the most valuable asset in the future, which is what we call the novel human experience. So in a world where you have all of these agentic, these, these AI agents, right. So a little bit of a Genesis story for Shiza. I come from the capital markets and the first sort of agentic solution that we had built out with Shiza was, was, was one of my, was with one of my previous companies. that I was running and it was an AI agent that was a due diligence analyst focused on the capital markets. And then we're to come out to market with that. But then what I realized was that if a dummy like me could build something like this out so easily, the reality is there's going to be a mass proliferation of these agentic solutions that are going to be coming in. So if that happens, and once that happens, we need to start thinking about not what all of these agents are going to be doing, but what does a post-agentic world look like. And in this post-agentic world, it's going to be flooded with these AI agents that will lead to the automation of tasks, which will lead to the automation of processes, ultimately leading to the automation of jobs. So it's an inevitability that that will happen. So there's two things there. One is that when your labor gets replaced by these AI agents, how is it that you're going to make money? Right today, we're a very labor driven society, right? Whether it's in the form of of physical labor, intellectual labor, creative labor, manual labor, it's labor nevertheless. But when that labor gets replaced by an algorithm in the form of an agent, you better make sure that you own that agent as opposed to like a centralized entity, like an open AI or a Google or an anthropic, right? So the first concept for the first premise for us was when we started thinking about what a post-genetic world looks like, that is where we were like, you better own that AI, right? Because today with every inference call that you're making to a chat GPT or to a Claude or to a Gemini, you're giving them your information. You're creating them on you, right? So instead of giving them this concept of these large language models, we introduced this notion around an individualized language model or an ILM, which ILM...

Monika Proffitt

You're training it. My next question, the ilm. Yes, I've been wondering about this.

Syed Hussain

So ILM stands for, like I said, individualized language model, but it's also a play on words because in Arabic, ILM means knowledge, right? Knowledge, wisdom. your own ILM, so you own your ILM, only you have, so Monica's ILM is not only Monica's, no one else has access to it. And if someone wants to have access to Monica's ILM, then they need to get permission to access from Monica. And anytime I'm benefiting from it, then there will be a transaction that we will agree on just like any kind of a business deal that one goes into. This will be handled through smart contracts that will come to agreements on, which will then be done through these zonal agents. So Monica will take her intellect, her human intellect and through these zonal agents, share it out with everyone else. Thus the concept of shared human intellectual agents or Shiza.ai, which is the infrastructure that we're building out for this future post-agentic post-labor economy that's to come.

Monika Proffitt

Yeah, and you've said like human intellect, not labor as the foundation of value, it's the new foundation of value. So like you're actually just like going straight to the source to then monetize that and almost sidestep even the notion of labor.

Syed Hussain

So what's interesting about this is that we're doing it today. Anyway, this is not a novel concept, right? Except the big difference is that the only way for us to monetize this, the input and the output. So if we take a look at it, the intellect is the input. The labor is the output. And what we're getting monetized for is the output because that's what's, there's no other way for us to be able to replicate that or sorry, to give for people to derive benefit from it, right? So it has to be in the form of the output. But if the output is now replaced algorithmically, right? Through some kind of a machine, through some kind of an agent, right? Then all of a sudden, and that ends up getting commoditized, then this will be the first time in history where the input and the output are separated. That's where the intellect And the labor comes in. And what we're saying is that a on that output that gets replaced, you own that labor, right? And then the intellect that ends up becoming that monetizable asset that other agents are going to want to subscribe to, right? So imagine a world in which you have all of these agents, right? And all they're doing is they're just learning. It's a, it's a play on data. It's a plan. Okay. We want to do this. Well, agents can very easily replicate labor. But the one thing that they cannot replicate is the human experience. What did I say? Artificial intelligence, easy to replicate, genuine stupidity, novelty human. So those are the things it's going to capture from. And that's where the value will come from.

Monika Proffitt

If you're gonna like, you know, of course, genuine stupidity, I'm kind of the queen of that as well. So I think that we're just, we're like, we're right on par here. This is very- That's why we're clicking so That's why we click, this is we click, man. All right, so I have kept a journal since I was a child. I am on journal number literally 60, right? Each journal has at least 80 pages in it, front and back, never skip a line, da da da, you can imagine, right? So I don't have any kids. So I talked to a friend of mine a couple of years ago, was like, I don't know who is gonna want these stupid books when I die. Like no one's gonna do cares. And he's like, no, you're gonna feed them into an AI and we'll have an Oracle of you and people can just go and talk to it. And I was like, sounds great. I can't wait till that happens. And now here you are, so much sooner than like when I'm on my deathbeds. This is great. Now, can I actually like find a software that could like read my terrible cursive handwriting and just like scan it all in and be like, da-da. Cause I've often thought, know, God my. My freaking targeted ads would be so different if I had started up like an online journal. Thank God I write it in just like regular script because like that should not be just out there in the world. But with all my stupidity, if I did somehow upload this, I I can monetize now my life experience, which has gone since I was five years old and I'm writing about it.

Syed Hussain

That's where the value of the experience comes in as well. So for example, when you, so you mentioned one thing, which was the, don't wanna give people access to the entirety of everything that I know, right? Because there's a lot, what's interesting about us is that, imagine, so with Shiza, what we're creating is think of replicating the human experience. What is it that we're doing right now in this conversation that we're having? This is an experience.

Monika Proffitt

I'm identifying the human experience by nudging one another with like communicating.

Syed Hussain

Correct. So I'm learning from your experience and you're learning from my experience. All of this right now is being captured inside of our biological repository, which is our brain, right? With Shiza and as you can tell from that, like even the logo of Shiza, it's a human, it's a digital brain, right? Because that's we're looking to do. We're looking to create that, right? So we've sort of started to graduate from GAI, right? Generative Artificial Intelligence into now focusing more on AGI, is artificial general intelligence. But what we're saying is that in that artificial general intelligence should not be something which is centrally owned. Sheza shouldn't have access to it. Open AI shouldn't have access to it. Google shouldn't have access to it. Monica's AGI needs to be owned by Monica. So now if you if you think about like capturing the entirety of your of your experiences, that includes all kinds of experiences, right? The good the bad and the ugly, right? Certainly you don't want people having exposure to the ugly and certainly not to all of the bad, right? But here's the thing, the good that comes out of whatever it is that you comes out of that won't be there without the ugly and without the bad, right? We were talking about that earlier. We were talking about bullying and why these things are, they're ugly, but they're very important. That's what turns us into who it is that we are. So what you don't want to do is you don't want to give access to someone, uh, to your brain and its entirety. So instead, this is where, so we spoke about the shared human, the zonal agents, but this is where the intellect comes in, right? So for example, if I want access to Monica, I'm not going to get access to Monica's brain in its entirety, right? To her entire ilm, right? Her ilm is hers, but from that ilm, you're going to get what we call intellects, which are these custom experiences, custom knowledge stores that you can go into. So for example, if I wanted to learn more about Bitcoin, Right. But remember for me to get access to Bitcoin, right. That I can go, any agent can provide that. can go to Google. can, I can go to a chat GPT. I can get that. That's not where the novelty of that is going to come in. But if I want to get Monica's take on that particular, on, on, on, Bitcoin, right. Or for example, if I wanted to understand where do I think the trends are going, right? Well, let me go to, let me, let me go to Michael. Right. I'll go to Michael Turpin and get his take on it. Right. Cause he's got some very, very unique takes on it, but those takes are a result of his direct human experiences. That's why his take is going to be so different. Saeed's take is going to be different. So in this world, this is where people will want those unique takes, including other agents. So for, I'm going to access your intellect, which is a derivative of your Ilm. And then Those will be subscribed to in the form of an agent. So Monica's agent, I can just subscribe to.

Monika Proffitt

Bitcoin agent or I can have a personal experience. That's correct. Okay.

Syed Hussain

And every transaction that I'm having, every transaction that I'm either physical, biological, Said is having, or Said's digital agent is having with Monica's agent, what is that? That's a transaction. And every single time that transaction is occurring, that is going to occur through what we call a neuron, which is the currency within the Shiza ecosystem. And for each and every one of those transactions, you're entitled to earning those neurons and that ends up becoming that utility, the currency within the Shiza ecosystem. And this is how, when we start talking about things like, how are human beings going to monetize without labor? What happens in this post-labor economy? What we're saying is this is how you start to shift from being a labor-driven economy into being what we call an intellect-driven economy.

Monika Proffitt

That is incredible. So I mean, other than like someone who keeps a journal or has things written down, like what other repositories are you guys considering that the user would be turning over like all of their email? I mean, what would they?

Syed Hussain

So, so.

Monika Proffitt

The whole Google Drive, like my entire Google Drive, just gonna, this is everything that I've ever made or whatever.

Syed Hussain

Exactly. Exactly. So look, I mean, for the most of the part, there are things, those things are the easy ones to capture. Right. So we've got like, I, you know, I've got my digital life, right. So I'm pretty much, I'm like completely digital, right. I don't have, and you know, I've got a ton of respect for you because you actually know how to physically write with a pen and paper, which, which, which I actually, I, I'm losing that ability, right. I just know how to, I had a type. So You can, you can certainly. So, so things like, for example, what we're doing right now, right? Well, we'll come to this in a bit, but yeah, the easiest thing is like, okay, give it access to my Google drive, give it access to my one drive, give it access to my drop box, right? All the stuff that's there. Just pull in from there. Second thing beyond that is now let me give it access to my emails right now. Let me give it access to my social media, to my Twitter. All of these, right, my own companion that's constantly with me. And I don't have to worry about giving it access to some centralized entity because this is not really mine, right? No one else has access to it because it's cryptographically secured. The only one that has access to it is me. Then the third thing beyond social media and messaging, right, beyond all those things are doing things like capturing all of our digital interactions, how just like how you and I are talking right now, right? And we have all of these solutions that are already there in the market, right? Fireflies, Otter, right? Read. You'll have that, except the problem again is that this is stored on their servers. It's their data. It's your information, but it's their data. They own it, right? In this instance, it's actually going to be yours, right? You own it. You're able to do. So imagine all of the valuable output that you're going to be able to extract from these inputs. Then The other thing becomes when this is where things start to get really, really fascinating, right? It's like, okay, fine. Great. This is probably captured. would say, you know, 80 % of, of, my experiences, but the real value is going to be on the 20%. Right. What about that 20 %? Well, in that instance, if I want to capture that, then just like how Saeed and Monica are having a conversation right now, Monica would actually be having a conversation with Monica's own agent, just like this. And instead of her talking to a biological person, she is talking to a digital entity that is interviewing her. That's capturing the other things and you're philosophizing and you're talking about this and that, and that continues to fill in on your illness as well.

Monika Proffitt

I get it. get it. So you're actually, I mean, you have to have come up with more and more different extraction processes as well as a whole stimulation and extraction processes. Let's get together and talk about your philosophy of life. I haven't thought about my philosophy of life in a long time. Okay, well, we'll start there. Yeah, that's interesting.

Syed Hussain

The thing about all of this is that, you know, because a lot of people thinking are like, well, holy shit, how many things are you guys going to build? Right? Well, the good thing about this, I'll give you guys a little bit of a secret. We don't have to build anything, right? Because there's people that are a lot better than us, that are a lot smarter than us, that are a lot better funded than us, that are already building these things, right? So for us,

Monika Proffitt

just aggregating and pulling it in and giving it. It's a data play and it's it's it's a data and a digital ownership play. That's it.

Syed Hussain

That's correct. That's correct. We're building the infrastructure, right? And we're giving you the ability to like it, like we always say, right? Own your AI before AI owns you.

Monika Proffitt

So I mean, how does somebody get involved in this? mean, are there ways that I can already start using one of these and loading up all my data in it? also, in terms of quantum proof, cryptography, whatever, what are the processes that you're using that people can at least talk to me like I'm five? How is it going to be safer than putting it in Google Drive, right?

Syed Hussain

Sure, sure. So first off, like I said, think the... The genius behind what we're building is the recognition that we're not geniuses at all. We're dummies. So let's focus on who the geniuses are that have already built these things and just layer on top of it. So our approach is finding out, and for anyone that's listening to this podcast, one of the things that we're doing is we're continually looking for the right ecosystem partners to build on top of. So whether you're a decentralized physical infrastructure network, whether you're a decentralized compute infrastructure provider, whether you guys have, let's say, encrypted quantum cryptography, those are all the layers that we have as a part of our logical map that we're putting together. And instead of, so for me, the approach always is we take, it's in this order, right? So it's integrate, then buy, and then build, right? So, is probably, which is gonna sound, mind boggling to a lot of technologists. It's like, well, you build last, you know, you're a technology company. You should be building first. I'm sorry. That's not, that's, I'm not going to build something unless we absolutely have to build it. Right. So the first thing that we're going to do is has someone built it? And if the answer is yes, how can we integrate it? Right. How can we let the shoemaker make the shoes? That's always been my philosophy. Then the second thing is, okay. Do we have to buy it? Great. If we have to buy it, no problem. We'll buy it. Right. Otherwise the last, if it doesn't exist or if, or if there's a better way to do it and we have no other option, then finally we'll build it. Right. So that's how that, you know, that's what we're doing. So we're, you know, they're the good thing with a lot of these things, like all of these things that I'm talking about, right. From a modular stack perspective, there are a lot of these solutions are already available. The real magic is in putting all of these things together. Uh, and that's why for like my, we have two focuses right now, right. And again, We're a startup, right? So we just got, we just came out of Stealth in December. In January, we went live with the first product within the Shiza ecosystem because Shiza is an ecosystem and it's got multiple products within it. The first one is Shiza Developer, which, like we say, we say own your AI before AI owns you, but before you can own your AI, you need to be able to build your AI. So we introduced Shiza Developer, which is a very simple and intuitive drag and drop tool that allows people to literally build your own AI agents in a matter of minutes. Right. So that we came out of that. So December, we came out of stealth. January, we came up with the closed beta of Shiza Developer. February, we were already post revenue, which allowed us to prove product market fit and whatnot. we, and then in March we established partnerships with some key protocols, including Morpheus.

Monika Proffitt

My question, who were these first people that adopted it, got you post revenue so fast? Who are the early adopters now of this new, basically this new economy?

Syed Hussain

So it's interesting because of the fact that we went with, you know, build your AI first, right? Because a lot of these things are also, they sound great, you know, philosophically it's like, yes, this would be great if we had this world and whatnot, but, that world is not there right now. Now we're going to get there very, very quickly, but we're not there yet. Right. So how do you get to that world? And the way that you get to that world is by, by, by, by proving your, you know, proving product market fit. And the best way to prove product market fit is if you can get others to pay for it as well. Right. That shows that you've got so much value. Right. So the best way to, to, to, to raise is to fund it yourself. And that way you do that is through revenue. So what we did was we started to identify folks within the ecosystem. So like I was mentioning to you earlier, right? Like partnerships, right? Who would be the right partners? Who would be these pieces, right? That, could, that could add to it and that could contribute to it. And who are the ones that are, where we're aligned. So we actually came across one of our first. customers was actually another AI company that was looking to build a prism, an AI prism to be able to build some empathy within the AI responses. So they were the first ones to start utilizing Shiza Developer. And then right after that, we came across, I was actually a co-panelist. And Michael Turpin introduced me to Morpheus. So we met with the Morpheus folks. We saw what they were doing. And there was so much alignment in terms of decentralized AI and whatnot with what they were looking to do. And they were looking for solution for that. we actually, that's where we started talking to them. And then in March, we ended up securing a collaboration. With them, we took an open source version of Sheza developer. We contributed to Morpheus and they staked the more token into us, which allowed us to start achieving even more revenue. So we became a core contributor to the DE AI Forge on the Morpheus network. Now we're looking to replicate that same model across other protocols. So we're having some conversations with some more significantly larger, both L. L3, L2, and L1 protocols as well that we're looking to expand into. That's all on the Web3 side. And then on the Web2 side, we're actually working with there is a logistics company that is looking to institute and utilize the developer to build out their own agentic solutions in which we're building out for them. And our revenue stream from there is going to be it's a combination of SaaS But then more importantly, it's more results-based, right? So for any cost savings that they experience, we're gonna get a portion of that back to us or for any increase in revenue that they're gonna get, we're gonna get a portion of that into us, which is also where we're seeing this sort of future economy evolving into. So the SaaS model, that's gonna change drastically. And we're sort of proving that out. We have that, we're talking right now with another company. in which for the legal profession, we're looking to substitute the human labor in that with AI driven agents and human oversight viewing those as well. So there's a lot of moving parts as you can see.

Monika Proffitt

Yeah, there's a lot of main parts. when you say, so I was involved in tech back when SaaS sort of started, right? The cloud and SaaS became these two like catchphrases that I, me and my team, we were like busy making fun of it. We're like, that's so stupid. SaaS runs with ass. No one's gonna do that. you're like, put yourself in the cloud. That's so the cloud, like it's vaporware. It's vaporware, you know? And I got that one wrong. So when I heard blockchain and I was like, that's a dumb word. There's too many continents in the middle. And I was like, you've done this before. You missed the boat when you made fun of the last stuff. You want to maybe take a closer look? And that was like 2015. And I was like, oh, oh, oh, yeah, no, no, this is one that I should really, I'm glad I looked at this one. Yeah. So you're saying it's going to revolutionize the SaaS model. Walk me through that because I missed the SaaS model as it hit. I clearly use it all the time. And you're saying it's going to revolutionize it. And it's like the web three kind of post SaaS model. What the he- walk me through that.

Syed Hussain

So you mentioned blockchain. So I think one important thing before we go into the SaaS model to talk about is the question that we get asked all the time. It's, okay, guys, cool. You guys are building this thing out. Why blockchain? And my response is ask someone who understands technology. My response is, It's not even why not blockchain, right? Because why not blockchain would still imply that there's other mechanisms and other options. But my response is there's no way other than blockchain. you're looking to build decentralized artificial intelligence solutions and you're giving the notion around ownership and distribution and granularity, microtransactions, things like

Monika Proffitt

Exactly. of course.

Syed Hussain

your accountability, Proof of provenance, right? There's no other infrastructure that's ready to go than blockchain that would make sense for it. This is why for us to build what it is that we're building, make Web3 is the only rails that it makes the most sense. And this is coming from someone, by the way, who came into this as a cynic of Web3, of blockchain, of Bitcoin. Right. As a traditional capital markets guy coming into this, only to read Satoshi's white paper. I was blown away by the implications. The moment that I read it, I was like, Holy shit. Yeah. Algorithmically, if you can solve for these things, which, which, which the paper does. So it's, it's, it's funny because one of the, one of the criticisms in blockchain that we generally tend to get right in the world of web three is, you guys are a, you guys are essentially a solution looking for a problem. Right. And my response and my response is, my response is, yeah, you're right. Yeah, we are a solution looking for a problem. And AI is that problem, right? That blockchain is, you know, is built for, right? So it's those rails that you build on top of that, right? This is the reason why the web three, you know, why web three, why blockchain rails, right? Why tokenization? Because without this, there is no way you're going to be able to do these granular micro transactions that can be captured, that could be encapsulated in which there's proof of provenance that you can, you'll, you'll have accountability for, right? So this is the most efficient in the existing solutions that we have today, is the best architecture to build on top of. Now, what this leads to though, is when we start talking about things like granularity, for example, this is a perfect segue into, you know, why is SAS dead, right? I mean, I think it was Mark Andreessen that had, I think last year he had written a... a narrative around this saying that, know, something like, you know, why SAS is dead or why SAS will die, something like that. But the SAS model is, you know, before SAS that we used to have this perpetual licensing agreement, right, where it's like, OK, cool, I have this version of the software and I pay for it once and cool. Now I have access to it. But then the problem is then it becomes outdated once it becomes outdated. And there's newer versions that come in now I have to go and apply that again. from a cashflow perspective, from a money management perspective, there was a much more efficient way to be able to fund the development of the software as you're building it out. And that became SaaS, right? Which is, look, mean, basically we're building it and as we continually update it, right? This is software as a service. So as long as you're utilizing the service, you continue to pay for it. If you don't need it tomorrow, Cool. You could switch it off. That's great. But now imagine a world in which that software that I'm subscribing to that you're asking me to pay for, right?

Monika Proffitt

It's paying for itself because as long as I'm using it and it's being subscribed to, it's paying for itself.

Syed Hussain

Well, well, here, here, the other thing, right? That's one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is imagine a world in which you're like, Hey, say, here's my software, right? Here's something that I've built. and it's an, it's a phenomenal accounting software, right? And I'm like, cool, Monica, let me take it. And now I can take it, but I can have my agents take a look at that software and reverse engineering, right? Once they've able to reverse engineer that software, sure, it's not going to be a hundred percent accurate, but the reality is how much of my software am I using a hundred percent, right? If it can get to, say 70, 80%, I'm good, right? So what this is going to end up forcing people to do is when agents can start replicating software and they will, and they already are, we're not quite there yet, but we will, right? When they start to do that, then the value of the SaaS model itself is going to end up collapsing. So this is where we start to think about newer mechanisms in such as again, and this is where Web3 and blockchain comes in, right? Is this whole motion around open source software. I've built a software. I'm contributing my software to something and I have a tokenized incentive that someone can contribute to it. So this is where I I'm starting to see the, the death of traditional proprietary models and more and more open source models are going to start to, start to take over. Now, does that mean that by the death of open, uh, of, of proprietary models. If there's going to be no models that are going to ever exist that are proprietary, of course not. But the general trend is going to start to shift from being SAS driven into what we call being cast driven or, you know, we shift away from being software as a service and it ends up becoming knowledge as a service.

Monika Proffitt

That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. And also, I mean, if you have a tokenized, I want to know about the token, because like this is the token I would like to get in on early for sure. know, like monetizing like general collective human intelligence and also stupidity is very important. It's very cool. But you guys don't have a token yet, do you? I mean, you're going to be having a token. There's plans for it, but it's not actually released or even in beta at this point, right?

Syed Hussain

No, no. we, and we've been getting a lot of pressure on putting the, know, on getting that token out ASAP. So one of the things that we have done is in anticipation of the token, because the token will come later, but the utility comes first, right? So what we're doing is we're introducing this concept of neurons, which are which is where the utility of when you're building out, because you want to create the gamification incentives, right?

Monika Proffitt

this tracks that it's a digitally tracking just the interactions, right? There's points that will eventually like transfer over into being the coin and blah, blah, blah, it's just

Syed Hussain

Exactly. So we're doing that and we're actually planning on in collaboration with Morpheus, we're actually planning on doing our first sort of giving people the ability to have access to these tokens, to our neurons, right? To these neurons very, very early on. And I think I would say within the next week or two. maybe three, we're gonna be making that announcement for where people can actually earn these neurons onto the schizomorphous subnet.

Monika Proffitt

that's fantastic. I can't wait. I want to earn. have so much. I'm happy to contribute stuff. That'd be super fun. That'd be that just sounds like a ton of fun. I mean, not only just because I can like nerd out and think about what would I want to put there and not, but also just knowing that it's so much safer. I mean, I've been waiting for something that's much more like a walled garden for all kinds of things. I just don't really feel comfortable telling to open AI or anyone else.

Syed Hussain

Look, mean, it's Michael Casey from the Decentralized AI Society. we talk about this all the time, which is we have a choice, right? But the window to make that choice is closing very, very quickly, right? Because the accelerated pace of innovation that we're experiencing now is unlike anything we've ever experienced. So I've been in the industry for what, two and a half decades now, right? So I'm a dinosaur. I've been in the industry for two and a half decades, the last, progress that we've experienced in the last two years doesn't compare to the progress that we, that I've experienced in the last 20 years, right? And this is only going to increase. This is only going to increase.

Monika Proffitt

You talk about the collapse of the SaaS model, it makes me think of Jeremy Rifkin's work with, you wrote the book Zero Marginal Cost Society and how just like as all costs throughout society just gets driven down to near zero or basically at cost like just as low as low as possible, what does that do to the nature of work? What does that do to the commons? What does that do to the fabric of labor and economics in general? it's so like what you've got is you're really thinking post that, almost post-apocalyptic, you know?

Syed Hussain

Well, that's why we call it post-sagentic, right? Because it's like what happens after the rise of agents. And by the way, that rise of the agents, I'm not talking like 50 years out, right? I'm talking like, sweet spot is between half a decade to a decade. So five to 10 years out, right? Is when that will happen. So what we're building for is for this post-sagentic world.

Monika Proffitt

Absolutely. Well, okay. So for anybody who's hearing this and they're really excited, they want to get involved. Like what is the easiest first step for just one of the classic stupid persons such as myself? Like what do I do? Talk to me like I'm five. What's my process and how long would it take me to be engaged and potentially get on the, I mean, is there a white list to get towards like the neuron coin? How does this, you what are the steps?

Syed Hussain

Yeah, so I think we're still sort of figuring that part out, but I think the easiest thing is going to be to all these updates and notifications, right, is follow us on Twitter. You can follow us. You can follow me on Twitter, on LinkedIn as well. And so my Twitter handle is at serialtechxserial. tech T E C H and then the X. So you can follow me on there. can follow Shiza, Shiza AI, Shiza S H I Z A underscore AI. Follow us on Twitter and we'll be having some of these announcements. Like I said, within the next two weeks, you'll be hearing about the Morpheus subnet and we'll be doing a big sort of announcement, big push on that as well. And there's a couple of other interesting There's a couple of other interesting things that we're working on. And like I said, we're raising. So this is as early as it gets. We're very, very early in the process. I am going to be in Vegas for the Bitangels tokenize event as well. So I've been summoned there by Michael Turpin. A couple of our existing investors are going to be there. Dr. Adel, Sheldon Weisfeld. So we're... very much looking forward to that. If you're there, me a shout, happy to talk. And if you're an angel, if you're an angel, if you're looking to get in, or if you are a VC that's looking to get into the early stages of this and you wanna come in, come talk to us.

Monika Proffitt

I love it. I love this. Absolutely. I I love being able to beat the drum and help help companies get the word out with their fundraising. mean, it's not like it doesn't happen without money. You still need money. I mean, even though you're going to be building last, you still need money. So this is very, cool. And it's early days. I mean, you've been at this for not very long and you're already post revenue. So it's just it's very cool to see this happening. And I, for one, just can't wait to hop on the website and see what I can download and start messing around with it. So. Thank you so much. been an awesome conversation, Saeed. You're a wealth of information about everything from bullying to pizza to post-apocalyptic AI.

Syed Hussain

Stupidity stupidity has that magic effect

Monika Proffitt

Stupidity has, I can, I'm seeing these quotes already just like going through my mind. How are we gonna quote you? Stupidity has that magical effect. That is absolutely true. I just love this. Thank you so much for coming on the show and for talking with us about Shiza. It's very, very cool what you're working on and I'm really excited for the future.

Syed Hussain

No, much appreciated Monica. Thank you very much and I'm looking forward to getting engaged.

Monika Proffitt

All right, this is great. Well, I'm going to wrap up this episode of The Prophet Show. This is Monica Proffitt signing off and I'll catch you on the next episode. Thanks, guys.