Meet the team

We believe great work starts with real people.

We want to know your business inside and out. And we think you should know who you're working with. Here's a bit about us.

Founder

Marvin Mbogo

New York, NY University of Michigan · London School of Economics Previously Merge, SoFi, Clear Ventures

I'm Marvin. I grew up outside Philadelphia, went to the University of Michigan where I studied engineering and computer science and played Division 1 lacrosse, then spent a semester at the London School of Economics studying finance.

Before any of that, I ran a business. In college I started ProCut Landscaping. I hired a five-person crew, managed about 30 recurring clients across Philadelphia's Main Line, and grew it to over $120K in annual revenue. I learned what it's like to juggle scheduling, invoicing, payroll, and customer follow-ups with no systems to lean on. I know what it feels like when the back office is held together with spreadsheets and your own memory.

After graduating I became one of the first engineers at Merge, a venture-backed software company in New York that's raised over $75 million from NEA and Accel. I spent three years there building the tools and systems that powered the product. Internal dashboards, API integrations, and the kind of practical software that makes a company actually run. I also interned at SoFi (NASDAQ: SOFI, $30B+ market cap), where I built internal tools that automated workflows that used to take weeks.

In school I was selected as one of three undergraduates nationwide for Clear Ventures' inaugural Deeptech Fellowship, working alongside PhD founders on venture-backed deep tech commercialization. I also led a machine learning research project with Coupa, where I built optimization models that cut cloud computing costs by $30K–$50K per month while keeping performance above 99.9% reliability.

I started Kazi because I kept seeing the same gap. Capable businesses, distributors, service companies, operators, held back by small, fixable problems. A report that takes three hours by hand. A process that lives in one person's head. Data scattered across tools that don't talk to each other. These problems are too specific for off-the-shelf software, and too small to justify hiring an engineering team. So they just sit there, quietly costing time and money.

I've been on both sides. I've run a business and felt the pain. And I've built the software that fixes it. I'd rather ship something small and useful this month, support it properly, and earn the next piece of work. Not promise the world and disappear. If something in your business is stuck, I'm the kind of person you can call.