- The U.S. Criminal Justice System
is in need of radical transformation,
and so what we've done is isolate
a really important component of that problem
and are using technology to try to solve it.
Our research tells us that the more contact one has
with an incarcerated person,
the less likely that person is to come back to prison.
One of the most traumatic parts about being
incarcerated is that you're isolated from society.
You're cut off from new technologies.
You're cut off from your families.
You're cut off from your communities.
- Right now, prison phone calls are so expensive
that a third of families of incarcerated people
go into debt trying to stay in touch.
So, Zo founded Ameelio,
an app that lets inmates and loved ones
communicate for free.
- We're taking on two companies,
Securus and Global Telelink.
These companies are basically
earning billions of dollars
by charging vulnerable people in our communities.
- Jack Dorsey, Vinod Khosla,
and Eric Schmidt have all invested.
But can a scrappy, tech nonprofit
take down the two companies
that dominate the billion-dollar prison communication space?
- These companies have created
an artificial industry.
If we succeed, their entire
business model is undermined.
- This is a show about founders challenging the status quo.
- What terrifies you the most
about leading this company?
- That's a good question.
You know my stress level has increased dramatically,
and I don't sleep much, but what it's also done,
it's really given me a lot of meaning.
- Zo and his co-founder Gabe
launched Ameelio in early 2020
while they were still in school.
- When we first started Ameelio
we wanted to make sure we were building something
that was really serving a need.
We wanted to make sure that the communities
that we were trying to serve, found value in the work.
- Zo used his savings
to hire their first software engineer
to begin work on Ameelio's first feature, Letters.
Letters lets friends and family
type and send letters to inmates through a phone app.
It sounds simple,
but it takes care of logistical hurdles
of finding inmate addresses and physical mailing.
It was an instant hit in the app store, and it was free.
- One thing we heard that really moved us was
Richard Watkins, a recently released incarcerated person,
and he said that the greatest sound
that he would hear several times a week
was the slide of a letter coming through his door.
For him, you know, those letters coming from families
were a ray of hope.
For us, you know, that was an 'aha!' moment.
It's both exhilarating and frightening
to carry the weight of a startup on your shoulders.
Being responsible for the livelihood of people
who've really, you know, taken great risks
to commit their lives
to trying to improve the condition
for some of the most overlooked people.
We only had $12,000 in the bank.
One of my biggest fears was,
you know, what happens one day if, you know,
30,000 people download the app
and just send a letter,
and we're completely bankrupt in a day?
We had to figure out a way to get more funding
to keep the ship afloat.
- Zo decided their best bet for survival
was to get the team started
building their next feature called Connect.
He picked up and moved to Des Moines
hoping to secure Connect's first real-world pilot
with Iowa Correctional.
- Connect is a free video communication platform;
it's gonna reconnect incarcerated people
with their family members but also other vital resources
like educational providers, mental health clinicians,
and legal support.
Hi everyone, how you doing?
Gabe, do you have any updates
you wanna kind of share with us about Connect?
- Next week we have the big demo
that we've been prepping for.
We wanna make sure that D.O.C
feels good about the platform.
Mark, maybe you wanna show a quick demo
so everyone knows how the app's looking like.
- Okay, cool. So this is what the app looks like as of now,
sort of dashboard stuff, as you can see.
You should be able to go in and manage
all your contacts and stuff, and hopefully join a call
but just things looking good for internal testing.
- That's awesome.
- Amazing, it's looking great man,
it's looking awesome.
We'd like to think of Connect really as
a technological bridge.
- Free video calling for inmates is unheard of,
but with COVID limiting in-person visits,
prisons were looking for a video calling solution
to let families communicate.
It was the perfect opportunity for Zo to launch Connect.
The pilot would be a high-stakes proof of concept,
that could open doors to the funding Ameelio needed.
- If one is really devoted
to shrinking the size of the U.S. Criminal Justice System,
it's hard to both do that and also be profit-motivated.
As a nonprofit, we are committed
to never charging families or incarcerated people.
But convincing tech founders and venture capitalists
to invest in a nonprofit is challenging.
There's obviously no monetary return on investment
for the folks who provide us donation.
One of the most important things for me to do is
to convince them about the impact.
It was really stressful to figure out,
you know, how are we gonna reach breakeven?
I had some sleepless nights waking up thinking that,
you know, it was all over.
- The pilot proved a success,
paving the way for Zo's plan to achieve breakeven
by charging departments of corrections,
local jails, and lawyers for access to Ameelio's services.
By November of 2021,
Connect will be live in all nine of Iowa's prisons,
and will be launching for the first time in Colorado.
There are a number of factors
that make prison phone calls expensive.
But Zo's commitment to a new way of thinking
about prison communications is disrupting the status quo.
- The North Star vision of Ameelio is to make sure
that every person with an incarcerated loved one
can communicate with them completely free of charge,
and that incarcerated people can have access
to vital resources that they need
to succeed post-release.
Moving to Connecticut, as you know, a nine-year-old kid
with a really thick Nigerian accent,
fitting in was really challenging.
Basketball was the vehicle
through which I became American.
When I was around 12, after one of the tournament's
that we probably lost, we took this photo
that's basically eight of my friends,
me, and my basketball coach,
and unfortunately, four of the kids in that photo
have been incarcerated at some point.
Regardless of what the worst thing is that you've done,
you aren't worthless.
I carry that photo around to kind of remind myself
just about how fortunate I've been,
and the really important issues out there
that need to be solved.