 To Adventures in Small Business, a collaboration of Small Business Administration, Hawaii District Office and its partners, where we showcase the stories of local entrepreneurs and small businesses. I'm your host, Victoria Enlita, from VBAC of the Pacific. And my next guest is a serial entrepreneur, startup mentor, and advisor with 16 years experience in Japan and Asia. He's the founder of Startup Hui and a co-director of Founder Institute, Honolulu Chapter. Russell has successfully built two different companies from the Ground Up to Acquisition and NASDAQ IPO, and is the co-founder of DevLeak, which is Hawaii's leading coding bootcamp. Welcome and aloha, Russell. Well, thank you for having me here. Thank you for being here. You have a very impressive background, and I know you also worked at the Microsoft and other corporations, so who made you choose entrepreneurship route? I don't think I chose entrepreneurship as much as I think it chose me. We grew up pretty, pretty modestly here in Hawaii. And I think from a young age, because we didn't have a lot of things, I had to create stuff and make stuff and figure out how to do things. And so from there, I think you start with helping your friend with the paper route and you start hustling when you're a kid and stuff. And I think that really gave me the foundation for understanding what people want and what are people willing to pay for, and it started from there. And I heard you started seven companies, is that right? Yeah, I started my first two companies at the University of Hawaii. It was called College of Business Administration back then. It wasn't what it's cool now, it's called Shidler, right? And I started two companies there. One of them was, the first one was called Overseas Hawaii and the second one was called Graphic Words International. I was a college senior and I started one as a sole entrepreneur and the other one was with a partnership. So it seems like once you start, you can't stop? Yeah, you know, I was a college, you know, I was a business major and it was really interesting because as opposed to learning about it in school and trying to do things in class, we're doing it in real life. I mean, we're literally bringing in a matz and container of goods from, you know, from China and really selling them at what they call CVS stores, Long's Drugs, and now today and other large stores back then. I was in way over my head at that time. I was a college senior. What did I know, right, in that sense? And I had a partner for that, but yeah, I mean, it really gave me the seeds of building my own company. That's impressive. So now you're co-founder of Devleek. What is the mission of Devleek? Well, Devleek is, you know, as you said earlier, you know, we are Asia's premier coding bootcamp for people who are trying, you know, motivated persons who are trying to pick up skills and really get their career starts in technology. We sponsor, you know, we specialize in JavaScript and cybersecurity. And then when people finish the 16-week or the 30-week program, we help them, you know, get into career starts. So we help them find their jobs if that's what they're looking for. That's wonderful for our community. Thank you for doing this. And I heard you have a few scholarships at Devleek. So we have, we've always traditionally had, from the very beginning, my partner Jason Sewell and I were very blessed to have been provided with, you know, other people's help and stuff along the way. And we felt it was really important to give back to our community as well. Over the last five years, we have created something called Devleek Elevate Scholarship where we've put out $122,000 worth of our own money out of our own pockets to do this. Finally, you know, we were providing it really for needs-based scholarships and we had a female hacker scholarship, but today we're finally announcing a new scholarship for diversity. So women, persons of underrepresented groups and minorities, and of course LBGTQ, a special scholarship fund, up to $10,000 per cohort, and the minimum is $1,000 scholarship for persons with identified themselves as, you know, under-representative women and minorities and LBGTQ. Wow, so that's a brand new scholarship. That's a brand new scholarship. We're announcing it here on ThinkTech. So thank you for, you know, asking about it. That's exciting. So if I want to apply for the scholarship, what should I do? The best way to apply for the scholarship is, well, anyway, to get into Devleek anything is really go to the website, devleek.com, and then apply through there. We do require people to apply for the scholarship. We do require people to apply for Devleek in order to enable themselves for it. The scholarship is geared towards paying for the tuition, a portion of the tuition within Devleek, and it's not designed to cover the entire tuition, but of course to defray some of the costs there. You know, we have tuition payment plans. We have tuition loan programs. Again, we have other workforce development programs, like American Apprentice Initiative as well, to all with the goal of providing, making education affordable for as many people as we can. Perfect. And I think it's a really great profession to be in nowadays, right? I think with our team at Devleek, Jason and I, we're super thrilled about what we do. We love our jobs. I can't wait until Monday all the time to come into the office. Thank God it's Monday in that sense, right? Yeah, and it's super fun, what we do. It's perfect. So how can veterans benefit from Devleek? So recently, it took us two and a half years to get to the point where we were finally approved for the veterans GI Bill. So what that means is veterans who have GI Bill benefits can apply to Devleek and have their tuition and also their housing covered for the duration of their time in Devleek. Originally, it was only for the web development class, and now we've just been approved a little about two weeks ago for the cybersecurity course as well. Congratulations. It's, yeah, thank you very much. It's been a few years in the making, and we're very thrilled to work with the veteran community in providing them with resources so that they can get their career starts as really civilians, right? Cybersecurity. So during our Boots to Business classes, actually we're talking about cybersecurity a lot because this is a raising issue, and this could be a great idea for a business, right? When people come to Devleek, learn coding and start a business, can you help them with starting a business? It's probably one of the more, we have a lot of graduates, we have a lot of students that come in from our into Devleek program, whether they're, you know, switchers, professionals working at one place and they're either unsatisfied or they're looking for another, they're looking to scratch their itch. And people have different, and people come into our program and then they have different outcomes. Some of the outcomes, most of the outcomes is, hey, I want to help me find a full time job. The second one would be I want to build my own company. I want to build my own startup. The third one is I'd like to join a startup. I don't want to build it, but I want to be part of one and be an early employee. And the fourth one being I'm not looking for a full time job. I'm going to do, you know, freelance work, project work with the companies that I like and work with people that I find interesting. And the fifth one would be I'm currently in, especially for part-time students that come into our program, I like my company. I may not like my boss, but I'm going to stay with my company. I'm going to change my role and do more. So, yeah, but the people that get us really excited are the ones that want to start their own company as well, too. And so we get to kind of influence their hard coding, their soft skills, and of course offer them some additional advice and insights into entrepreneurship as well. It's just a part of what Jason and I do since we've started multiple companies, you know, and for me, seven companies and Jason two at the same time. So we have, you know, we know a thing or three about entrepreneurship as we go about how we teach in Devly. Perfect. So for those who don't know, VBock of the Pacific is helping transitioning military and veterans with entrepreneurial development. And Russell is actually one of our mentors and he's helping a lot of startups, our clients. So thank you for doing that. We're happy to have you. Thank you. It's very, it's really fun. It enables us to get on the base. It enables us to work with some of the veterans. And of course, the other part of it's the entrepreneurship part. It's it's a really fun exercise when we go through it. So right now, let's say I want to start a startup, a tech startup here in Hawaii. What would be your advice? Where should I start from? What would be my first step? You know, I think as as entrepreneurs from an entrepreneur to another entrepreneur, I think really the first thing to do is decide that you're going to start, right? Most people talk about it and very few people actually put it into motion. So the first thing you want to do is I need to start, start somewhere. You may have this bigger part, bigger vision and a bigger piece of the what you want to do, break it into smaller pieces and then start there. You know, so when it comes down to it, I always try to give the advice to other entrepreneurs who are just starting out, especially first time founders, build something that people want and are willing to pay for. So let me unpack that a little bit. Build something that people want really means understanding, being able to ship a product, right? Build something that you have the ability to build something that you can build a product that you can actually put into somebody else's hands is here, here you go, or a service that you can say, look at what we can do for you that people want and are willing to pay for. The willing to pay for part of it, people want part of it is getting you are getting, you know, getting users for it. They don't necessarily have to pay for it. But if they really like it, they will pay for it as well. So building things that people want and are willing to pay for, real core to starting up of an entrepreneurial effort, a startup company. That's a great advice, actually. And we have a lot of clients who are coming to us and saying, I have this great idea, but I don't want to share because someone will steal it. What would you say? You know, and it's fun when we do it at the VBoc office. I've done this at Founder Institute. I've done this for quite a bit of, you know, when I was, when I'm doing work with startup who and stuff. Really, if you have a great idea, a great idea is a great idea. It's a great idea. And if, if, especially if it's solving a problem, if you have a stupid idea, nobody's going to steal your stupid idea. No one cares. Right. And so the best way to get out there is to put your idea out there, share it with people, get feedback from, from people and preferably not from just your family, because your family loves you. Your friends and family will say nice things about you, but for people who don't know you, get some feedback from, from them. And when you get that feedback, you can come back and iterate on the feedback you're getting and you have to decide as the founder and CEO of your company, decide if that is actually going to be valid or if that's what you want to build, but getting feedback early and getting feedback often, it's free for the most part and can inform your decision and how you go about building your product. And it can give you more ideas. And it also can, it can give you more ideas, but it can also identify some of the people that you're building for and if people really care about it. You know, you don't want to build a vitamin. You want to build a painkiller, right? And so build them something that people want and are willing to pay for it. It really comes back down to those core, core, you know, guiding principles, I should say then. Exactly. So it's not so much about you. It's all about customers, right? It's never about yourself, right? It's, you're building it for customers. I mean, if you want to build a sustainable business, it's always about building, who am I building it for? What do they really want? What's the pain point we're solving for? And then really working back is now can I provide some expertise or some insight or some product or some service that will solve that pain point? Because if you're not, then it's a, you know, it's a fun widget to have, but when push comes to shove, people don't always need to have it. If they really, really need it, then, you know, they'll tend to want it, have it. And for some things, it's free. So most things, it's got to be sustainable. So you have to charge some money for it. Exactly. So how tech company is different from any other regular company? How to start a tech company? What are the things to consider before starting this venture? It's good. I think that's a really good question. I get asked a lot this from, you know, I think that there's for a lot of startup companies, you know, and I'm fairly pretty good at both the startup companies. So I, you know, I take that with a grain of salt for other type of companies that I may, you know, that may be starting up, but we tend to want, especially in technology companies, want to have the, the, the hustler hacker designer triangle. So, you know, if you have the hustler part of it, which is typically the business person or the new business development person or what have you, a person who can speak and communicate to other audiences. And then the second part of it is having the hacker part of it, being able to build, being able to have that technical underpinnings. And then, of course, having the designer part of it or having the person that can build things that, so it just works, right? So when you have the hustler hacker designer triangle, it's the kernel of a startup company that can deliver some software product or can deliver something in technology. Now, again, you know, it's vastly different for hardware, hardware startup or vastly different for say a restaurant, for instance, right? I'm fairly good at the technology side of it. But having the technical underpinnings, especially if you're building a software company, you have to have it. And I find a lot of entrepreneurs have the ideas, but don't have the ability to build upon on the technical side of it. And it's probably the most expensive part of building a technical company or software company. So it's not just idea, but skills and abilities, right? Well, it starts off with an idea, but then, again, you need to start, right? And like I said, build it into, break it into, from a bigger pieces into smaller pieces and just get started. Most people just don't start. They talk about it a lot. Too bad. Well, thank you, Russell. We are taking a short break and we will see you in two minutes. I'm Jay Fidel, ThinkTech. ThinkTech loves energy. I'm the host of Mina, Marco and me, which is Mina Morita, former chair of the PUC, former legislator and Energy Dynamics, a consulting organization in energy. Marco Mangostorf is the CEO of Provision Solar in Hilo. Every two weeks, we talk about energy, everything about energy. Come around and watch us. We're on at noon on Mondays, every two weeks on ThinkTech. Aloha. Hey, Stan the Energyman here on ThinkTech, Hawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary. So I'm stuck doing energy stuff, but I really like energy stuff. So I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan the Energyman at lunchtime, at noon on my lunch hour and we're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place. Just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan the Energyman. Aloha. Adventures in Small Business. I'm Victoria Anulita and today I'm talking to Russell Chang from DevLeague. We're talking about how to start a tech company in Hawaii. So are there any specific requirements in Hawaii or is Hawaii a venture? Anyhow different from, let's say, a mainland venture? It's just to start off the business part of it. I mean, I think, you know, it's no different than any other city, right? You need to register your business here in Hawaii. Make sure that you're a legal entity. I tend to look at it as housekeeping, right? You need to have the legal infrastructure that counting the finance, the real estate and the kind of personnel HR part of it. That kind of builds the foundation of your organization. And as long as it's legal and what you're, you know, product or service that you're doing is legal in the country or you can interpret it as legal, then you have a legal basis to build a company. That is universal, whether it's in any city or another. I think the things to think about here in Hawaii is try to tap into some of the uniqueness of Hawaii and some of the things that we have as opposed to, you know, building things that we don't have to ship over to anywhere else, right? I mean, I hate to say, but manufacturing is a bit challenging here in terms of we have a smaller audience. Whereas in software and technology, what we can build here is for a global audience and that you can, you know, you could put it into the app store. You can have it on your website and people can download it. And so it's, you know, it has a global audience. It also has a smaller footprint in terms of, you know, in terms of having to, you know, in terms of the environment. Yeah. And the thing I like about tech companies, online companies, is a global audience, as you mentioned, and you can be anywhere in the world, right? Right. Right. And yeah, and I think, you know, for what we do here at Devleagame, all the things that we teach here are the tools for people to be killed in software developers as a cybersecurity. It's not just here for Hawaii. In fact, the bulk of the people that graduate from our program stay here in Hawaii. But we do have pockets of people who have ventured off into New York, ventured off into Seattle, ventured off into San Francisco Bay Area. And then we have on the international side, we had Belgium, Mexico, Melbourne. We have people in Korea and also in Taiwan and also in Japan as well too now. So they're coming from all over the place or they're going to all over the place internationally to the mainland, of course, staying here in Hawaii. That's very exciting. So you're mentoring a lot of startups right now. So what would be the biggest challenges of beginners? What they're actually usually ask you? What are the biggest problems? Most people start off. So I'm part of the University of Hawaii's virtual professional residence. I'm also a part of the Shamanad's Hogan Entrepreneur Program. We used to also have this for HPU and also at Punahou as well too. And we used to be part of the entrepreneurs, like an entrepreneur in residence program there. Most either whether it's students or first-time entrepreneurs think that they need money to start off something. When they really need to think of an idea that it keeps sounding like a broken record again, right? It's build something that people want and are willing to pay for. Break it down from a larger pieces into smaller pieces and start there and get some early, try to get some early, you know, early traction. Getting the early traction, whether it's a prototype, especially, you know, even if it's duct tape or cardboard or stuck together with glue and stuff like that. But the idea is to put it in people's hands, get feedback on it because that will save you in the long run. It gives you information, it gives you feedback and it gives you the ability to gauge possibly early customers. But more importantly, feedback that you can iterate on. I find that most people think of all the different things about setting up a company. They need to think about product, product, product, right? I mean, I keep coming back down to that because if you're not shipping product, then you're not putting it in people's hands. If you're not putting it in people's hands. And I say product and product slash services, right? If you're not putting it in people's hands, you're not getting feedback and you're not going to get revenue, perhaps, from that equation. Exactly. So the other good thing is that DevLeak provides a network of people, right? So you're not on your own. You have these people to share your ideas with, that feedback. Yes. You know, at the beginning part, we started off so modestly, right? We had our five graduates that came, five, you know, students and our five graduates came out of our program. A lot of it was built upon Jason's reputation, Jason Sewell's reputation, the other co-founder and my reputation as well as entrepreneurs in the community. And then from there, we had to get the next few graduates and the next few graduates, 200 graduates later, you know, we have a lot of developers in the developer community now that companies and employers can tap into. But more importantly, we also have employers as part of that equation. Employers that have hired DevLeak graduates who have provided some feedback and provided career starts for people. And then we also have partners that help us to build pieces of our community out. You know, and so I think having the access to a large community of developers and people inside, you know, employers in the ecosystem helps to get outcomes for people. And for some of those outcomes, it's building a company. For a lot of people, it's about getting, you know, getting a full time job, right? But from within them, they're constantly connected back to DevLeak and part of building that ecosystem with us. We have a Slack channel that's internal. It has over 200. I checked it this morning and had 239 people in it. And they're almost all connected to the technology community of some sort. And they're all within DevLeak's ecosystem. So it's definitely a great place to be. So besides DevLeak, besides a mentor, a business advisor, what other people should the person have in his team if he wants to start it? You know, I think it's really important to surround yourself with really smart people, preferably people who are smarter than you, people who can do a lot of different things than you. I tend to think of it as almost complimentary. You know, you don't want to have a lot of yes persons with you. You want to have people that say no and having a healthy debate is really important. So having, you know, I think if you're a solo founder, try to find a co-founder. It's too hard to build a company by yourself. I've done it before. It's very challenging. I prefer to have the healthy debate. So having a co-founder, I think is really good. I talked earlier about having the whole what I call housekeeping. You know, having the finance, the real estate, the accounting, the HR, the, you know, all the different pieces out there. Surrounding yourself with service providers that can help you with that because they think of things in a different way, because you don't have the time to do it and you're trying to run as fast as you can, building product, trying to recruit a team. But finding a really good team is really important. It will make your life so much easier. So DevLeak, as I understand, you have a great team, right? Yeah, we have a really good team of dedicated staff that really want to be part of our mission, which is really about creating technical learning, workforce development, and then providing career starts for people. The bulk of the people are software engineers or have been trained in software or in the technical field and want to also provide mentorship and technical skills and education to other people, you know, because it's enriched their lives. So we play at that intersection of education and technical workforce development. And, you know, we're always looking for more people to join our team. So what would you say if I would like to start a tech company, but I feel intimidated because I don't know anything about coding. I don't know if I can do it. I'm hesitant to do it. But what would you say? Well, I mean, in all frankness, I would say don't start it then, right? And then the reason why is because you need to start. You're in many ways, you're thinking of all the excuses not to start. And the forever optimism, you know, I just can't help myself, right? You need to figure out how to start something. You know, sometimes that start is going to be you get kicked out of a company or it doesn't work out or whatever or your former business closed down or, you know, whatever. So your circumstances are such that you have no choice. Sometimes it starts that way. Sometimes you're working in companies, I'm going to go scratch that itch, right? And I'm going to jump out because I can do that, I can do that better. Or I think I can build something that built a better mouse trap, as we used to say, right? So but getting that first start and having that positive thinking that I can go build this, I can do this. A lot of people kind of do that part of it. So if they're, if they're already talking themselves out of it, I really can't help them as much. Maybe it's not the right time. Maybe it's not the right timing for them to, yeah. So like we say at the boost of business, it's not the intelligence, it's not your idea, but actually willingness to take act on your idea. Yeah. My partner Jason, you know, my business partner Jason Sewell and I really, it's about the hustle. You know, we get, we have graduates coming out of our program and some of them will quickly look for a job. Some of them will just take a vacation and kind of go through the paces and everything. But the ones that really hustle for it, they may not even be the top, the technical part of it, top of the technical spectrum, but they have enough skills and they can get an entry, everyone coming out of a program that can get an entry level job or a junior developer job or in a cybersecurity professional job. But the one that hustles the more, more, almost always gets it faster, gets a better one and gets multiple offers in this. Again, no, no different in building a company. You want the person that's going to be hustling out there and trying to create something out of nothing. I mean, that's what entrepreneur is all about, right? Entrepreneurism all about is building something from really nothing, just coming out of their, you know, their heads and putting together a small team of people that are like-minded and thinking that they can go conquer the world and do something, right? And so, yeah, just, just start. But there are hurdles, but so what? There's gonna be hurdles at any company anyway, right? Thank you, Russell. It was really great having you. I encourage everyone to check out devlead.com for more information. Also, if you're a veteran and you need business consulting assistance, you can reach us at VBOC at hawaii.edu. Thank you for watching us today and stay tuned for more adventures in small business every Thursday, 11 o'clock.