 Hi, this is Jay Fidel, St. Tech. This is Hawaii, the state of clean energy. We also do entrepreneurial things. And today we have a really interesting couple, Lauren Pierce and Spencer Vanderkamp, of Real Fresh. If you love fish, you're going to love this show. I'm telling you now. And of course, Mitch Ewan. And he will introduce them in a moment. But first we're going to talk to our spokesman from Hawaiian Electric, Peter Rossek, because what he's going to tell you is very important to a lot of people. Hi, Peter. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you, Jay. It's really, it is a very important message for a lot of people in Hawaii. As of September 1st, we're going to start resuming disconnections or non-payment of electric bills. So we know there are a lot of people who have financial problems. We know that there may be, they're continuing with possible additional closures and so forth. So it's really important that people contact Hawaiian Electric if they can't make their payments to avoid being disconnected, which is not pleasant and it's not fun and it costs money to get reconnected. So if you are unable to make your full payments by September 1st, it's really important, and we're going to be saying this again and again, come to HawaiianElectric.com slash payment arrangement and fill out a form there. It'll show you what you can do there. It'll explain the various options that we have. We do have a number of options for stretching out payments. And ultimately everything's got to be paid for, but we understand a lot of people are not in a position to pay everything right away. So and we also have on our website some places for people to look for help. Each county has a slightly different way of getting CARES money and other kinds of assistance. We also have a link to HawaiianEnergy.com, which is, you know, the great source for ways to save energy, which is always good, but it is especially important right now if you can't pay your bills. So, you know, there's a message we're going to be drumming very loud for the next, really for the next four weeks or so, because before, between now and September 1st, it's really important that people come to our website, fill out a simple form about and make some kind of arrangement. If we haven't heard from a customer, we've got to assume they're not going to pay their bill if they're deadbeat. Whether they are or not, we don't know, but we can't do anything until the customer contacts us and says, look, I can't make my full payment. Here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to pay over a four-month period, six-month, whatever. And, you know, like everything else, if you're sincere and you make an effort, get in touch, work something out, we're going to do everything we can to avoid putting you in difficulty with so many people home. Of course, we don't want to cut anybody's power off. So, what was the name of that sign again, Peter? It is, whileelectric.com slash payment arrangement. All one word, payment arrangement. And you'll find there, that will start you going for links and things like that about how to deal with this. We have other sites that'll tell you where you could pay and all of these other things. But if you're going to have a problem between now and September 1st paying your bills, oneelectric.com slash payment arrangement is a really important site you need to visit. Or just go to the website of oneelectric.com and you'll find links to get you to that. But you got to let us know. That's the main thing. Well, there are, in your memo that you sent, your press release, I guess, you talked about other programs where people could, you know, get some help through the CARES program, the federal care program in the city and county, in Maui County, in Hawaii County. Where do they go for that? You list those possibilities on your website. That news release which we sent out is also on the website. You could link to that on the very first page and that will tell you everything that I'm telling you even more clearly. But so we have those links to the ways each county is a little different, as I said. So you got to pay attention if you're on Maui, Big Island or Oahu, how to get in touch with these people. And there are other, you know, there are various charitable organizations and so forth. But, you know, so there are ways to get help, there are ways to avoid getting disconnected. And it just, it's going to take some initiative by the people who are having a problem making payments. Okay. Well, I hope you'll come back between now and the end of August anyway to talk about this some more. Make sure everybody knows about it. We absolutely will. Anytime, anytime we can get a platform like this will be, you'll see us on, you know, the other kind of television. You'll see us on, he'll hear us on the radio. We are making a hundred percent effort to make sure nobody says, oh gee, I didn't know I was going to be disconnected. That'd be the really, that'd be the worst thing for all of us. We hate to do that. It's the worst last resort. So we will do everything we can from our end to help people who are having a problem. We all know people in that situation. That's Peter Rosick, the spokesman for Hawaiian Electric. And that is Hawaiian Electric Hawaii's Electric Company. Thank you very much, Peter. Okay. We're going to move now and we're going to go to our main show. We have Lauren Pierce and Spencer Vandekamp and Michiu and it's going to give us a little background so we can understand them and what they are doing and the excitement of their project. We're really lucky to have Lauren and Spencer here. They're part of the UH Venture Competition, which is put on, I believe, by the Scheidler Business School. And so they gave a pitch. These accelerator programs that teach people a lot about business and how to promote their idea. And one of the things they have to do is make what they call a pitch deck. And so they have our fascinating idea and they brought a copy of their pitch deck to share with us. So it's not going to be death by power point by any means. So what we want to do is work our way through it. And as Jay said, when we started the program, this is a really fascinating business idea. So over to Lauren and Spencer. So tell us all about real, fresh fish. Yeah. Thank you, Lauren and Spencer for coming on the show just to put it in perspective. This was in the, was it the Business Venture Competition at Scheidler and you presented this program, this entrepreneurial idea and you won in that program. Am I right? I'm going to get to the finals. We've got third place. Okay. And this, this venture that you're doing involves fresh fish. I could be wrong on some of my extrapolation here, but it seems like you get the fresh fish from the fishermen here in Hawai'ine directly. Okay. And then you, you buy that and you resell it to consumers. And we're going to talk about exactly what that, you know, chain of custody is and how you manage that. But it sounds like a beautiful idea for exactly the right time. And gee whiz, I like to hear all about it. So tell us all about it. Yeah. Thank you for having us. So our, basically the idea is just to give a platform to connect the local small scale fishermen and other producers directly to the consumers so they can buy the freshest fish possible. And the idea kind of started through our own fishing adventures and me being commercially licensed trying to sell fish and seeing the avenues that I had to sell fish or lack thereof. And then just looking for ways to make it work as well as seeing like the amount of markup that you see in the stores from what the fishermen are getting for their fish to what it retails at in stores. There's really like a huge disconnect there. So we started brainstorming ideas to fix those problems. Well, sounds to me like if you put the pieces together, the fishermen's a winner because now he has a market where the market's not so hot. Restaurants are closing all over the place. I mean closing permanently all over the place. And the consumer is in better shape because he pays less for the lack of a middleman. And you become the middleman. Now, are you buying on consignment? Are you buying, you know, the fish and reselling it? Or are you just brokering it in some way, connecting the buyer and the consumer buyer and the fisherman seller? Which way is that working? How is the fish being, you know, handled? So it would be connecting fishermen directly with consumers and we would just be a platform to help facilitate that. And so you can browse whatever fish is caught that day and you can eat it for dinner. Okay, so that means software. It means a pretty sophisticated website. It's a what do you call it? It's a it's a it's a selling website. It's an e-website kind of thing. So I go on there. I guess I have an account. I go on this website and I check out to see what fish and I get and I get to what deal directly with the fishermen and the fisherman then I order the fish through the website. I guess I pay on the website and a lot of fishermen are not going to have their own websites or their own means of payment. So I have to put my credit card on the website, pay on the website, and then you will in turn turn that money over to the fisherman. And now how does this is a question Mitch had before the show. How does the fish then get from the fisherman to the consumer? So yeah that's basically it so far. Be able to facilitate payment would be a great service to both the fisherman and the consumer and then they would be able to to meet up and feel comfortable knowing that the fishermen are vetted and they could go to their house or to right to the dock and pick it up right then and there and be able to either process the payment through the website or handle cash in person or arrange for delivery through the fishermen themselves. A lot of fishermen are willing to deliver the fish or even just the third-party delivery apps that are real common these days. Oh like Uber or something. Yeah yeah okay so um all right um so it can be any number of ways but you you don't actually handle the delivery all you do is put them together. Is that right? Ideally not to keep the the fish as fresh as possible and to keep it as affordable as possible but maybe eventually down the line might have like distribution centers or kind of like like holding centers in theory just to make it more convenient for people. Yeah how do you how do you vet the fisherman? I mean what do you say to a fisherman? Is your fish fresh? I promise you he'll tell you his fish is fresh. How do you vet a fisherman? Yeah a lot of fishermen uh there's a bit of a stigma but it's really not necessary. A lot of fishermen know that they they try to take as good of care of their fish as they can to to get the best prices for it but also we have certain guidelines that they have to certify to follow as well as giving the consumer their own resources to to know what they're looking for and to be able to see that this fish is fresh and it was taken care of. You can you can see it if you know what you're looking for. Now one of the structural issues I see in what you've presented is this if you put your buyer and your seller together the next time around your buyer and your seller can deal directly and cut you out how do you pretend against that? Yeah so ideally the trust in the platform and uh and having it be efficient enough compared to the fisherman having to text 20-30 people they can just send out one mass thing and then they'll have that incentive to help them keep using it as well. Yeah and the messages will be facilitated through our platform real fresh. Yes but suppose I'm a buyer I really like the fish I got from Fisherman X okay and uh I have his I have his contacts I have his email or his phone or both and I call him up after the deal and I say you know Mike that was great fish there I really appreciate that and I'd like to order some more from you and I want to do it on the side because I like to negotiate a price that's slightly lower and no we don't have to deal with real fresh it's just you and me I like you a lot why can't that happen and don't you get cut out and don't you lose your profit going forward? Yeah so there's definitely the chance of like the platform leakage so um one thing to combat that issue specifically would just be the the convenience of the fisherman not wanting to deal with to text all his buyers initially as well as that one fisherman may only fish once a week or once every once a month so the the buyer would want to stay on the platform to have access to other types of fish. So you're assuming uh small consumers you're not assuming restaurants or hotels if we ever have hotels again if I'm a big buyer I'm going to try to cut you out sorry so the question is uh I'm only suggesting that maybe you have to think about this because you know the standard rule is don't don't get cut out you go to all this trouble and then somebody cuts you out that's really mean but it's possible and it's not illegal unless unless you have a contract to that effect where you don't let them cut you out. The other thing is uh I told you before the show I think it's a great idea wonderful idea it's timely it's right now it wraps in COVID it wraps in local fishermen I mean everybody's a winner in this deal there's so much so that you know it it it shouts at you why don't you do this too Mitch why don't you do this why don't I do this why don't I get some friends of mine to do this this is so easy what you got to do is go down to the docks and write some names on a yellow paper and make a website before you know it you know uh you'll put uh Lauren and Spencer out of business um how do you protect your your your venture? Yeah so one thing that's it's really hard to do with the platform like this is uh it's real easy to enter but it's it's hard to scale so uh once we we can't really create barriers to entry but once we scale and and get a bunch of people using the site it'll be a lot harder for competitors to come in since they have to build up both the buyer and the fishermen side and as well as just our industry connections in the fishing world uh I would imagine a few people have as many uh industry connections as we do so just being able to onboard the fishermen like personally would be uh a great um well I've never thought about being exclusive you think you have you could have the negotiating position in the marketplace to be exclusive say to the fishermen you know we're going to do this and we're going to get you a lot of business and assuming we get you the business we think we're going to get you we want you to deal only through us we don't want you to go around and cut us out and we don't want you to deal with any other supplier Mitch is that legal? I think any kind of a business arrangement is legal you're not restricting trade I mean you know the guy has the uh the option of saying yes or no I mean his own boss so but I'm not a lawyer like you that's why that's why I asked you I wanted a completely non-illegal you know response so but you're going to have to see a lawyer about making an agreement I don't think you can do this deal without having an agreement you need an agreement with both sides you are the hub of the wheel and the spokes lead out to your fishermen you got to have an agreement with them and spokes lead out of course to the consumer and both of those contracts are worth putting in some real thought in real time and maybe real money with a lawyer who can write them up profit and save you from the two risks that I identify you know on the other side what's been the uptake from the fishermen I mean what's been your experience so far with them do they view this as a valuable service that they want to sign up as this is working and and how many fishermen have we got here in Hawaii so what's kind of your market for us as far as your supplier base goes so there's kind of like we've done a sense of amount of like market research and just from our industry knowledge as well we kind of create two market segments one is the long line fishery and then the other is everything else basically so just excluding the long liners at first we're looking at about 1500 commercial licensed fishermen wow and then they estimate about double the amount of recreational fishermen as well that's just in Hawaii presumably you could do this anywhere you could do this globally I guess yes yeah you know one issue is you got a lot of guys down there in the docks you know the ones who you mentioned in your you're gonna go to your slides in a minute you know who make a living at the fish auctions at four o'clock in the morning what are the how are they going to think about you are they going to like you so this the coronavirus thing has really flipped everything on its head and before you've never seen those big long line boats selling directly from the dock but lately with such little demand from the hotels and the restaurants the auction has actually been turning away fishermen and saying we won't take your fish it's gonna it's just gonna flood the market and drop the prices to nothing so they've been selling right from the dock so yeah I think we could even open up that other customer segment to the long liners as well yeah right good thought good thought we have this on tape also you know okay so let's talk about your slides why don't you call up some of your slides and and let's see what you've got going Spencer Spencer I assume you're the CEO yeah correct okay yeah all right and and Lauren helps you in many ways including being an executive vice president or something along those lines yes I'm the CEO okay all right so let's let's talk about your slides what do you want to look at okay um yeah we'll go that we'll jump into the first slide yeah it's kind of like our other little elevator pitch here that um some statistics for people is that the on average consumers can expect to see 30% lower prices than they do in grocery stores sometimes more like 50 or even 100% um savings and then for the fishermen they can see 200 even up to a thousand percent and design just made up numbers the other day I sold an hockey for about like a dollar 80 a pound and then we walked over to Nikos and I saw $21.99 for a kind of ahi wow yeah wow there's a spread there isn't there yep as you can tell when you're trying to buy a fish in stores the selection is not the best and you can tell that the fish is definitely not fresh that's because the fish are actually at sea for a long time can you tell if the fish is uh or yeah a cut of fish is fresh from a picture because uh you know you see pictures uh so I think the picture the fish auctions show pictures don't take somebody's showing pictures uh are you going to be able to show pictures on your website yep for sure they'll be able to post pictures of their their catch they can take a picture with their cell phone right the fishermen can do that in a perfect world the way it's going to work is the fishermen will finish their day of fishing start heading back to the harbor take some pictures of their catch and post it and then they'll have five ten fifteen buyers waiting for them at the pier that'll be ideal scenario okay time to time you're going to go on the boat right you're going to go on the boat and see if it's uh hygienic and see if they're doing what they say they're doing right yeah we kind of have like uh certifications make sure they're following certain procedures as well okay mitch what are the signs that a fish is not fresh so if you can see the whole thing um one of the big indicators is the eye whether or not it's like cloudy or kind of like it doesn't look quite right and then just like the the texture of if it's the whole fish itself is kind of like mushy you can kind of see that it wasn't uh maybe either wasn't cold enough or it's pretty old right so it was the uh follow on question does the fisherman actually package the fish i mean he packs it in ice when he's out there fishing but when he gets back and say i only want a pound he has to chop off a pound of fish and uh as you have his own containers packs it in ice and then i guess uh shuts the container down and gives it to her as a shrink wrap it or how's that part of it handled so likely it'll be a ziploc bags if people want to buy a fillet rather than the whole fish yeah or even um we're looking into some like kind of proprietary packaging that we could use that people would uh could benefit from i guess you can hand out baggies with your logo on it right yeah yeah that'd be cool yeah easy to do is there a fillet in the pipeline here is anybody going to get in the middle of that delivery system and fillet the fish for it so as of now we're planning to have like basically like a wholesale service where the fisherman can say okay i can cut this fish for you or like if you just want a fillet i'll cut off a fillet for you oh very good if they're willing to do that that helps because it makes your market that much stronger yeah for sure yeah and from our experience a lot of the fishermen are willing to do that yeah and if you're talking about the small buyer the small buyer is not in the mood to do the fillet if you can get somebody to help them do that or we can get it delivered that way yeah and we plan to mainly our kind of target market would just be your everyday family but we we don't intend to like disqualify restaurants or hotels or anyone from using the site as well oh yeah we kind of talked about these already mainly like the just low prices wherever wherever they can sell their fish these days so yeah just kind of to give a another overview just fisherman catches the fish posted on the website the consumers who have signed up to be notified will get like a text message that said this fish was just caught in your area if you want to meet it up here's the price and then they can either meet up and then pay through the website or pay cash so are you going to be on all islands what are you planning yep we're planning to launch on all the islands in Hawaii and then hopefully if the the idea works basically you expand the mainland and internationally what's the name of the website real real fresh dot com real fresh we're working on a domain name but um most likely real fresh dot com okay and lauren you're working on the website yes are you gonna are you gonna include recipes yes yes for sure we do plan to have recipes and other kind of how-to videos for consumers and fishermen alike yeah that's just kind of an illustration of our our price differential from like the average wholesale auction price up to the retail pricing stores so are you going to negotiate the prices with the fishermen or just let them set the price so yeah we probably we'll have it so they can set whatever price they want but we will have like resources for the fishermen like a suggested retail price or like today's market price and are you going to tell the consumer what you're paying or what the fisherman is charging so yeah it'll be kind of sort of like craigslist where they they go on that specific profile or that post and it'll say here's a pound of ahi for ten dollars a pound here's a pound of mahi at an each price for like a whole or filet however they want to buy it okay well the consumer be able to figure out or will the fishermen be able to figure out what your cut is yeah we're definitely still considering like different revenue models but uh we're working on either a commission or maybe a kind of like a membership fee to be on the website yeah i think this is a great slide to really show the value proposition here so yeah you can see the savings for the buyers and the fishermen and the fishermen would set the price at fifteen dollars or whichever price they want but you can see it's a big difference if you're buying twenty one ninety nine land and they set the price to fifteen dollars that's a lot of savings especially by more than one pound of fish savings against what though because the market is really in the tank right now so it's the savings against the historical cost right well even you see it's funny the throughout the coronavirus the the ahi prices specifically at the wholesale level have fluctuated from the lowest lows to the highest highs and what you've seen in the stores is pretty much almost the highest highs like it's still expensive in stores yeah that picture from foodland is from three weeks ago ah okay and uh if there is any other type of fishing but that particular fish is most likely a long line fish and by the time it hits the grocery store it's probably three weeks old and the real fresh fish was swimming that day suppose you get a call one day from a Japanese market or a Japanese food wholesaler and he and he says to you Spencer you know we'd like to buy some of your fish we love Hawaii fish so can you freeze this and put it in dry ice and and ship it off to us would you be able to expand your operation to include that yeah we would love to facilitate something like that um so these are some additional value propositions that we have other than the price savings the methods of fishing that we would promote like from the small scale fishermen would have methods of less flycatch and it would help Hawaii be less dependent on imported goods as a whole and that's pretty important these days it also increase transparency of where food your food comes from which is a big demand right now for consumers yeah sustainability is everything but you know mitch doesn't this remind you of the the ahi cage farm project that was off and it failed but it'll come back I think there was a little contention with the local fishermen uh where somebody wanted to do uh aquaculture ahi and big cage um and what kind of technology for it if it comes back how can you click into that with with real fresh I think that we would mostly want to focus on wild caught um ahi but I don't see why there won't be an exclusion as of right now for um cage doggy yeah okay all right there's an organization over at Nelha now that you guys I don't know if you've heard of Hatch but they're an entrepreneurial group they kind of do accelerators as well uh and because Nelha has a has a lot of uh farm fish going on there uh aquaculture so you might want to tap into them with your business model and they're uh global they're out of Norway originally so I highly recommend if you didn't know about them that you go and contact them they're always looking for new cohorts as they call it and uh I understand that they do have money so uh to you know promote the fisheries trade and their experts in the fisheries trade so you might want to look at uh look at that as another option for your business model so what's been the take up so far I mean you just started if you just started this uh have you had initial sales and how how's it going so yeah we've uh we've been doing a bit of uh it's kind of like customer outreach surveys and things like that trying to see whether or not we really want to push forward and go ahead with this uh we've spoken to um several developers and have kind of found the developer we've planned to go with if we can get the funds together so it's a develop what's a developer for this purpose what is your developer software developer and like web designer to help us build the the functionality of the site very important that's another question I had what what are the kinds of products could you sell besides fish I mean once you develop the the app the application and there must be like the world's your oyster you know you could sell just about anything in this line did you say oyster I thought you said oyster I said oyster that's part of oyster too but so yeah we have kind of a bigger hopes for the the website too in that like micro scale production being able to have like say you have a backyard um a mango tree or a little garden in your backyard or aquaponics you'd be able to sell your access to people in your immediate community which would produce like dependence on shipped goods and store bought goods so yeah I would help wise food security I would think the coffee industry might be an interesting target okay uh any more slides you want to talk about or should we go to the future yeah I think we're good to move on okay so you guys are doing like you know minimal sales right now you're developing contacts you're building a website hopefully you're going to build good contracts need that um and uh where does it go from there I mean question I suppose is are you serious about this is this going to be a career for you is this going to be a company that you invest your time into and and money and all the money your family will give you and your credit cards and everything until you get some real capital yeah is this serious yeah we're serious we put a ton of time into it already and we plan to move forward so next step we're basically finalizing a few things as far as like user interface goes on the on the website and then we'll um work on getting together some funds and then start developing to the site so what kind of funding are you projecting that you need what's what's the as I say in the trade what's the raise um we we're trying to get very lean in the beginning really do like a minimum viable product at first so we're looking for about 20 to 30 000 to begin with and we'll probably it'll probably be like kind of pre-seed funding from family and friends most likely and then be able to kind of prove the concept and then hopefully attract some bigger investors and and really improve the site you're looking aside from the developers and all that and I suppose the lawyers with the contract now you're looking to hire anybody and who and who would that be and what would that person do yeah we definitely be interested in um I've been talking a few kind of people more on the technical side um to help us with the the development of the the website and then most likely um some kind of in-house like accounting or financing as well someone who does that through that process yeah this is a great play it's a great play it's a certainly it's at the beginning now but it's a great play and it's going to depend on all the elements we've talked about how well you you do the website and the e-commerce um how well you do the relationship with the fishermen and the marketing with the consumers I mean all these things potentially are doable and doable well and the market clearly is good for you you pick the right moment the right problem to solve and furthermore I mean part of my basis for saying that is we're not done with COVID we're not done with the trouble in the economy we're not done with the failures of restaurants things are changing all around the one thing it's not changing is people like fish they're going to insist on fish it's going to be a staple especially here okay Mitch you want to want to ask him any more questions or close up how you want to deal with this now I think I'm going to close up but I just uh want to give a plug for the University of Hawaii office of technology transfer in the Shilin Business School who are helping our young entrepreneurs uh enter uh the uh the perilous shark infested no pun intended waters of business and it's really good to see uh you two guys of uh are are getting in there getting your feet wet or getting bledded whatever you want to call it and uh getting out there with a really great uh idea and uh I guess we wish you all the best and keep us informed and uh when you got something you come on back and talk to us about it and tell us how you're doing what you learned in the hard cruel world of business so yeah yeah yeah we'd be interested in talking to you again and I and I will leave you with my comment is uh something that that Mitch said it's uh the world indeed is your your oyster there you go yeah we'd like to thank our mentor Mark to Laura for bringing your attention okay yeah thank you guys for for having us on here thank you yeah uh Lauren and uh and Spencer really appreciate you coming on the show and Mitch of course thank you so much for setting this up hello hi you guys all right