 Okay, we're back on Think Tech here in a different Wednesday afternoon at four o'clock. We're doing Hawaii the state of clean energy, and it's more than energy about energy. It's energy about entrepreneurial activity, and because we want to study entrepreneur activities so we can apply that to energy, okay? And we were in touch with Austin Yoshino and Everett Amundsen, and they just won the business plan competition at the Charlotte College, so they're heroes. And for the second time. Yeah, yeah, and so, Mitch, why don't you give a more detailed, but not a very detailed introduction of these guys. Yeah, well, we, they're good friends of ours. They came on the show almost about a year ago with another, their first invention, which was a gyroscopic, almost like a chair to. Yeah, gyroscopic walker. There you go. So that people with cerebral palsy who couldn't stand on their own could actually walk basically on their own assisted by this chair. It was a really a fascinating piece of technology. And then I found out from the UH Office of Technology transfer that these guys have won yet another competition for a whole different product. So now there's serial entrepreneurs and serial business plan winners. And really great. So I thought we'd bring them back to tell us all about eight. I'm really curious about what the status is of the first invention. And then they can talk a lot more about this new one. So what is the status of the walker? So the walker is still in development. Unfortunately, there's have been some time lags. Just the complexity of the medical device base is kind of getting to us. But, you know, we're continuing to work on that. So in steady progress, a lot of 3D printed models, a lot of CAD drawings, a lot of gyroscopic research. We're very excited about that. As far as the new product, this kind of came along when we were doing research into the harnesses for the walkie device. We found that the compression can help to calm people. And so we thought, you know, if we pivoted it and change it a little bit, we could tackle this anxiety and mental health space. It's something that we're very familiar with and we're very excited and very passionate about. OK, so the second company, the one we're talking about, another one you just won the most recent award about, is the mental space. You're doing mental now. So you guys, students, would you classify yourself as full-time entrepreneurs? Full-time entrepreneurs. Yeah, Austin actually just graduated as well as a few of our other executives. So he's now out in the real world being a full-time entrepreneur. I'm still a student. So I have one year left at UH before I finish up my degree. But I spend about, you know, 20 hours a week at least for on our company. So I'm a part-time entrepreneur. OK, what's the name of your company? Monoola Innovations, Incorporated. And what are you, co-stockholders in the company? Is that what it is? Yes, yep. We're co-founders. He is the CEO and I am the CSO, Chief Sales Officer. Do you have an office or do you operate out of one of your garages? We're definitely operating out of our garages. You know, it's the pinnacle of entrepreneurship. Got to start somewhere. Just being realistic here. Oh, absolutely. Austin, you have some stuff. Let's just get a little plug in for the accelerator part of this, because this morphed from the UH Accelerate that originally was downtown. Now it's back with the Scheidler Business School. So could you just give us a little update of what that whole program is all about, as it changed? Because you did the first one, so obviously. Right. So yeah, we've been fortunate enough to work with PACE through almost all of their competitions now. Austin competed in the Breakthrough Innovation Challenge, which is one of their first ones, and did that himself and then brought our team on for the Business Plan Challenge, which we competed in one last year. And then this year, it got taken over and rebooted. And it is now the University of Hawaii Venture Challenge. Yeah. What do you need that stuff for? What do you need that stuff for? Why don't you just go and do business? What do you have to get involved in competitions, especially if you win them all the time? It's a great way to do that. It's a great way to get money. It's a very non-diluted, equity-free grant money, as well as resources. We've got an excellent marketing package that we plan to put to use very soon. And as exposure, we're on the show with you guys now. This is a big time, Austin. Yeah. Oh, it is. And really has been another one of the amazing resources we've been able to get through this. And one of the reasons why we keep coming back is because they do a lot of the professionals and residents, you can talk to people who've done this for years and been doing it. They've always been able to hook us up with some amazing mentors. And many of them are still on our board today. And so it's just really about the resources. And it's great to get a big check at the end of the day, too. Let me ask you about the mentors. I keep hearing about mentors. So do you really need mentors? Why don't you just have a drink together and be creative? An example of a question you would put to a mentor and the kind of answer you would get from a mentor that took you to a step that you would not have been able to achieve without him or her? Well, as you can see, we're fairly young, definitely on the inexperienced side. We're creative. We're quick learners, but we lack experience. And that's where the mentors really come into play. And it's a lot of the nitty gritty things that you wouldn't necessarily think of like, hey, this is how you have to file your taxes. Or these are the incorporation rules. Or this is the product launch cycle that isn't necessarily taught in the textbook. And you have to know by experience. Or this way might not work. And I've tried it this way. So there's just so many different questions to ask. And it really takes a specialized mentor. Ever and I and the entire team put ourselves in being pretty good at a lot of different things, which is kind of what you have to be in entrepreneurship. But there's times where we need very specialized knowledge. We need specialized lawyers. We need specialized accountants and financial people and marketing is a very specialized field as well. So having those mentors is really helpful in completing and executing our business ideas. Okay, so when you go to a business plan competition, you have to pitch, right? That's part of it. You have to stand up there. You prepare in advance. You prepare your slides. Do you guys pitch together or is it a tag team kind of affair? How do you do that? And then we'll ask you to do a little pitching but with the slides. Just to show pitching works, you know? Yeah, I'd love to. So what we usually do is we will develop it. Usually one of us will start out and do the story part of it. So originally when we did the first one, Austin did it because obviously he has the connection with his little brother. And then for this one, I took the bulk of it. It was my partner Kendra and I, we did that together. Kendra is an amazing business woman. And I took the story because I have struggled with anxiety throughout my life and still currently struggle with it. And so it's a very personal topic to me. So we like to start out with the personal side of it. Tell the story, really get the message behind there before. And then we sort of dive into why we're doing it. Make sure we have the market and everything to back it up. And then we sort of just go back and forth depending on who's a little more clear on what parts were you a shy child ever? I was actually not. I was not. I already knew that. I knew that. What would you add to that, Austin? I've always been loud. I mean, can't you tell? He's very outgoing. So, okay, you do a tag team then each one of you gets up to do a little thing then the other one and so forth. Okay, we have a couple slides. We like to make it really dynamic and go back and forth within the presentation. Make sure we're keeping everyone's attention. Do you? But we'd be happy to do some slides for you. Okay, do them. So one of the things that we took a very hard look at when we were getting into this space because I had a lot of personal experience with it but we needed to know what people were already doing. What's where they're already spending their money, what they're doing instead and what we're trying to one out essentially. And so within that research, we found that physical touch was one of the biggest things such as hugging or cruddling. People also used sometimes drugs such as nicotine or marijuana or Adderall or other prescription drugs to manage their stress. Or food. Absolutely. Or food, yes. Another big one. For alcohol. Or alcohol. Yeah, absolutely. So we really wanted to dive into and see, and we saw that at least 50% of people use some sort of a physical touch. That was the really big thing was that they're all across the board as their physical touches. We wanted to really dive into that and have like a really solid solution. Another key point for this is that, for example, the 55% of self-medication, we measured what they did and also how effective it was. And for specifically a self-medication market or sector, there was a big difference between people reported using it and the effectiveness of it. So that was a big clue that like, people are trying different things but it's not necessarily working. And that self-medication isn't necessarily the most healthy thing. So if we can introduce something that works and is healthier, I think we have a really strong play here. And all of this is enhanced in the time of COVID, right? You make that point. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so now we have the statement of the problem. Okay, Nat? Yes. You've stated the problem very succinctly. I appreciate that. Yeah. Now we're gonna say how you move into that space with an idea that nobody else has. Go. Right. So this is the next slide, the science of compression. The way we came up about this idea was thinking, what do people do when they're really stressed? What's something that works really efficiently, really effectively and is very intuitive. You know, and the first thing that came to mind was a hug. You know, you have a really long day, you come home and you get a nice hug. You love one or you're significant other and it makes you feel really warm and really relieves your stress. So we looked into some of the science side of it. You know, currently it's being used by weighted blankets, by swaddling, by hugs and cuddling. And the effects are increased oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin, a decrease in blood pressure, a slower heart rate and a more calm and relaxed feeling. Okay, hugs are good. I mean, we've known that from the oldest profession. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, so what do you do for making a living on compression and the like? Sorry, would you mind repeating the question? Yeah. Well, what's your solution? What are you selling? You are selling something, aren't you? Right, right. How'd you come up with the solution? The solution is a discrete undergarment vest. We designed this with the idea of it being used with a working millennial. So, you know, you're about to go to a business meeting and you're really stressed, you're gonna give a public presentation, you're gonna take a test as a college student, you're really stressed and you can wear this under your clothing where nobody would notice and you could activate the compression mechanism very discreetly. So, for proprietary reasons, I can't open it up, but this is the vest with the strings on the side that pull down to activate the compression mechanism. So, it's fairly simple, but very effective, very discreet and tackles what we want. And adjustable. And adjustable, that's another big key as well. Yeah. So, one of the main pain points we found is we've ordered a few of these. No, it's not bulletproof. Not bulletproof? Not bulletproof. Not yet. Not yet, not yet. When you're skiing, can you turn it on and get warm? Yeah. Right now, it's just the mechanical aspect of that compression, but we're really looking forward to our second version, which is gonna be the main point for us raising our round that we're doing right now as that we're gonna be incorporating a lot of sensors. And so those sensors are gonna help us measure breathing rate, heart rate, and basically be able to communicate with your phone and be able to give you some knowledge on how stressed, maybe you're finding out that you're more stressed in the beginning of the day, so you try and move some stuff around or you get more anxious before you go to sleep. And we're even looking into the possibility of being able to wear this overnight so that you could sleep in this and it could help track your sleep as well. This reminds me of something that Pat Sullivan did a few years ago. Mitch, what was the name of his company now? Ocean, yeah. He had a bed with a blanket, a magic blanket, I called it, and you lay down in the blanket and the blanket would do your heart rate and it would do your breathing and it would report on a monitor. I don't think he ever got it to take blood pressure because that was complex. That was an idea that came out of Ocean several years ago. This sounds similar to that. Yeah, very interesting. I think the application is a little different but the technology application for a similar reasoning could be true, but yeah. What kind of age groups would be attracted to this? Everybody from zero to a hundred? Yeah, if you want a niche group, we started off at looking at our age, our demographic because we are the generation that brought mental health awareness to light. We've been very open about these issues in ways that other generations have not. However, during our time of market research, we found that it could be used by anybody, lonely, elderly in care homes, middle-age parents in the workforce and really it's anybody who is stressed which is a very broad term, but in a very big market, especially now. So what I get so far is that the best would actually help you deal with the stress because it's a soft, warm, what do you call it? A cloth mother in the old psychology, cloth mother. But you're going further than that. You want to put sensors all around the thing and you want to read heart rate, you want to read temperature, you want to read breathing, all that. Now, so I give you heart rate, temperature and breathing. I'm going to give you that with sensors. How far have you gotten? Have you designed software that actually interprets those signals? Have you designed a wristwatch, for example, or a little device on your phone? Maybe an app that will tell you what the conclusion is from the changes in those metrics? Right. Yeah, we're actually working with a, we're working with an app developer starting to begin to work with an app developer in order to start that process. We're actually just about to launch a Kickstarter for our version one of the product. So we're still finishing up our first round here and then we'll be launching the second round, but we'll be watching this Kickstarter, I believe, within a week or two is the goal, depending on some marketing materials. And we're excited to share this with everyone. Okay, well, how about sharing the marketing idea? Where would you market it doing? How is the big question, would you market it? There's a big health services industry out there. I'm not sure how healthy they are right now, but here we are and maybe this is helpful. How would you market this to a health service professional, maybe an administrator of a hospital or a private physician? What would you say and how would you reach that person? Well, if our marketing plan is to start with our age group and that would be done easily through social media ads, word of mouth, micro influencers on social media. But if we want to target the health administers market, it would be more of a B2B model, making connections with hospitals, getting into the hands of them, having them purchase bulk orders for their staff. It's something that we're looking into, but for the first Kickstarter campaign, we're niching in on our demographic, trying to prove the concept because we really need to get this in the hands of people, get some user feedback, see how they like it, see what works, see what doesn't. And it really proved the concept of people would wear a discreet vest and use it for compression and it'll help them in their everyday life. We obviously very strongly believe in this idea and we have market research to back this, but it's always great to have real life market data putting it out in the world and getting real user responses. So yeah. Which one of you guys does the sewing? That would be Kendra. Yeah. So our team member Kendra is actually a very talented seamstress and on top of her already vast repertoire of business skills, but I actually did a little bit of sewing as well. So we spent about, what was it, like six hours up on the roof? No bro, it was like six hours a weekend for like a month. That's true. I learned how to sew for this. I mean, I can't sew straight, but I learned how to sew just to make this prioritized. It was quite the process. Well, when you get beyond this, okay, and you want to do volume, where are you going to go for sewing? So we're actually working with the, oh, go ahead. I was saying the same exact thing, looking at some national manufacturers. Yeah, we're trying to keep it in country as much as possible because we'd love to be able to slap the American made on that. But with the manufacturing resources available in the US and times like these, we unfortunately might have to go out of country for just in order to keep the cost as low as possible. Nitru had something. We're the initial prototypes. So we worked with a local manufacturer, Palm and Claw, she was excellent, really good quality, but just doesn't have the resources to mass manufacture. Yeah. So what about the, how well does the material hold up to this? Is it washable? Like you see the guy on my pillow, he always says, yeah, I can just store your pillow in the washing machine. I've had a chance to wear it enough to find out what works and what doesn't work. Yep, I've been wearing it off and on since we were able to get that version of our minimum viable product. And I wear it for meetings, for tests, for presentations. It's really comfortable. I wear it underneath, like I would wear it underneath a shirt like this, for a time like this, if I were not as confident as I am in my public speaking skills, to give myself a little boost, be able to calm yourself down, right before you go in. And even really the goal of this is that you wouldn't be able to tell even if I'm sitting right here and I just reach down and pull this, you can't really see what I'm doing, but that I would have initialized the compression for the vest and would have already started to calm down a little bit. So you actually feel that, you feel that experience. Do you have to tighten it up or something? Do you have to like pull strings like on an airplane safety vest so that it gets tight enough? And how many sizes do you have? Small, medium, large? Would one fit me? Would one fit Mitch? He's taller, you know? How many, how are you doing that? Well, we're working with our manufacturers in order to do this sizing. Right now we're looking at doing a small, medium, and large, but once we're done with this first run, then we'll most likely look into expanding that for big and tall. And so do you have to tighten it or does it have to be? Yeah, so there's two tightening mechanisms on these. Yeah, so essentially you zip up the front of the vest and then put it on and then you pull down on two strings and they're on each side and it compresses. And then you can jump out of the plane that when you've done that. Right, but how do you uncompress? You just adjust it like you're adjusting your shirt. You're pulling your shirt down, yep, yep. You just sort of play with it a little bit and it naturally releases. Okay, I get my question now is about have we finished the slides, Austin? Are we done? Is there any others you want to share? I believe there are a couple more about the market research. We can move regardless. Well, okay, I'll tell you what my question was, maybe you can weave it in somehow. So you've been through this, you prepared for it, you presented, you guys do have a kind of rhythm between you where you can do the tag team routine, which is really important because investors want to see that you get along. They want to see that you work together, that you're on the same page. And so the tag team thing is really important. But my question to you is this, what sold them? Why did you win? What was it to turn them on? How did you convince them that you were the top of this whatever group it was in terms of the competition? Did they tell you, do you know? Well, I mean, we can assume from our winning twice now but we're very lucky with the people that we have. It really is a lot about the talent and the people that we're able to utilize. Like I've mentioned, our mentors and our amazing team of executives and vice presidents. But I think that really what sets us apart is that we really, like I mentioned, we always include a compelling story and then we back it up with evidence. It's like, you state something, you get them hooked involved, you share with them why we care about this product so much, why it affected me personally, and now I'm able to use it to help my anxiety and stress. And then just back that up with all the data we can, make sure that we are very thorough, we pride ourselves on having rebuttals or points. So when the judges ask questions, you need to be able to come up with something fast. So you either have to already know it or be able to know how to think on your feet. Yeah, Boston, what would you add to that? I would say a common question is, why are you doing this? We've been able to avoid that purely based on our personal drive. Like you look at the products that we're making and there is no doubt that we're very passionate about it. We care about it and we're very knowledgeable in the field. For other businesses, it's like, okay, this is a really cool product but why are you passionate about this? Do you just wanna be rich? Do you just like this space or are you really passionate about it? Do you really know it? But for us, we're very first-hand experience knowledge, very passionate and it's very personal. So I think that shows through our pitches as well as being storytellers. We craft our presentations very precisely. You think you could handle a shark tank? You think you could handle a shark tank? I would love to try. Yeah, yeah, I would love to try. We had a guy on the show a few weeks ago, Rob, he'll come to me. And he's the guy who does these streamers, these orange streamers. Right. Anyway, he was on shark tank and he lost. They didn't give him, they didn't offer him anything, nothing. But he said it was tremendous because he got all these inquiries from all over the country from other people. So, yeah, that's why. It doesn't matter if you're winner or not. It's an excellent exposure. I wanna ask you one other question is that shark tank would ask you this question. Why this product buy you guys when somebody else could knock you off overnight? They could build the same kind of vest and it really wouldn't be an infringement that I can see. Even if you had a patent, you don't have a patent, do you? And so why wouldn't you get, oh, you have a utility or rather a provisional patent? I'm sorry, yeah. We have a trademark on the name as well as we're working on design patents for the version two. What name is that that you have the trademark? The stress vest. Okay, yeah. So, but why couldn't I knock you off tomorrow morning? Why couldn't I do that? I think our power here is in brand loyalty. When we launched the market research, we had gotten 100 interviews in two or three days and it was all from peers reposting our market research ask. And so I think that shows that our peers are very excited about this product and they understand that we've put a lot of passion and love into making this product for them. Yeah, sure, you wanna rip off our product but there's intuitive knowledge that you're not gonna know because you don't take the time to ask the people what their real problems are. And that's research that we've done and we're not gonna share that. It's proprietary to our company but we know and we design the product based off of those feedback. And so I feel like, yeah, the legal troubles are, I mean, the legal issues, we can't protect it legally as much as we would like but we feel like we have a very strong brand loyalty here and people will feel that. And also just the life experience. I mean, it's what I've lived through and now that I've been wearing this and using this, I think I've worn it most out of anyone on the team and just, so you could probably copy it and get probably 50% of the way there but there's no way that anyone's gonna come even close to what we've been able to fine tune and tweak now that we've been wearing it and using it and doing, like Austin said, all this research really getting in touch with our customers. I think our most important thing is that we care about our customers, we listen to them and that's what we design our products around. And also, as we mentioned, this is version one that's gonna go on the market in a couple of weeks and then we start working on version two. So that's the version two, if you take version one and you buy it and you copy it, well, version two is coming out soon and it's gonna be way better than version one, so. You're not telling us about version two, huh? You're not gonna. No. Well, that would be the one with the sensors but other than that, that's all we can give you for a sneak peek. Yeah, okay, well, we wanna be held in suspense. Mitch, what do you got on there? Well, the Shark Tank also chips people up on their margin that they have. What's the cost of making your product and then what can you sell it for? And then they always fall on their face when they ask for too much money for the evaluation, they're willing to give away. So like the Shark Tank just rip them the shreds at that point. Yeah, absolutely. They all come in with a great pitch and it's really smooth. But then when you get into the money part, that's where they fall apart. Either their expectations are off the chart of how much they're actually worth or their margins aren't there to actually make it a business. And then the other part is, is the people don't recognize, like you just said, the value of the fact that these people on Shark Tank have these tremendous marketing capacity to get the product out there. So I talked. The guy's name, just remember his name is Rob Yonover. And if you guys wanna talk to Rob Yonover, he would tell you a lot of things about his experience as an entrepreneur and on Shark Tank, where he learned a lot. Sure. Okay, well, I guess I'd like to ask you guys for, you know, with the message you wanna leave with our audience about, and especially about young entrepreneurs, you know, who would like to do stuff like you've been doing. What is the one lesson, let me start with you, Everett, the one lesson that you would like to leave with them to help them follow in your footsteps and make Hawaii a center for entrepreneurial activity, not only in this kind of business, but in energy and in all kinds of innovation. Okay, Everett, what's your advice? Well, I would say that the biggest thing is that always look for resources. There's, I mean, when I first got into this space, I really didn't know what I was doing. And Pace and Austin and a bunch of people really helped educate me a whole lot. And so it really, there's a whole lot more out there than you think. And there's so much to be able to support you through either a university or your state. There's, we've been able to work with Hawaii Small Business Development, which has been really awesome. And I would just say, really pick something you're passionate about, try and solve a problem that really means something and then just don't stop trying. Don't stop trying, okay. Don't stop believing. What's the message you would leave with everybody who might wanna be an entrepreneur also? I would say, train yourself to be very good at spotting opportunities. It'd be very easy for us to look at this situation, the world that we live in and be like, man, the economy sucks, the stock market is in the bubble, it's gonna crash. Investors aren't investing. But we don't look at that. We look for the silver linings. We look at the opportunity. It's a very unfortunate circumstance, but the mental health space is gonna be alive and well after this, to say the least. And we have a product in that space. That's a good opportunity for us. Yeah, so something that, it's a little bit of a different mindset. Takes a fair bit of optimism, but I think in the end it would be what leads us to our success. Okay, Mitch, time for you to make some sense out of this. Frankly, you know, you could suggest that they send one of these vests to the White House to assist the mental health. What do you got for a summary and a wrap up on this? Well, my main takeaway is one of optimism that our young people actually have this entrepreneurial spirit. And like Austin said, they're not gonna let all this bad use get them down. And I think the other takeaway is the University of Hawaii is promoting and supporting them to really help the community coming up with everyday solutions for their everyday life. So that the university is helping these young people develop these products, develop these businesses and it's good for Hawaii. So well done to the University of Hawaii, the Scheidler Business School. Yeah, I think that's a universal thought. We really care that you guys succeed. We want you to succeed and spread it around, pay it forward, show what you've done and make this community love you and love entrepreneurship in general. Thank you, Everett. Thank you, Austin. Great to have you guys here. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity again. We're so together, yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much. Aloha.