 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of Lakeable Science here on MacTech Hawaii. I'm your host Ethan Allen. Think Tech is all about technology and how technology is a vital part of our lives and Lakeable Science is all about how science is deeply involved in that process, very much a part of everyone's daily life here. Not something just done in laboratories, just done by scientists, but we all use the processes of science every day in our lives. With me today is Mellie James. Welcome Mellie. Mellie runs a group called Mana Up and has been around doing tech type things here in Hawaii for a number of years. And we're gonna talk today about sort of the role of technology in Hawaii's future and Hawaii's present really, how technology is impacting Hawaii, how it should be and can be impacting Hawaii, why it's so vital and necessary for anyone doing almost any business in Hawaii, right? Yep, exactly. So let's maybe just start a little bit. How did you get into this technology business? So how much time do you have? So the short version is I lived in San Francisco, I was born and raised in Oahu, was living in San Francisco and actually started my first tech company in 2007. This is when the iPhone actually was kind of just coming into existence. Everyone was starting to have these smartphones. Really the web was actually at your fingertips for the first time. So I created the first mobile website for wine, really solving a huge challenge in my own life as to how to find good wine and kind of go beyond picking more than just based on how cute the label is and the price point. So it turned into actually the number one wine app on the iTunes store and a top 100 paid app and top 10 lifestyles app during its time. So that was more my background in tech in San Francisco and so kind of coming back here, working for myself and being able to be back in Hawaii, I kept coming back for a month at a time and really seeing some of this stuff starting to happen with technology here in Hawaii with a, there was a Han accelerator, kind of like a tech kind of like a, I don't know, like a hackathon happening and box jelly was just opening. So I started seeing some movement and thought, hey, all these things I'm really loving in San Francisco, is there a way for us to do something more like this in Hawaii and really create job opportunities, sustainable livelihood, utilizing technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. And so I moved back and quickly joined Blue Startups which is a tech accelerator here in Honolulu and Hank Rogers and Shenoa Farnsworth and really loved working with local companies as well as the ones that we were bringing in from the mainland and international that are all focused on different technology innovation and providing capital of resources and mentorship. Moving on from that, I started working with the University of Hawaii with Accelerate UH and it's their venture accelerator helping to commercialize intellectual property being born at the university, many of which are technology-based innovations. And then kind of moving on, obviously thinking about mana up and other ways that we can broaden how we view entrepreneurship and innovation, especially in the product realm was something that I thought long and hard about with how we can start creating more industry here in the product base that's focusing on our regional strengths, which we believe is the brand of Hawaii. Yeah, and that brings this to the sort of critical sort of transition that happened. Hawaii is this unique place. It's one of the most isolated land mass in the world, right? It's far, far away from other places. Traditionally it's taken a long time and a lot of expense to get to or from or move goods to or from Hawaii, right? But now, boom, we have the web, right? And you can move electrons as easily the mainland or Asia or wherever as if you were next door to them, right? And so suddenly this isolation, this distance is no longer the barrier it used to be, right? Absolutely. And that really has made now a fundamental difference in how businesses have to be conducting themselves here, right? Yeah, I mean, it's really a game changer. Like you said, it was a huge barrier for Hawaii where whether even if it was a product trying to physically get something in every store and every shelf or just trying to do business here without having Skype, without having Zoom, without having video technology and laptops and ways that are able, you're able to work very quickly and remotely. We're seeing this huge amount of people working remotely which is a big movement happening. And why can't you do that here? You've got the surf sand and you've got the right mindset, being able to get stuff done. I think it's kind of a perfect storm for us to have some really awesome entrepreneurs and talent being based in Hawaii. Right. And then there are really unique Hawaiian things, right? Hawaiian customs, Hawaiian ideas, Hawaiian designs, that now it's much easier to export these than it used to be at anything that can be transformed into a 2D image, at least. Absolutely. And that's one of the biggest pieces for Mana Up which is why we believe right now is the time for an accelerator like this to work with product entrepreneurs because it's leveling the playing field. Technology is with e-commerce, Shopify, Amazon, a lot of these big players coming in, allowing local product entrepreneurs to be in, you know, fulfillment centers in the mainland to be able to get eyeballs in these e-commerce stores where you don't have to physically be in all these brick and mortar places all over the mainland. Yeah, you can send your reading card or whatever the other little story about who you are and why this is so cool. And it can be printed in Indiana and shipped to Ohio, right, and nobody knows the difference, but it's Hawaiian, right? Yeah, I mean, and that's a big piece for us. We want the headquarters in Hawaii. We want to create critical mass of job opportunities and capacity for sustainable livelihood here. You know, how can we tell that story of Hawaii in a way that's authentic and taking advantage of some big trends happening, especially as millennials, looking for connection to culture, looking at the package, flipping it over. What are the ingredients? Who's the founder? Where's this actually from? And taking advantage of that because people are looking for authenticity, so why not marry the two? Right, and there's a lot of inauthentic stuff going on, companies or products that claim to be Hawaiian but have nothing really to do with Hawaii. They're very tricky. When you start actually noticing, you flip over the package, you'll say, made with aloha, and it's like, what does that even mean? Yeah, I mean, it's sort of like the old, when it was made in Japan, and they formed a town called Usa, Japan USA, so they say made in USA, you know? But yeah, and we have to sort of fight, I mean, it's a very competitive landscape for products. Yeah, and I think it's important, you look at entrepreneurship in Hawaii, Hawaii was built on entrepreneurship, especially if you wanted to get ahead, you had to start something yourself. And so as we look at these product entrepreneurs, many of them have kind of hovered around this mom and pop level because whether it's a mindset challenge, like it's the cost of doing business in paradise or just actual challenges that are being addressed now through technology with the Shopify's Amazons of the World e-commerce. And really looking at, you know, how can we scale and elevate entrepreneurship businesses here so that we can create the sustainable livelihood and jobs? Yeah, and with things pretty, I was thinking when we were first talking at the show, I was thinking of 3D printing, right? I mean, there's a technology that is growing day by day, right? They 3D print houses now. So once they can do that, they can pretty much 3D print anything they want, right? And so if you have an idea, a product here, again, you don't actually have to ship it somewhere else, right? You can have the idea here, set up your company here, and actually have it 3D printed somewhere else, you know? Yeah, where it's near its market, designing something for Eskimos instead, right? Yeah, I think it's important. I mean, you look at big companies like Manaola, which is one of the top fashion companies in Hawaii right now, in the essence of how they're creating their block prints and the narrative behind, you know, the intention behind the prints, all of that being very authentically Hawaii. Do all the clothes need to be made here? Absolutely not. You know, I think you can, we can absolutely price yourself out of the market if you have to make everything here. But being able to tell that narrative, tell that story, have the world learn about Hawaii through an authentic lens from the people that are actually here is really important as we create, you know, industry that is leveraging technology to get it out to the world. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And this really, you mentioned this the other day when we were talking about, technology's just, it's gotten so pervasive across every aspect of our lives now that it can't help but really influence the way we think about doing business. More and more, I mean, you see people who, you know, not only haven't written a check in years, there are people who don't use cash anymore either, right? Don't use checks or cash. They're doing everything on credit debit cards, you know, swiping cards. I mean, again, it's just the whole world is changing so much and making us in that sense more place-independent, which I think maybe paradoxically drives up the value of a place-based idea, such as Hawaiian item, right? Because it's not just anywhere. It is Hawaii, right? It's very location-focused and it's, I think as the world becomes more homogenous where you were to do a road trip from California to New York and you're on the highway and you're basically hitting a Chili's subway, you know, Applebee's and a couple others and those are essentially the restaurants you're going across 20 different states or 15 states. People are yearning for this connection to culture. They're yearning for something different. And Hawaii being at this, I think there's nothing more location-focused as Hawaii. I mean, it's a globally loved brand. People save up their whole lives to come here. Even people who've never stepped foot here, they buy things that say Hawaii. And that's what we're even seeing with a lot of these companies that are leveraging our brand that have nothing to do with Hawaii. You know, an example of that being Maui Chips. You know, it's actually Frito-Lay has nothing to do with Hawaii. And what it's telling me is, you know, their market research is telling us that Hawaii sells. So why would we not help our local entrepreneurs create, you know, this critical mass industry in Hawaii, leveraging our own brand and helping to tell that story of Hawaii that people are interested in and being able to profit from it? Yeah, and again, I mean, Hawaii has so much room for growth. I mean, we just, you mentioned the Maui Chips, you know, thinking about food, right? We import, what, 90% of our food? And then of the stuff we grow, we export 90% of that. I mean, this is sort of nonsense, right? I mean, all the shipping companies are making the big money, right? Yeah. And it's not the Hawaiians who are doing the work. Yeah, and so actually, we found that. So for our first cohort from Mana Up, we did a call for applications in November. And actually, we're recruiting right now for our cohort too at manauphawai.com. So if anyone's interested in applying, please go to the website. But we did a call for applications, got about 85 applicants, and ended up selecting 10 of them. And what ended up happening was this really neat theme with the first 10. They all had an agricultural component as part of their product mix, meaning they were sourcing or growing their own raw material from the islands that was in their mix. So whether it was the chocolate, Manoa chocolate, Kohana rum, Kunoa cattle, which has a great beef bar, Hawaiian rainbow bees, obviously honey, all of these pieces had an ag component, which is really interesting right now when you think about Hawaii and all this ag land that's coming into play, what does the next 150 years look like for ag? With diversified ag, and especially what you're talking about this local production for local consumption, how can we be more sustainable? Value add food products play a really big role in sustainability from an economic perspective. So for example, if you're growing 30 acres of a raw material for the grocery store, on average about 40% is unusable, whether it's bruised, discolored, disfigured, it can't go on the grocery store shelves. So how can we look at that from a farming perspective and create another revenue line? So one of our companies, Monkey Pot Jams from Kauai, uses all the fruits and vegetables in Kauai that was essentially non-usable. So she makes jams, curds, jellies. That doesn't care whether you're bruised for that. Yeah, exactly, it's all going to the jar. And so it was a huge success story, not only from the farmers who are no longer just having 40% of their inventory going to zero, they're actually being able to take that as a new revenue line, but she is creating these value add products that can pay the farmers for that inventory, make it more economically viable and sustainable for the farm, and create these amazing products that have the brand of Hawaii that are value add, they can come at a higher price point and it's a win-win for everyone. Yeah, yeah, that's very neat, that's very neat. And then there are the other sort of extreme of ag, again, the people at Smart Yields, who, again, a local group who got into this whole sensor technology to help small farmers and large gardeners basically really fine-tune their conditions to maximize growth, right? Yeah, yeah, Vincent and his team are doing some incredible work, and I love that, you always try to solve problems in your own backyard. And obviously this ag and all of this is a big component that we've all been very aware of and looking at how they've created a solution for that via technology and continuing to help farmers yield their crops. Yeah, amazing. We're going to dig into this more deeply when we come back. Right now we're going to take a one-minute break here. Mellie James from Monop is with me today on Likeable Science. I'm your host, Ethan Allen, and we'll be back in one minute. Good afternoon, my name is Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Code Green, a program on Think Tech Hawaii. We show at three o'clock in the afternoon every other Monday. My guests are specialists both from here and the mainland on energy efficiency, which means you do more for less electricity and you're generally safer and more comfortable while you're keeping dollars in your pocket. Hi everyone, I'm Andrea Gabrieli. The host for Young Talent's Making Way here on Think Tech Hawaii. We talk every Tuesday at 11 a.m. about things that matter to tech, matter to science, to the people of Hawaii with some extraordinary guests, the students of our schools who are participating in science fair. So Young Talent's Making Way every Tuesday at 11 a.m. only on Think Tech Hawaii, mahalo. And you're back here on Likeable Science. I'm your host, Ethan Allen here on Think Tech Hawaii. Mellie James from Monop is with me today in Think Tech Studios. We're talking about technology in Hawaii and why technology is a good thing, how Mellie and Monop are trying to bring technology to the forefront and help Hawaiians think more about how to use technology more effectively. We're talking in the first part a little bit about her first cohort through this sort of accelerator process and these are all mostly agricultural products. And, but I want to dig a little bit more than into this whole idea of taking a cohort of people through this process. And what does this really involve? Who comes to you signing up? How do they sign up? How do you select them? What do they do? Yeah, great question. So we're actually right now we're recruiting for our second cohort and it's all through our website. It's a pretty painless process online and not too many questions. And we base it on certain criteria. So the criteria that we base the kinds of companies that we want to work with right now really kind of go into ultimately how we view opportunity for Hawaii. So one, we want the companies to have at least 100,000 annual revenue to apply. Meaning they have product market fit. People are buying their products. They're not trying to figure it out still and really are interested in scaling. Two, they're leveraging the brand of Hawaii in some capacity. So we believe when you're trying to create business in Hawaii, it's so hard to do business here, but how can we create business that makes sense for Hawaii and business that's built to last? And we believe leveraging the brand of Hawaii makes sense for business here and especially business that's interested in scaling. Three, the headquarters has to be in Hawaii. We want to create the next 100 headquarters and the next 100 Hawaii CEOs with multi-million dollar annual revenue companies. Really trying to create that critical mass of job opportunities for Hawaii. Yeah, that's gonna build the whole economy, right? Exactly. And being able to jump around. You know, we've got 100 companies, they've all got five or six management level positions. You shouldn't have to, when you're trying to move back home from college, get one job in Hawaii and have to stay there for the rest of your life. You know, when you have that kind of critical mass and great opportunity, especially when you have a headquarters, you can jump around and be able to create a real career here for life. So that's another big piece. The headquarters has to be in Hawaii. Four, they have to want to scale. There are many companies here at mom and pop level covering basic needs, kind of keep it more of a family business and that's awesome, wonderful. It's just not a right fit for the accelerator. Not what you wanna do, right? Yeah. It has to be in the retail or value add food product, good for export. It's a big piece of this is around e-commerce. Hawaii's actually 51 out of 51 states in the lowest for exports per capita and we wanna change that. Well, yeah, not an enviable position. Yeah. So the companies have to wanna grow beyond Hawaii. So that's really why we created the criteria that way. We did a call for applications, got 85 applicants as I mentioned, and they go through a pretty rigorous interview process. So the ones that meet the criteria that we think are growing, it's an upward trend. For example, Mamalani, which is one of the companies we selected was a natural deodorant, which we know is a big trend right now. They were actually featured in a lure magazine as a top 10 product, must have product. So we're seeing a lot of people not wanting to use the antiperspirants with the aluminum. So we're seeing that as a global trend happening. So that could be a reason we look at a product more closely. We have a very large and very experienced selection committee who help us make these decisions who are industry experts in various areas, whether that's manufacturing, packaging, buyers, things like that. It all make a difference. Yeah, all make a difference. This is what they breathe every day. And so they really help make those decisions. So we go through an interview process. We then have, we selected 10 companies, and then we start the 12-week accelerator program. What does that look like? Yeah. Today in the accelerator program. So what's neat about MataUp is all the companies that we're working with are already revenue generating. So when we actually brought in our 10 companies, even though our minimum threshold was 100,000, on average, our companies were over half a million. So these are companies that have business. They're producing revenue and they have a, I mean, this isn't a startup. These are businesses. So what that meant to us was we couldn't have the accelerator be an all day, everyday thing because they're running their business. So we had to be very conscious of the time that we were utilizing with them. So before we even started the cohort, we asked them to talk about what are one or two scaling challenges that they needed to solve to help them really grow? And what do they want to accomplish? Who did they want to meet? What kinds of mentors and why? So really try to create a program that was very curated for each company. So a big piece of the accelerator is curated mentor introductions. So if someone has a really great need and we have a perfect person, whether that's one of our advisors is Josh Feldman, who's the CEO of Tori Richard. We actually had our first workshop at his headquarters in Kalihi, kind of really doing a top story with him on his journey and turning the company around and his leadership style. And I think one of the really key pieces of the program is getting access to those types of people and being able to ask those kinds of questions. So with our program, we normally meet on Wednesdays at around three o'clock. We do a couple of different workshops back to back and then have a resource come in and talk about, you know, there's so many great resources in Hawaii that have already existed before Manaup, of course. We've got the foreign trade zone. We've got the Pacific Export Council. We've got the SBA. We have so many resources and we're really trying to be able to connect those dots for these companies. Say this is how you can use this resource so that it's actually beneficial for everyone or they're actually utilizing them more. They understand what it is these groups do, how to approach them, what they can't do. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So we meet on Wednesdays. We always do a pretty heavy content few hours and then we always do a pahana. And the reason we always do a pahana, not because we don't enjoy having a couple beers after we have an intensive workshop day, but because a lot of the magic that happens in an accelerator is really within the cohort. It's within these entrepreneurs who are going through very similar things, all obviously having different products, but they can really relate to each other. Being an entrepreneur can be very lonely, especially when you live and breathe your company. Many people can't understand that. And I think they really found it very therapeutic for them to just be connecting with each other. And even just whether it's kind of emotionally being able to talk about things that no one else understood, but also being able to have some partnerships. Some of the companies realizing they were all still buying their sugar from Costco and thought, hey, we could all go in together for a palette. So those kinds of things were happening. And a lot of that, we just stay out of the way. We're like, hey, you guys, they're at the pahana, they're connecting, they're enjoying each other and all these things, magic is happening and we just really just try to stay out of the way. Yeah, yeah, well, that's often the case, right? You get good talent with people. The main thing is to kick a few barriers out of the way so they can really do their jobs well, right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Excellent, that sounds very exciting. It sounds like a good thing. And so then they do this for 12 weeks, you say? Yeah, 12 weeks. Sort of once a week meeting this intense, several hours of meetings, sort of some homework in between, how am I expecting? Yes, so we do check-ins weekly, where they talk about what they've gotten done, what they want to get done, and so we hold them very accountable, especially to what they came into the program saying they wanted to accomplish. And so that's been really great every week we talk with them about, where are you? And for a lot of these entrepreneurs are so in it, they're so busy, as you know, running a business, that a lot of times it's hard to kind of step away and look at it from a strategic standpoint and more of a macro level, as to ultimately what are you trying to accomplish and how are you gonna get there? Yeah, because it's too easy to let the trees get in the way of the forest, right? So they don't sort of see that every week we do have to do X, Y, Z steps to make it on through, right? Yeah, these kind of small steps to get to what you're ultimately trying to get to. So we host weekly check-ins, we do the heavy Wednesday workshop in Pohana, and then we also do heavy curated mentor introductions. So for example, if a company is looking to do a rebrand or they want to change their packaging, we will introduce them to a very specific mentor or resource that's able to help them do that. We've got some awesome partners, Spire Accounting is one of our great partners, Rodney and the team there, Lucas and Tyler, they work with our teams and help them from an accounting standpoint, which is really quite robust in the sense that all these companies are revenue generating, so it's very real as opposed to just projections. Sure, I know that how you're accounting is critical, how much money you actually spend doing that is really a key part of your business because that's not generating money in the sense that it's spending money, but you've got to do it and you've got to have somebody watching it well, and so yeah, doing accounting well and efficiently is a key, yeah. And then also from a technology standpoint, having our partners come in, SendGrid is one of our partners, they're one of the largest email marketing campaign software. Uber uses them for your receipts and things like that. So having them come in and talk to our companies about email marketing campaigns, how are you capturing data? Your website, your e-commerce, things like that, which is really wonderful because a lot of our companies, one of the biggest areas of challenge that they identified was their online presence. And so that's a big area that we focus on. So through the 12 weeks with the check-ins and the workshops and the mentor introductions, at the end is a culmination, we have a showcase, we actually just hosted our last showcase at Salt at Arcacaaco, we had over 600 people there. The companies did a three-minute pitch to the audience and we also had a marketplace where people could taste and also buy product, which was a lot of fun. Cool, yeah, sounds like a really wonderful sort of process you've done in place and now you're getting ready to do another 12 weeks with another 10 companies. Yep, yep, so we're recruiting right now, so if anyone out there is interested, please apply. You're trying to do these every three a year? We're doing two a year. Two a year, yeah. You should probably need some down time in between. Yeah, yeah. Pretty intensive, I'm sure, to run that. Yeah, yeah. It takes a lot of time and energy because it sounds like you're doing a lot of very personal, one-on-one kind of things with the people and setting up the introductions and those initial meetings. I'm sure you have to facilitate and help get that conversation moving in the right way. Exactly, and you know, we do a lot of work with the community as well. So Kamehameha Schools is our title partner and we have other great partners. Hawaiian Airlines is our exclusive airline partner. Lupono Initiative, American Savings Bank, Castle & Cook. And so part of this is, especially with Kamehameha Schools are on alternative career pathways. So how can we create this pipeline of more companies for Mana'a but also create that mindset shift, especially for students that you can do it here. Here are tangible examples of successful entrepreneurs, which is really wonderful from an access and exposure standpoint. Yeah, excellent. Wow, very exciting, very exciting stuff. So good that you're doing this. It's good for you. It's good for all these people who are running for your program. It's good for the economy as a whole. You know, it's good for the state. Yeah, you know that, that's excellent. Thank you, even. Hey, so before I let you go, I'm gonna switch topics entirely. Nothing to do with- Should I brace myself? Should I brace myself? Completely off the wall question. Here it is. If you could have one of the two superpowers, you could either fly or you could be invisible. Which would you choose and why? That's an interesting question. I would say I would rather, I'd like to fly. And the reason being is I just, I love just feeling inspired and being able to see things from different perspectives and kind of getting high up, especially from what we're doing at Mana Up is like that next level, kind of macro level perspective and an economic development initiative that is good for Hawaii and it's good for the state. I love being able to have opportunity for that kind of different perspective and just feeling exhilarated. So that would be why I'd pick flying. Excellent. Hey, well, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. Real pleasure having you. I really appreciate it. Aloha. And I hope you will come back next week for another episode of Likeable Science here on Think Tech Hawaii.