 Two o'clock on a given Wednesday, that's Mellie James. We're going to do a schmooze today about Manna Up and other things in and affecting Mellie James and all her businesses and activities and whatnot. Hi, Mellie. Hi. Thanks for having me, Jay. Yeah, great. Great to have you here. You're kind of a neighbor. Well, you were a neighbor. Now you're a neighbor down the block. Just a little bit. So let's get to know you a little bit, okay? You've been around tech and venture capital association and entrepreneurship for a long time already. You don't look it, but you have been around for a long time. And I want to cover in some systematic way all the things. So let's talk about Manna Up. This is your latest excitement adventure. And I know this because you were there at the Hawaii Business and SBA award ceremony about a month ago. And you won an award. That was pretty impressive. So can you talk about Manna Up? What is it? Yeah. And who is Brittany Hyde? Who is that? Who is Brittany Hyde? So yeah, we were really thankful for that award out with SBA Female Lead Business of the Year, which is really amazing because we launched Manna Up just two years ago with my co-founder, Brittany Hyde, who is based on Mellie. She's here a lot during the week. She's the original founder of 1776, which is a global incubator and venture fund out of DC, solving kind of big government problems. So she's going back and forth. She was in DC. Now she's based on Mellie. So she's all here, 100% Manna Up. So we launched the company two years ago as an economic development initiative for Hawaii. And so we work primarily with product-based companies, so consumer packaged goods in the value-add food space, retail, or health and beauty that are leveraging the brand of Hawaii that are headquartered in Hawaii and that are earning at least a minimum of 100,000 annual revenue in order to get into our program. And then, of course, we scale from there. This sounds like one of those shows on TV about how these venture capitalist guys come and interview prospective partners, you know the ones I mean. Shark Tank? Shark Tank. There's more than Shark. That's one of them. But I can imagine. Let me also add that Mellie is going to do a series for us. And what are we going to call it, do we decide yet? No, we're not. T.B.D. T.B.D. We're going to figure that out. Starting in a week or two is going to be good. And there's so many people that you can call in and do your Shark Tank type interview. Woo-hoo. Exciting. I don't be curious what the background's going to be. Yeah, we have to figure out a good background for that. So anyway, yeah, so why did you do that anyway? I mean, Manna Up is different than the other accelerators and incubators that we have in the environment right now. How is it different? Yeah, so, you know, I've been very much involved with the other accelerators, with the University of Hawaii, as well as Blue Startups, an incredible experience really growing this innovation ecosystem and startup ecosystem here in Hawaii. And I started thinking about, you know, how else can we look at innovation for Hawaii? How do we broaden? How do we view innovation? To compliment technology, technology is really no longer just kind of a silo. It's literally layered onto everything. And so even with Manna Up, technology is really leveling the playing field for these companies to be at a global level. SEO, e-commerce, all of these technological advances in logistics, shipping are really helping them to no longer have to be in every shelf and every store in the mainland. E-commerce is a real game changer for many companies, especially here in Hawaii. So kind of thinking about that, you know, how do we support additional types of business in Hawaii, especially the product arena? With a lot of the tech accelerators that was more service-based. And so I looked at, you know, we were judging a lot of these business-time competitions and startup weekends. And there were all these great product entrepreneurs, and even looking at these wonderful products that we have in Hawaii that just couldn't get past that kind of mom-and-pop level. And so I thought about, okay, well, what's that challenge and how do we help solve that? How do we layer what we've learned and the experience that we've had? And Brittany's had a great experience at 1776, and even myself having been an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley with my first company starting at 07, my YNAB and that whole amazing five years. You were 12 at the time, I know. I was 12 at the time, of course. Yeah, yeah, okay. I'm actually, you know, Benjamin Buttonstile, I'm just going backwards. So, you know, having that experience and being involved with the accelerators here and of course running HVCA, how do we kind of bring all these different things together and broaden how we view innovation? And so that's really where this was born. And so we call this an economic development initiative because a very big focus of this is on job creation and sustainable livelihood here in Hawaii. And looking at what's changing from a global standpoint, you know, especially millennials, authenticity, connection to culture, all of these things are very much at the forefront now for what consumers are looking for. I think five or 10 years ago, something could just slap on aloha on it. It was made in Taiwan. You picked it up at the ABC store and that was your gift that you were bringing home. And now people are really looking for that connection to culture, authenticity, and really that story behind the product. So, thinking about these entrepreneurs and their great stories, how do we connect those dots? How do we take that narrative back from the way the world learns about Hawaii and really have this be an area where with tourism can really make sense more for Hawaii as more of our tourists are spending more money with local companies, creating more economic impact and new dollars in the community. Just a free association. Yes. When we schmooze, we do free associations. Oh, I love it. There was a guy named Rick Davis and he ran a aloha magazine. It doesn't publish any more. In fact, he doesn't publish any more. He died. But his thing was that there was a huge market out there on the mainland of people who had come to Hawaii, who liked Hawaii, who enjoyed, wanted to get back to in some nostalgic way to their trip in Hawaii, which was really special for them and all that. And if you could reach them, there were tons of people like that on the mainland. And that's, I think, what you're talking about. It's not just people who have come from Hawaii who were born and raised here. It's all the people who like Hawaii for whatever reason. And they're the market of these companies you're dealing with. Exactly. So, I mean, when you think about how do you become a global brand that's based in Hawaii, you have your immediate audience that's here, but the tourist economy, so there are 10 million people coming here a year, right? And then there's also all the millions of people that came here for the past few hundred years now who have this nostalgia for Hawaii. It is a globally loved brand, right? And so we see that really in the form of a lot of other companies, even in the mainland who leverage our brand, who are making hundreds of millions of dollars. I think the obvious example would be Maui Chips. That's a Frito Le company. It has nothing to do with Maui. Yeah, why am I irritated about that? We have a host, by the way, just had a show yesterday from Germany because we can connect with Germany. And he's doing Aloha Shave Ice in Germany. It's a cultural arbitrage, that's what he calls it, yeah. So when you think about that and you look at all of these opportunities that are available and there's all these mainland international people who are leveraging the brand and they're doing it not for altruistic reasons, they're doing it because it works, it sells. Why aren't our local entrepreneurs able to get to those levels? And so that's really what Mana Up is addressing. You're talking about local entrepreneurs. You're talking about locally. You're talking about selling the Hawaii brand, selling Hawaii, really, to the world. This is really something special. That distinguishes Mana Up from a lot of other organizations that do similar things with different markets and different origins, so to speak, different culture points. So that's different. So give us some examples of the companies that you're working with. Can you tell me that? Can you tell the people that? I sure can. Go for it. So we have 31 companies who have gone through our program. We've already hosted three cohorts. We're actually recruiting right now for Cohort 4. So if anyone's out there listening, watching... ManaUp.com. ManaUpHawaii.com. So we are recruiting for Cohort 4, which will start in August and end in November. So a few companies, I should have brought some props here. One is Manoa Chocolate, which is a great chocolate company really trying to increase the cacao industry here in Hawaii. Should have brought that. Should have brought that. Sorry, I'll come back. Come back later for some presents. Another great one is called Big Island Coffee Roasters. So they're taking advantage of the cache of coffee in Hawaii, but creating a brand new product that's a coffee bar. So it looks like a chocolate bar, but it's actually just coffee, cocoa butter, and sugar. Ooh, that sounds good. Yeah, you crack off a piece and it's a half espresso shot. So get ready to clean the house and do whatever you need to do. You're going to be on fire. That's a really great company. And I love that one because it really... I see Hawaii as should be an opportunity and a hub for new product innovation. And as we create more of these well-worn paths for success and creating more tangible examples of success, it really creates this kind of mindset shift and ability to just say and see all these examples and be like, of course I can do that. I see 10 more examples out right here. We are doing that as well. And so another company, let's see, Kaimana Jerky, which is a company that just came through. It's a ahi jerky at Akona. They do sustainable fishing practices off the coast of Kona and they're actually also in Costco. Is this fish jerky? Fish jerky, it's very delicious. All right, all right, healthier yet. Very healthy. And we also do a lot in the retail and the health and beauty. So another company is Mamalani, which is a natural deodorant, foot powders, dry shampoos. How do you find these companies? Well, so we do a call for applications. And our first call, we had 85 applicants, which was incredible. And every call, we get about 75 to 85 applicants. And at this point, a lot of our past cohort members are doing the recruiting for us, just sharing their experience. And that's really the best way to get the word out. So that's how we get. And in terms of diversity, of the 31 companies, 17 of them are female CEOs. 14 of them are native Hawaiian founders and 13 are family-run businesses. So when you look at diversity, we always go for the best entrepreneur and the best product. It just so happens that it all kind of comes together to create a really diverse crowd. Why is diversity? You can hardly avoid it, actually. So what do you do for them? I mean, let me imagine in my mind, you give them advice. You help them with branding. You help them with packaging, I guess. You help them with finding the market and dealing with bringing the right product to them. Go ahead. So we help them solve scaling challenges. And each of the companies have very different scaling challenges. One could be perhaps needing a rebrand or really trying to get in deeper with what's their story. Why should anyone care about this product? One could also just be having more e-commerce challenges and really needing to up their e-commerce game. So it's kind of across the board. What we do in our interview process is really identify what are those key challenges and what we can do to help them and to make sure there's a match. In the course of all of that, you get to be expert on this market. You can share what you learned from one company with another. And they're sharing with each other. There have been so many collaborations. We put them together. Well, they're in a room with each other sharing about challenges or they get to know each other. We always have Pauhana after all of our workshops. So it's really a time for them to socialize and just be in the room together and collaborations happen on their own. This sounds like a great time to go through your pictures. Yes, it does. Why don't we go through your pictures and you can give us a running discussion of what's in the pictures. Sounds good. Ready to go watch that. All right, so this is a picture of our cohort two. This is inside of our office and you can see here just the amazing diversity of these are the founders coming in for cohort two. And our team there with Nohili, our project manager, and Brittany, our my co-founder. Which one is Brittany now? Brittany is in the orange in the back, the blonde. Okay, she's being modest, yeah. She's being modest, yeah. Okay, and the next shot is Melle from Mamalani. I just mentioned the natural deodorant and powder company. She's based in Kailua, Oahu. She's a native Hawaiian female founder and really, really taking off and doing incredibly well. She was featured in a lure magazine as a top 10 must have product, which is a pretty big deal. The next photo is me with Byron Gu and his wife with Tea Chests Hawaii, which is a great product. They do a lot of the tea at the Royal Hawaiian and at the Moana, the tea service. And they do a lot with Mamaki. That's a company that's been around for a long time and really taking off again. They just launched a new product called a Kakao Tea. So it's a chocolate tea that's with a collaboration with Manoa Chocolate and Tea Chests, which are two of our companies, which all happened through going through the cohort together. The next shot was at our showcase at Salt. Our first showcase with cohort one, this is Malcolm, who is the founder of Hawaiian Honey. Rainbow Bees. And they're a great company. He actually got exporter of the year last year with SBA. He was on the cover of Hawaii Business Magazine. And then the next shot is this was at our showcase and this was the crowd who are all lined up listening to the pitches. So at the end of our program, after the 13 week intensive, where there's mentorship, access to capital, resources, we host a demo day where all the companies do their pitches and it's a huge marketplace where they're all selling and also tasting and then they do, these are all customers as well. Everyone's buying. Oh. Oh yeah. What's the venue? What's that building? That is Salt at Arkaka Ako, which is where we hosted our first showcase. Since then, we've moved to DFS, a duty-free tea gallery in Waikiki. We take over the entire first floor. That is a big move. That's a big move. Big difference from Salt and Waikiki. Well, what's neat about that difference is being inside of DFS, it's really part of that mindset shift that we're helping the companies get where they deserve to be in a store like that. They should be in a store like that. They should look to the left, see Cartier and look at right and see Longchamp and their product is right there at that department store and becoming a global brand, that's where they should be. You're kind of getting past Farmer's Market. You're in a beautiful department store. This is not Farmer's Market anymore when you're in the gallery. And also, it sounds to me like if you organize this as a future in building your own store, a monorup store, have you ever thought about that, Mellie? That might be something in the future, but for now, we actually have our own e-commerce shop. So we do a lot of the collaborations with the company. So for example, we have different baskets. So if you're looking to buy something and you're all about female founders, we have a female founders basket. So there'll be 10 products in it that they're all female founded and we do these really neat cards that have a picture of the entrepreneur and a cool story about- Multiple products from multiple companies. Yes, so you're not having to go to all the different online shops to get that one product. You can get it all in one basket. So that's at our- This is cooking. How old are you? I don't mean you, I mean, how old is the company now? Mono, two years. Two years. This is really interesting. I've got more, let's go more slides. Yeah, more slides. So yeah, this was at Salt. This is one of our companies is Dylan, the founder of Manoa Chocolate at Salt. We can go to the next one. This is Jack Butel, who is one of the founders of Kunoa Cattle, one of our companies that went through Cohort One. And this is at the end of the demo day. This is all of Cohort One, up on stage. This is all- It looks like about a dozen maybe, less? We always have 10 companies come through, yeah. And actually one cohort, we had 11, so that's why we have 31 companies. Okay. This is a workshop inside of our office with a gentleman named Yasu Nobu, who is a venture capitalist in the consumer packaged goods world in Silicon Valley. He was previously the COO of Uniclo, and this is an example of the types of mentors that we bring in who are really focused on consumer packaged goods and really kind of honing in on those resources and mentors that are really specific for these types of companies, which has been pretty neat. You know, we've had great leaders come in like Mark Tyra, CEO of King's Hawaiian Sweep Red, talking about their journey starting in Hilo and now being a $500 million company that's, you know, it's all started here. So it's possible to spoof, and it's possible. Exactly. Or even we had Dennis Terney, she come in, who was CEO of Hawaiian Host, as well as, you know, like Kitty Yanoni coming in and doing media training and different mentors like that, which has been really neat for our company. So sometimes it's skills-based and sometimes it's more leadership training. So what was that, you're in, where is your office then when that was taken? So that photo there was taken inside of our office, that's in our workshop room, where we host all of our workshops. So we meet weekly. So our cohort is 13 weeks long. And with our great partnership with Hawaiian Airlines, we're able to support a lot of neighbor island companies to come over. So this last cohort, we actually had six of the 10 companies who were neighbor island companies. And I think in total, we've had, I think, 13 of the companies have been neighbor island. So almost half of the companies, which is pretty neat to provide that access. Usually they're under a disadvantage, but when you have numbers like that, clearly you're helping them. And all these companies are revenue-generating. So the fact that they have to be at least at 100,000 annual revenue, we actually are just about to close up our economic impact report because they report to us on revenues, exports, jobs. On average, our companies are at 1.1 million. So when you think about that, and you think about an accelerator program, it's not an all-day, everyday program, right? We respect less. They have to be really, we have to be really concentrated with the time that we're asking of them and really make sure everything we're doing is really specifically working and helping them. So we meet once a week from about two o'clock to seven o'clock, where we have workshops, we have resources come in, like the Foreign Trade Zone, Pacific Export Council, people like that coming in to really look at connecting the dots. So these entities have existed and they're so beneficial. But how do they get shared in layman's terms how this really helps the companies? So it's free. It's free, yeah. Your beneficiaries come in free and these experts come in free. That's pretty good. Impressive. And when I get really impressed, I like to take a break. So let's take a break. Sounds good. Let's smell the James. Should be back in one minute and so will I. Aloha, I'm Gwen Harris, the host here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii non-profit that depends on the generosity of the supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Aloha, I'm Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, a host here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii non-profit that depends on the generosity of the supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. What's the word of the day? It's Mellie James, it's actually two words. Mana up, that's kind of one word, isn't it? Two words. M-A-N-A-O-U-P. But the U has a little dash under it, so it's artistic. And that brings me to packaging. Packaging, you had an expert come about packaging, and I expect Brittany knows a lot about packaging too. She certainly does. And so where's the art? I mean, do you have artists here, Mellie, who can create the packaging, who can make that a special kind of Hawaii 1930s looking, you know, special art that distinguishes a product as a Hawaii product? Yeah, so it really depends on the type of product. With a lot of the companies, we actually do work with them on their new brand, a new look. And how do they distill what their story is on that tiny piece of real estate that they get on the actual package? So how do you have someone care and love your product and be able to differentiate it as a authentic product of Hawaii that isn't like the mainland ones that are really good at disguising whether they are not actually from here? So that's a big piece of our program. We work with a branding person. We have designers, packaging experts that come in and all those different types of things and have done a lot with the repackaging. Really important because, you know, the displays and the packaging, the color, you know, all that stuff that appeals to the consumer. The consumer often makes this decision on the basis of a few words in that packaging rather than on researching, you know, the alternative brands. And they don't have time to research. They make their decision pretty quickly. Right. It's up to you to tell that story quickly. So let's talk, can we talk about, oh yeah, one of the interviews that I saw on the Shark Tank type of show, it wasn't that, it was another show, but I said, you know, you were diffusing your brand. You have too many products. You're confusing your followers. You have to focus on your best brand and everything in your array of products has to be somehow connected to what you're selling as a core product. Do you consult with your beneficiaries? I don't know if that's the right term. Clients, so to speak, on exactly what kind of products would work for that company? Yes, so when we do our interview process, it's a pretty rigorous process. We have a selection committee and a lot of those questions come up. Sometimes the company does have too many products and so before they get in, we'll let them know which one that we're going to be working on with them. So we really want to focus. For some of them they're all- That means his word, focus. It's about focus. Yeah, it's about focus. Businesses about focus. And what's their hero product, you know, or their three hero products that we're really going to be focusing on. So, you know, they can have an array. So it's certainly not a bunch of different products that have nothing to do with each other. That's going to be under a specific brand, but we really start to distill, like, which are your hero products? Which are the ones bringing in the most revenue and margin for you? Yeah, good. You're really getting into weeds with that. And that's what you're going to do. And a lot of these young entrepreneurs, because a young entrepreneur, it's the same thing. I like to think it's the same thing, especially in Hawaii. We're trying to build a community of young, hyphen entrepreneurs. It's okay for the old guys. It's okay. But, you know, when you're teaching them, you've got to teach them everything. You've got to teach them all about, you know, back office, for example, they're not going to know about that necessarily. They're going to, it's like, you know, a restaurant. You've got to do restaurants. We don't. We only do products. So no service. Yes, products. Okay, retail products. Retail products. And you're selling, or you're helping them to sell everywhere. Yeah, e-commerce is a big piece of the program. Yeah, well, it should be. So what about the capital? I mean, you've been associated with Hawaii Venture Capital Association a long time. And other related capital funding organizations for a long time. How do you help them? How do you help your clients beneficiaries in terms of getting capital for their business? Yeah, so it's interesting. So with Hawaii Venture Capital Association, we actually have an annual panel on kind of the state of investment in Hawaii. So every year we host this panel. And the most recent one we had was quite interesting when we looked at who are the usual suspects that are normally on the panel. But actually it was much broader. There's a lot more access to capital these days in many different forms. You know, looking at social impact investing, that's really becoming big around sustainability. I'm looking at loan programs. Loans? Loans. And actually different ways that even the banks are approaching loans as well as some of these larger foundations like the Kohala Center is doing a lot of loans, feed the hunger. So there's access to a lot of capital, even grants. Talking about non-recourse loans or recourse loans? Both. Okay. Okay, grants. Yeah, and of course there are also grants. So, you know, perhaps there's a $50,000 piece of equipment that a company needs that is say a metal detector that is requirement that Whole Foods has, right? But that's just a game changer if they can get this metal detector, but it's $50,000. We're seeing a lot more of these foundations coming to the table and loan programs, and grant programs being able to provide that kind of access that previously really didn't exist. Yeah, and with the grantor has an advantage with a grant because it's a vehicle that where you can specify pretty much what you want out of it. Oh yeah. And you can give direction with just straight venture capital. You're not giving that much direction. Yeah, with the grants, many times it's a very specific buy. Yeah, yeah, I'm very interested. Yeah. So you're helping them. We're helping them. I mean, I assume they need this. You know, it's interesting with a lot of these types of companies and products. So we're not talking about high growth venture backable tech, right, which has traditionally been venture capital. We're seeing these products are more like small business, more like incremental month over month increase in revenue and customers. And so in the past, unless you were gonna take out a loan or you were gonna just try to put as much on your credit cards, that was really the only access to capital. And the loans were really strict on criteria. Granted, you can't be too bendable because it's federal. But when you start to look at different areas and criteria that they are actually looking at now to be able to provide more access. And so now that that's happening and people are seeing that they have more access to capital, now it's like about opening your eyes to, okay, well, if I did have access to a line of credit or loan or investments or grant, whatever that area is, what could I do with that money? And how could that make a huge impact? This is very important. Yeah, whether that's for inventory, machinery, logistics, management, whatever those things are, dream a little dream, what can I do now that I have access? And so that's been a real game changer, especially for a lot of our companies, as we look at, okay, if you could get access to half a million dollars, $250,000, what would you do and how would that make a huge difference to get you to that next point in your company that's gonna make a big difference? You're gonna ask that question. You're gonna be there when that question is answered, too. So we only have a minute left. Oh my gosh. See how fast it goes. There's a schmooze with Mellie James, see what happens. So my last question is, where are we in terms of developing a homegrown, local community, an aloha community of friends who are all in this kind of basket, these cohorts who ultimately help our state, who bring new economic vitality to our state? Where are we? Is it moving fast enough for you and how will it move in the future? So we're actually hosting a panel on this on Friday for the Hawaii Venture Capital Association. If anyone would like to come, HVCA.org at eight o'clock. So Mellie got to mention, eight o'clock, we're at the Plaza Club. At the Pacific Club. Pacific Club, okay. It's around kind of Accelerators 2.0 and so we know where are we at, what have we learned, what new things are we doing? And so I think the community is growing. We've tried a lot of things. I know for what Mana Up is doing, it's really creating revenue, creating management teams, growing businesses from here. On the tech side, we've seen a lot of successes happening as Blue Startup says, you know, been in business now for seven years, six or seven years. I do see that the community is growing and we're kind of attacking it in different ways. So we have a new accelerator coming in that's focusing on like aquaculture. And we've got. Which is food, which leads to food, which is retail food, special. Or yeah, lots of things like that, yeah. And so we're seeing everyone doing different things and kind of getting to that next level. I do think there's great amount of momentum, tons of co-working spaces opening, startup weekends happening. There's just, you know, when I first moved back here in 2012, I kind of knew everything that was happening in this startup space. Nowadays I hear about all these awesome things happening. I had no idea. And that, to me, is a great indicator that a lot is going on. It's a great learning experience, what you do. Not only for you, but through you, you know, too. The members of HVCA and the community in general. So I am very impressed. When I'm very impressed, I have to close the show because we're out of time. Thank you, Mellie James. Thanks, Jay. Great to talk with you. See you Friday morning at eight o'clock at the Pacific Club, yeah.