 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Good afternoon. My name is Retsu Chiyama for another exciting show on business in Hawaii. It's a sultry, hot, humid afternoon in the tropical city of Honolulu, the capital of the state of Hawaii. And it's going to be an exciting show because I share this dialogue on entrepreneurship, on education, on giving young people a chance in college with a younger version of myself who graduated from the same high school, Wallace Ryder Farrington High School, in the beautiful neighborhood of Kalihi Palama adjacent to downtown and a census tract of over 40,000 residents, which means that compared to the little island of Molokai with 7,500, wow, Kalihi Palama by itself is many times larger and has a long history that dates back before the war, World War II, and currently has a very vibrant, multi-ethnic, multi-religious makeup. And my guest name is Trayvon Watase, and welcome to the show, Trayvon. Thank you so much for having me. Now, you're a young man out of high school, Farrington High School, and you are in midst of a journey, I would say, to become a successful entrepreneur. Am I correct? Yeah, let's hope so. I mean, that's definitely the path that we want to go down, so. Okay. So why don't you tell me or tell the others the origins of the journey? I guess I don't know where you can start with your childhood or with your, you know, in middle school, and where did it really start that was a spark or the background to leading to an entrepreneur's journey? So for me, it was basically just seeing a problem. So I'm, like you said, I graduated from Farrington, and when I went to Farrington High School, I applied for scholarships, and unfortunately I didn't do so well in my first two years in high school, and my last two years I did really well. But that averaged out to a low GPA, so it was really hard for me to apply to colleges and apply to scholarships. And I felt that a lot of scholarships, the way that they were, they didn't really listen to my story. They had this, oh, you need a 2.5 GPA or 3.5, whatever it is, in order for us to even hear out your story. So I decided to create a scholarship on my own. I decided to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for one week out of every month, just to save 50 bucks, so I could pay for a $500 scholarship. And then, you know what, $500 in my hand, this was right out of high school, you know, three, four years ago. Yeah, actually a little bit longer than that now. You know, no one would take my money because the dollar amount was too little, and that's when I just was kind of at all about, like, there's people out there who want to give out $500, $5,000 scholarships, but there's no chattel for them to do so, and it's not like kids don't need the money. So you were trying to create efficiency in a marketplace of getting people to meet each other, right? People who want to donate a scholarship and people who want a scholarship. Exactly. And I started out by trying to give out my own scholarship and stumbling into that problem. It was inefficient. It was ineffective. You faced an obstacle. Exactly. So that's just how it started. I just stumbled into it. I had no plans. My goal in life, as soon as I graduated from Farrington, was to become a CPA and, you know, go to Shidler, get my master's degree in accounting and go to the CPA firm. But then I just stumbled into it and that's how I got started. Okay, so after you made this discovery or insight, suddenly you saw what was out there was not so efficient and that there was a gap, you know, that you wanted to fulfill in this marketplace. What did you do? Did you go to mentors? Did you seek out people who did scholarships or startups? What exactly did you start to do? So I was very lucky. So one of the scholarships I got right out of high school was a Rotary scholarship and it was specifically, it was called the Diamonds in the Rough scholarship. They didn't look for a high GPA and I was really lucky where, you know, they connected me with the local Rotary Club. They're actually located in this building. And then, you know, they kept on inviting me to the, I mean, the breakfasts. And I got to meet a lot of people there. So that was like my first mentor network that I just got early access to. And basically because we were starting a website and I didn't have any computer science background, no technological background at all. It took me a year and a half just to finally get the first site up. So while I'm, you know, talking to developers and things like that and learning on my own, there was really all I could do was kind of pick the brains of other people. I don't know. So you're actually going to school and doing a startup at the same time? That's correct. Okay. All right. Anybody come to mind who gave you the best advice or I know that you were meeting people at the Rotary, which would expose you to all kinds of business people in downtown, right? Local business people. But you needed something more, I think, in your special app. I mean, so it wasn't, it isn't that everybody in downtown are doing mobile apps or e-commerce. Where did you go for more in-depth kind of focus? So I got really lucky and I brought that up because there's great mentors that I got from Rotary, but not a lot of great mentors when it came to like, it's how you build an app, right? I got really lucky. I joined a co-working space. So you know, I just went to the traditional route, which was like, okay, go to India, hire developers there. And then that didn't work out and then try and find some money and things like that. It just didn't work out. So you did actually go to India? Yeah. I didn't like fly to India, but you know, we used an online site. Right, right, right. So you contacted people in India to do some coding for you, I guess, for your app. Okay. So that's very, so you're going to places where people take years to go to, but you're like doing shortcuts in a sense. Yeah, definitely. But yeah, that, I mean, those things didn't work out, unfortunately. Lots of money there or quite a bit of money there. And what he called out, I joined a co-working space here in Hawaii and I started working out of there. This guy from D.C. was just like, oh, I'm going to go on vacation in Hawaii and I'm going to get some work done and work at this co-working space. Nia's the same, me and him connected and he built his, he actually comes from a technical background and he comes from a startup background. He's raised money from multiple of his companies and he's doing quite well and he really took me under his wing and to this day we talk quite often and talk about whatever problems come with the business. So you had an idea, but you needed, I guess, technical resources in a way. But you found a person who had kind of technical resources plus a business background, I guess, and then that you put it together at that point. Yeah, exactly. And this is just cool where it was. So I spent a year and a half trying to build a website. This guy, we're talking for a while, but he spends one late night with me of just building out the entire site and he just shows me the ins and outs, do it. All I needed was that one, you know, was that five hours or something to actually kickstart to get everything going. So when, exactly when was that breakthrough moment about a year and a half ago? Maybe two years. So a year and a half ago, suddenly things began to open up? I mean, like what I said, we spent five hours on it. It was not a nice looking site. It was. Actually, how we first started off our site was we just like had something to be equivalent to like a Google form. So the student would make their account through a Google form and me or someone else on my team would actually manually input every single entry into the database. It was not the best thing. Very primitive. Yeah. All right. So you had a beginning there. You could see the ending, but you had to get there. You could have at least a beginning on the journey there. So what happened next? Did you look for more advice or training or background for startups? So I was lucky to wear our school. So I was at this time, I went to, I was at Leeward Community College. And then Pacific Asian Center of Entrepreneurship at the University of Hawaii, Manila-Sharla College of Business, I got connected with them and they offered a lot of resources. They had multiple business plan competitions they sent me out on, you know, other resources, professionals and residents and all those things. We also got access to the Shilor students. They assembled a team of interns to help out with the operations of it. Now you're at the same age as them, or they're even older than you. Yeah. Yeah. They were MBA students, in fact. We didn't pick up for a MBA student until recently, but you know, undergrads. Right. Right. Or recent graduates. Yeah. That was the next step for us is actually getting connected to PACE and they provided resources and a little bit of capital too. So you had a base or shell to work on for a while. Definitely. Okay. So that's great. So that moved your journey a bit more to make your product more robust or something that you could put up and people could see and kind of give you more input. So what was the next phase after that? The next phase after like PACE, specific entrepreneurship is, you know, I got connected to, went up to San Francisco. I was just going there for a conference. I met up with this Hawaii guy, McKinley, grad, and he's doing a startup, talked to him, and convinced me to move up to San Francisco within five weeks. Oh, sure. So when you're young, you can make these, you know, instant decisions. But I think in retrospect, you know, it led you into the whole new world of Silicon Valley. Definitely. So that was the next step for me. So I was living in San Francisco for the past year now. Oh, wow. And, you know, I got connected to just a lot more people and just different, like people doing the same thing. And everywhere you turn in like a coffee shop or something like that, you maybe see a venture capitalist or someone right now talking about like a multimillion dollar deal and how they're building this app with AI or blockchain or something. And it's like, you don't hear those conversations. So getting exposed to those conversations also helped. Well, you're correct. What we call the ecosystem, you know, the venture capital, the money, the Stanford and Berkley's, the universities, the ideas and immigrants, as you know, from China, India, all merged together and they talk each other, especially, as you know, the Sandhill Road Starbucks. And that's a place where I used to hang out too. You're correct that they would invest or also know the talent pool, which is very deep. And so venture capitalists can provide or refer to C-level people who can be inserted, embedded into startups and really get things going or the technical resources, the CTOs and engineers and so forth. And not only in the valley, but also leveraging talents abroad, you know, in China or India or Russia, wherever they are. So you're correct that that whole heady atmosphere doesn't exist in many other places. So you've been there a year and you're back and forth in Hawaii, often I would think. So what are you trying to do next? Have you built your app to a point that is robust enough to really take it further along the line? What needs more to do? So we definitely want to make the app more robust. We want to add more features to make it more attractive to other schools and just give really the next thing we're working on is giving college counselors the tools that they need to actually help their kids see where their kids are at with the scholarship process, help them out throughout that application process. You know, we're delving into the product itself and I want to return to that and really explore it in depth after this important break. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Hello everyone, I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. We are back exploring the heady atmosphere of Silicon Valley and how does a primary graduate really become successful in his journey as a startup entrepreneur? But first, in order to become really successful, well, you have to have a product. You have to have a product that appeals to the customer. That's what the Googles, the Facebooks, the Amazons, many companies out there really strive for to differentiate a self in a sea of products, very similar ones sometimes, and how to rise up and of course dominate the market and monetize it and survive in the long run. And that's the economy, the e-commerce, the digital economy in many, many ways. So we are here now to kind of come back and really define the product itself that Travis has been developing and kind of see where it is in the, what category it falls under and who are the customers and sometimes who are the channels or who are the people who really can promote the product in the economy, in the digital economy. So we go back again to your Scholars app. What is it all about and who are the customer? So Scholars app, first and foremost, is on a mission to send one million more students to college by streamlining the scholarship process. That's what we're all about. That's the outcome, that's the goal. That's the outcome, that's the goal and it's to be quite frank the reality of it. Our kids last year got over $1.2 million from our application. We helped to generate thousands of dollars of new scholarship money and we are helping donors actually create new scholarships. So there's more students got scholarships this year than last year in Hawaii. Right, yeah. So our end customers are scholarship donor. So we connect students, we connect donors and we even give tools to college counselors at the local high school to actually be able to monitor their kids and assist them with the application process. But even then when there's not even a lot of scholarships, we give away for free too. And can you say that you are well on the show? No, scholarsapp.com. Okay, scholarsapp.com, very easy to remember. So what is your app, your product in the market? Are there other products out there that are competitors? What is the market that you're trying to succeed in? Yeah, so I mean there's a ton of other competitors. I mean you can hear about other scholarsapp search engines out there, there's scholarship management softwares. There's even tools already built for college counselors to kind of manage the scholarships at their high school. We're bringing all those different parties together into one place and we're taking a significant market share behind that. So in Hawaii, we just got word that almost all Hawaii high schools were at 95% already signed up and other high schools already emailed me that they'll be signing up shortly are all using scholarsapp here, public, private and charter. We have a good portion, I think we're coming up on two to five million dollars of exclusive money that you can only apply through our app. So that's how we differentiate from competitors. We take over the market. Now you're starting, we're talking about Hawaii, the state of Hawaii market. Are you doing this in every other state in all 50 states of the union? So we are signing up our first schools already on the Pacific Northwest of the United States. We're hoping to expand more into the continental United States and we're doing small test trials in the different regions right now. What are the, you know, the scale and I think that's what you're trying to do, scale up. Are you looking at it just for the US or globally? Right now our only focus is the US but there's definitely other markets in there that have inefficient scholarship processes that we'll like to go into. But right now just trying to be focused on the US for right now. And what do people say to you? The donor comes to us and says, thank you very much. You helped me do what? Get more applications. So we market the scholarship application. We help students apply online. This is generally the first time students can apply online for these specific scholarships that we're not taking over. But at the end of the day, we help tailor the students' story and help them submit their application and obviously a bunch more. So the donor actually gets more qualified and completed applications and a better pool to select the recipients from. And in most cases, actually we're finding out where because they're getting more applications, they actually decide to give them more scholarship money. And how does it help the student? You say that it makes a student shine and it really makes the student narrative much more clear. What exactly does the app do? It really kind of shine the light on their background and what they're capable of in the future. So let me just answer what we do for the kids first. We match them to scholarships. It's also, you know, it's a pretty accurate match as well. So all these different scholarships, I know that they all require different things. We get it down to pretty much almost a 90% match to upward majority of the time it's a 100% match. And we will tell the students, hey, because you entered X, Y, and Z, or X, Y, and Z things, you are 100% match for the scholarship. So we help them all with that to make sure that they get the entire list of where they want to go to and what scholarships to apply to. Then, you know, there's simple autofill stuff. So like, you know, you upload a transcript to our website from the college counselor that transcript can be used for every single scholarship. And we autofill their data. Small stuff like that, but you know, it kind of automizes it and makes it easier to fill out. Yeah, you don't have to write. The other option is writing this on a paper and mailing it in. So you have this app going on. What are your next steps? Are you scaling this in order to monetize it? In what way? So I mean, we charge the scholarship donors. So if you are below a certain threshold, you're free. And then obviously the bigger ones for bigger mono applications, they pay us. Okay, so there's a way to really provide a service but you, as the developer, it gets compensated for providing a service. Oh yeah. Okay, okay. And you have won awards for this scholarship, this idea and proposal out there. Tell me about your experiences out there competing against others. So like, in what way? Like you're talking about like the UH at the Business Lab? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I mean, yeah, we won a couple of awards. So we got one from Leeward Community College, the Business Lab competition. We got one from PACE in the Breakthrough Innovation. And also you went to California, remember? Yeah, that one, that was the big one. And tell me about what was that competition all about? Oh man, that was quite the challenge. So PACE asked me if I want to fly it, represent UH for the California Dreaming Competition. For my understanding, it's one of the biggest college business-like competitions in the United States. And I was one of the only undergrad, let alone community college students there. The first people I would walk into, they're rocket scientists developing the new fuel and I was like, what did I sign up for? Remember, I attended HEC and KCC after parenthesis, but go ahead. Yeah, I mean, but it was just rocket scientists. Yeah, talk to computer guys, yeah, that last one. It was definitely a shocker. So talking to you today, of course, you're still a young man and still in the middle of your journey. But looking back in high school, of course, in college, if there's other people following your footsteps, other people, what would you tell them or what would you like to see in terms of courses or mentorship or advice? Or how do you nurture more of you out of Kalihi, out of Farrington, out of our neighborhoods? So I personally think that they're already coming. And I have the luxury of having a scholarship application where one of the things that we ask is, what is your career goal? And I'm seeing a lot more saying that I want a small business, I want to have an ice cream parlor, I want to do something in entrepreneurship. So I think they're definitely coming. I think how do you get them to the next level? Just everything what everyone needs is, in my case, I need access to technical resources. And then we need access to capital and then the mentorship. All those things combine. But it's exciting to see that there's already students with the drive and the intent to do it. So now when you put the resources out there, those pillars that went over it. Well, let's be more specific. Like in high school, would you have benefited by more courses that would teach you how to make a company, interest rates, loans, venture capital, stocks, bonds, IPOs, would that have helped you? Maybe not the IPO part, because I think right now it's just early stage, we're just trying to find product market fit. But I definitely think a computer science class. OK, OK. That would help me a lot. All right, all right, that's what we're working on. We don't have AP computer science yet. But we have ICS 110, in fact, taught by an HEC instructor at Farrington today. But there's only one CS instructor for the entire school of 2,000 students. There's something wrong there. You're absolutely right. There should be, and going back to Kalakau and Dole, well, other middle schools, you have to introduce programming so that they'll be able to succeed in computer science courses in JavaScript or Java or C++ or Python in high school. But you're absolutely right. That is something that we have to work on. You're absolutely right. And because that will, you don't have to code, but you know what coding is about. So you can work with engineers. You can then ask the right questions to develop your app. I mean, if you don't know the coding, you don't know what the questions they ask. And then that's when I worked at Google, at Google, the product managers were at the same level technically as the engineers. You're absolutely right. In order to make the product at Google. But this is a really exciting area because I think, what do you want to do, though? Do you want to remain in Silicon Valley or return to Hawaii and do something? And what is that something you're going to do back in Hawaii? So we are definitely considering moving back to Hawaii. We're now definitely, there's some variables that come into place that we'll find out within the next couple of months. But there's a strong possibility that scholars will be headquarters on Hawaii as of January next year. Oh, great, great. Well, that's, again, that's the dream of the diversification of an economy to grow new jobs in Hawaii, in the tech field. But it takes people like yourself who have an idea and attract capital and then can create the marketing department, the engineering department, the product management department and so forth. And it needs local talent. And like you say, if they're coming behind us, I hope that those are the people who can fill in jobs. And some of them may launch their own startups, which will be really exciting. And that's the real dream, which I used to be involved with back in the 80s. And now we're here in 2018. And I'm especially glad that you as a representative from our high school, the greatest high school in the state, Sarrington. And there's people like Ben Cantano, a governor, former governor, Alan Oshima, a HECO president, many people who are quite successful. But we need more entrepreneurs and to create the new digital economy. So we're running out of time. And we will take all that you said. And I think these are words of inspiration for the next generation or current generation of young people to move ahead. Any last words from you? No, just thanks for having me on. And this is a great opportunity. You're welcome. But yeah, best of luck and congratulations on your journey and hope to catch up with you in late 2019 to see where you are and how successful you've become within a scholarship that really helps not only the donors, but in a marketplace to match with students, even more opportunities to study through increasing the donor pool, all kinds of new scholarships, and will create a better society for all. This is Ray Tsuchiyama. Thank you very much. Business in Hawaii.