 Hello. This is the Art of Thinking Smart. My name is Michael North and I'm the host, working with David Chang for this series over the past several months. And we talked to some of the leaders of Hawaii's business and social, cultural and political communities about what makes them successful. So we have today a very successful young man who works in the venture capital field, which is fast growing. He's with a group called Blue Startups, which is just around the corner from the ThinkTech studios here in downtown Honolulu. His name is Casey Lau, and he is something called an entrepreneur in residence, which is kind of a very fancy sounding term. You know, you've heard the term artist in residence, so you can be an artist in residence at a big studio or at a big opera company or something. But Casey, what is an entrepreneur in residence? Can you explain to me that fancy term? Well, yeah, it is a very fancy term, but it's basically I'm an in-house mentor, basically what it is. I have had experience running my own business and I'm now applying that knowledge to a cohort of startups here in Hawaii. So what is mentor? What in this context? So mentor, I guess, is somebody who, oh, it's the typical meaning of the word mentor, like Yoda might be a mentor. Who are you mentoring? I'm mentoring the teams that are inside the cohort. So I've done startups stuff for like, wow, quite a long time now. So the teams are companies? Yeah, the teams are companies. They're people at an early stage in their lifespan of building a business. And they come to Hawaii to join Blue Startups, which is a three month program to help them kickstart their business faster. So a cohort is a group of companies. Correct, correct. And this code, yeah. That's an old Latin term for soldiers who are marching together. Exactly, exactly. Want to make it sound really official? Are the companies interconnected? Are they related or are they working in individual? There's seven in this cohort, which is number nine. They are seven individual teams in different verticals, vertical industries. And so these are the ones that we think we can help the best here in Hawaii to expand globally, whether it be in the US mainland or out in Asia. So there's nine cohorts. I think there's two a year, right? That's right. Yeah. So this is four and a half, very five years. This has been going. Yeah. Wow. Exactly. It's quite exciting. And I find that in Hawaii, it's a very dynamic space for this kind of accelerate to happen, right? First of all, it's very easy for people to come to Hawaii, because it's a great place. It's central. And it's central between East and West. I think that's the main point because people are doing business now more and more often with Asia. And if you're from the mainland US, it's a great place to come to kind of get ready for Asia. So there's a lot of Asian people here, Asian culture, Asian food. I find it very homely when I come from Hong Kong to come here, it seems very easy to blend in. And then vice versa for Japanese and Chinese to come to America. Actually, I think Hawaii is a good place to get ready, acclimated to the US customs before you're going into the mainland, maybe San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York, whatever. So I think that is a very exciting space to get. And part of the glue that makes Blue Startups really work is the fact that Hank Rogers and his wife started this company five years ago. Hank is the original genius behind Tetris. That amazing thumb breaking game that millions of people have played. He's done many other things in addition, but that's the thing that he made his bones with. And he's contributed a small amount of his vast fortune to financing Blue Startups. And those who win to get into a cohort actually receive a small amount of expenses and capital in addition to the valuable mentoring that they get from you and him and others. Exactly. So I think that any business nowadays needs a little bit of early stage capital, as well as this mentorship program, which includes a lot of professionals from Hawaii, from the mainland, from Asia that will help them in different aspects. So that's building a team, that's doing all the investment paperwork, that's also doing marketing, design, pitching, talking to investors. It's all these things that are very, very essential for startups today to get into the market who are maybe more young. Do they get a desk there to work on? They get a desk, yeah, they get a desk there. We've got a ping pong table, we've got the whole thing set up. But I think it's about every day, it's like a school, it's like a boot camp. Every day we've got a lot of mentors, a lot of sessions coming in, and then they have to basically nighttime they're working on the products. So let's get concrete. Boot camp. Who are you boot camping today? When you're finished here, you're probably going to be seeing a company. Give us a real world example of who you're mentoring. Okay, so the teams are coming in, maybe they're just about to launch a product, or they've already launched a product, but it's very early stage. Now the next thing is they're looking for customers, how to find customers to come and buy what they're selling. So we help them in this digital era, how to get those customers to come to their website, right? Website or app or whatever it is, and also how to raise money. So once the customers come in, they get something we call traction. It's very important, right? A lot of that means users. It could be 10, it could be 20, it could be 100, it could be thousands. And then we take them to San Francisco for a demo day where we put them in front of major investors who invest in companies like Facebook and Google. Oh, the tough guys in San Francisco. Yeah, exactly. So we hope to prepare them up for that level to then then bring them into the main market there. And then the ones that are successful there, I will then help take it back to Asia and hopefully integrate them into the Asian marketplace. And you bring people from Asia here? That's right, that's important, yeah. Companies and investors. Exactly. And annually you have this Fandango that's called East-Meast-West. Yes, East-Meast-West, yeah. So there was one this past January, you helped to organize it, right? Yeah, it's the third annual one and I think it's very successful. So what we do is we bring a lot of investor speakers from either the mainland or from Asia to come here and kind of discuss what's going on both sides. And so it's really exciting because one of the guys I brought in from San Francisco who works for a company called Angel List, which is like a big investment company online. The guy came here, he's like, this is great because he heard a lot from the Asian investors. What's happening in China, what's happening in Japan, what's happening in Hong Kong in terms of investment startups, which he doesn't have access to as much being in a Bay Area, right? So that's the idea. Then also accessing all the local startups can see what's happening here and then people want to come in to see what's going on. So I think it's a really good show. It's a cozy show so people can really network and meet each other as opposed to like bigger shows. I think it's very good and we're going to be doing it again next year in February. So folks want to go to bluestartups.com and tune into all of this and there's newsletters and contacts and if you want to be considered for the next cohort because there's a cohort is never more than six months away than the opportunities are there. And we'd love to have people who are interested in what we're doing to come out to our demo day here in Honolulu on July the 7th. So we having that at the Sullivan conference center at the university and that will be all seven teams plus we'll have some guest speakers fly in to talk about the startup ecosystems where they're from and to kind of you know show off the cohort. I went to one of those demo days and you forced them to give like a three minute pitch, right? You have to put your entire who you are, what you're doing, your business plan and why you're going to take over the world. You have to do it in three minutes and at the end of the three minutes you're off. That's right. Exactly. That's brutal. And so what that is is basically because you know the investors as well they're looking at these things and they listen to these pitches quite frequently so they can get the idea. So basically not only do you have to sell your business idea you have to sell yourself. Yeah. How much does that person look like they're going to be able to take a company from zero dollars to billion dollars? So if you can't sell yourself in three minutes you can't sell yourself at all. It's tough. Yeah exactly it's tough but I think that's the conversation starter actually so you see the pitch in three minutes and then you want to follow up with somebody and maybe sit down for a longer conversation later, right? Find out more about the details of the company. Is it fitting in my vertical? Can I fit into my portfolio? Things like that. So talk to us about Casey Lau. Sure. Like most people who is not born here you follow the twisted path to get to this desk at this time and place. Sure. So let's take a simple question. Why are you here? Okay. Why? Yeah. Let's go as deep as you can. Sure. In why? Sure. Why are you? Why is it you? Yeah. And why are you here? Sure. Well okay so I was born in Vancouver and my dad was based here in Honolulu when I was a little kid for the airlines. All right it's not in the military because it works for commercial Canadian airlines, right? So we were based here when we were little kids so this was kind of an interesting time that when you live in Honolulu for a while when you're growing up you have a really good impact on your life I think. So it's funny that after whatever it was 20 years or so I'd come back here again and have some sort of a career here. Why am I here? I really think that working with Blue Starks and Chanoa, Farnsworth and Hank Rogers and these my Rogers doing this here it's quite exciting and I think Hawaii does have a lot to offer and so it kind of feels like a full circle in the way you know I started off here when I was a little kid went to Hong Kong and didn't work there and now I'm kind of back in Hawaii and I'm seeing the ecosystem starting to grow here and I see a lot of opportunity and I saw a lot of ability for people to grow businesses out of Hawaii that I think that that's kind of why I'm here right now, right? I can tell there's some passion behind it. There's a lot of passion behind it. Where does the passion start when you were four and a half years old? Yeah it's true. That's a good question. Why is somebody like so interested in helping companies rather than like a charity or something? I guess I've always been like this you know when I was younger I've always wanted to do my own business I wanted to sell things myself to other people I wanted to publish my own magazines my own comic books things like that so I've always had that kind of entrepreneurial feeling and so as I started doing my own business I had other people other mentors kind of helped me grow and so kind of I don't know if you're going to call it paying it forward but the idea is that I feel like I have all this knowledge and I feel like I'd be wasted if I didn't actually apply it to other companies who are starting off in an early stage and don't have the same kind of knowledge that I do so I think that's good and plus I have a giant network of friends who are also successful entrepreneurs or investors or even just people in the counting field the law field that can apply their knowledge to these new young companies right and everybody wants to stay relevant everybody wants to be stay and see what the next good trends are right what's going on what's happening everybody has kids they're also going to be into this kind of world so I think it just it just kind of feeds off each other and I find that I'm very excited that I'm you know I chose like technology as a as a path to go through because it's always changing you know iPhones and old MacBooks and all these crazy things that are coming out and AR and VR and AI and all these crazy terms everything is technology everything technology yeah exactly even if you're talking about old line industries like mining or agriculture or fishing there are high-tech angles they must I believe in I believe strongly in innovate or die kind of thing right because we see a lot of major companies going down because they're not into keeping up with innovation what the customers want and that's kind of what we teach at startups in a startup world is to you know find the value proposition to your customer as soon as possible because something that you think is great nobody else might think is great right but maybe something you think is not great but everybody wants it that's when you get on so what's the payoff for Casey what's the ideal uh-huh moment for you out of all of this that you're looking for um I guess I'd like to just be able to um you know I think everybody needs to contribute to the world and I think this is kind of my contribution I think that giving back and helping the next generation get to the next level I think is very important so a lot of companies I've helped in Hong Kong I feel really happy about I don't necessarily maybe have taken financial award from these people but I feel like growing that ecosystem to a level where people are like wow you know this is it's built quite a bit of time over five six years I find that building that I think I feel like I'm a builder maybe in the past life I was some sort of architect or builders and like that but today I like building like these more like companies and people and helping people grow so that's are you doing a similar thing in Hong Kong because you're kind of commuting back and forth you spend a few months in one place sure in a few months in another place and you must be meeting some very interesting oh yeah definitely the crossroads of Asia in Hong Kong and everybody wants to get on the tech train for sure right and everybody now wants to come to Hawaii and everyone's come to Hawaii exactly so I also host a conference in Hong Kong called RISE and it is now the biggest conference in Asia for startups and innovation and in July we'll have 15,000 people come to Hong Kong for this with speakers from all over the world startups from all over the world coming together and enjoying Hong Kong but also enjoying the programming that we're putting together wow I know it's very exciting right and still I'm East meets West myself right my dad is Chinese my mom is from England and I'm running around Asia Pacific so it's pretty how's your Chinese um it's not so good you can blame my father for that I hope he's watching that and he knows he's responsible for that okay let's put a bookmark in it right there and we'll be right back okay you can be the greatest you can be the best welcome back to the art of thinking smart we're here with Casey Lau of blue startups in Honolulu and Casey you used a buzzword back a couple of folds ago ecosystem I I know what an ecosystem is in the biological sense yeah but how can you use the ecosystem in this context it's funny that's also what I thought when I first heard the word Dave McClure is a famous investor from Silicon Valley and he said to us when he came to visit Hong Kong he said you guys should get together in a coffee shop and create your own ecosystem and that's the first thing I thought like what does this have to do with science and frogs and things like that right but actually he meant that an ecosystem for startups at least is that you have all the different pillars of startup culture together in one space so that includes the startups entrepreneurs founders you've got the investors you've got government you've got media and you've got maybe even you know different kinds of associations involved so anyone who can help to grow facilities a little bit of money yeah some mentors yeah everybody put together that wants to see your city grow they all come together in an organic coal so Silicon Valley has done it obviously fantastically and that's completely organic right there's nobody that's saying hey we're going to start ecosystem they just kind of happen so other cities now have to kind of like drop the stone in the pond and watch the ripples go right so I was lucky to be able to be one of the guys in Hong Kong to start that but there's somebody in Singapore doing the same thing there's somebody in Tokyo doing the same thing Taipei Beijing Sengen there's like all of this so I'm finding people like myself they're kind of the the the disturbors of the ecosystems or the kind of people bringing it together I'm out there so when I go to places I want to meet startups I find that person that person could connect you into that ecosystem like I need to meet investors in Sengen I need to meet AI startups in Tokyo there's the people who are who are know who are in the know and those are the people that are very valuable ecosystem and they they're not too shy to share those contacts or to do introductions for you so you're a non-artificial intelligence exactly it's good to have all four yes yes yeah we have a short video below about blue startups like to have a peek at it great let's take a look at it Aloha blue startups was founded in 2012 with a mission to stimulate economic growth in Hawaii by providing promising entrepreneurs with seed funding business development advice and access to world-class mentors and investors the founding team of blue startups includes Hank and Maya Rogers of the Tetris Company and Shenoa Farnsworth a local angel and venture investor as Hawaii's first locally founded technology accelerator we've been a leading member of Hawaii's burgeoning startup scene since day one helping to brand Hawaii as startup paradise Hawaii's geographic and cultural proximity to Asia allows us to easily build relationships with Asia Pacific business leaders we host an annual east meets west conference that attracts hundreds of attendees from around the world we've developed close strategic partnerships with so top silicon valley accelerators mentors and most importantly investors during their final week at blue cohort participants traveled to silicon valley for a week of action packed networking and events we are a proud member of the global accelerator network and follow the proven tech stars accelerator methodology we have received some amazing results so far 75% of our portfolio companies successfully raised follow-on funding after the program and the average raise per company is over $500,000 in 2015 blue startups was ranked number 17 among top u.s accelerators such as angel pad tech stars and 500 startups we are now focused on increasing our national and international presence through expanded partnerships in Asia and silicon valley we look forward to building our future together one startup at a time from Hawaii to the world so we're going to drill down into uh through blue startups into Casey Lau here yeah Casey um 20 years ago you were a 20 something and if you could talk to that young Casey who probably knew everything there was to know had everything together was straight ahead and you know far smarter than all the older people around you if you could speak to him now from your lofty perch yeah um what would you tell him both positive or as a guidance what would you say to that Casey I would tell probably tell him to buy a lot of apple stocks that's probably the number one thing I was using apple back then I mean my my dad bought me the first apple like two computers so we had that so I'm thinking that's kind of weird I think that somebody did a somebody did a website study like if you bought a acintosh computer in 1995 instead of buying that and putting that money into apple stock to be huge today like it's crazy but that's definitely one of the things but I guess so one of the things I always think about is that you know my life took a quite a it's looking a big fork in the road right I was raised in Vancouver went to school there and I could have stayed there or or I could have gone to Hong Kong right that was the thing I kind of went to Hong Kong because um there was more opportunities there and I had family there so I went there and uh basically I just looked for a job for in two weeks and on the last day before I had to go back I got hired so I always think about that kind of thing what if I didn't get a job what if I went back to Canada would I been doing this in Canada or would I what would I also what would I be doing it's quite interesting intimidating though I mean you get to a city of 20 25 million people yes and you grew up in a city of two two and a half million yeah exactly um just the scale and the speed and the density sure on our entirely different yeah exactly exactly so but I think it was a good move and uh I enjoyed it and I've got a lot of opportunities that I don't think I would have got uh necessarily um out of Vancouver I go back to Vancouver now and I see their star scene is huge now there's a big conference there Ted is there it's very exciting everybody who's ever ever I tell people I'm from Vancouver they always love Vancouver so much right so it's great it's a great place so I'm very fortunate I've lived in like Vancouver Honolulu Hong Kong you know Tokyo these kind of places it's very exciting so I don't know to say something bad I don't know it just seems like everything it's just happening the way it's happening and I'm you know I can't say there's any regrets there you wouldn't tell Casey not to do anything hmm yeah make any big mistakes over the last empty up years I'm sure there's been a lot of mistakes but I that's the other thing about what we do in startups is that we embrace I think failure I think that's one of the things that we do teach that you need to if you're going to fail you need to fail fast and then get up and keep going you can't let failure cripple you so much and I think just from my I guess my own personality I feel that to be very true right so I don't think that anything that's happened that's negative has been so bad that it hasn't taught me a lesson and that's what you do in startups right you kind of like learn that okay this doesn't work but if you've done it this way it might have worked better and I think that's always how life should be taken and I think that's how I think of it as well so what makes you effective on a personal level obviously you have an intense working schedule and you're back and forth and you're straddling time zones and languages and cultures a lot has it could be very stressful yeah so don't don't say that right that's what I don't think about those things what you just said I just think it's like just go straight right okay but all these other things is that one of is stay in the now stay in the now stay in the zone yeah um and then you know get I use a lot of technology to get my make sure my days correct like I don't think I've had you know the computer systems I use and my iPhone stuff like I think it'll be quite a bit more challenging than it is so I'm I'm sure how people did it before the iPhone right I mean I even try to think back myself like how did I get how did I find my way from one part of town to the other like with a map that's with a paper map that seems crazy right so it's a lot of these things so I sometimes it in your head do you actually yeah yeah exactly right so um and even how do you learn a language right now you can have somebody teach you a language on your phone that's from the country right back then you'd have maybe somebody who was in your city teach you or you'd read it from a book or you did it in school or whatever right so I think that we have a lot of opportunities today and I think the young people today who are coming into the workforce now have so much opportunity and so many things that they they jump they basically jump a lot of learning that we had to go through and they can go faster and they can do more so I think that the rise in speed of technology will be quite quite high in the next 10 years. So what's your key to dealing effectively with people especially young high-energy people it takes some talent to be able to channel their energy into productive ways and to get them moving forward yeah yeah what's your key to dealing with good with talented people. I think the best thing to do is try to talk to them on their level I think that's the best thing if you're teaching it's like it's like my dad right he always tells me don't do this because it will hurt you but I'm like but I'm gonna I have to do it myself right you can't tell me like that right you I think you have to learn it your way so I think guiding people in a certain way that they can see the they can see the outcome themselves but I'm not sure but they're willing to able to try they don't have to be told don't do it then they're gonna do it for sure right so I think that's that's a that's a definitely a point I learned how not to take care of people from the way my dad taught me things growing up right sure there's love involved and things like that but it's more like you know you've got to burn your hand on the hot kettle to know that it's hot you're not supposed to do that right and I think that kind of in business sense it's the same kind of thing like you're gonna make a decision you're gonna put a thousand dollars on a facebook ad campaign that may be completely wrong but you're gonna have to blow that cash just to see that it works it doesn't work right so I think that and it's not going to hurt you physically so it's more and also just talking to people in the terms like I also think that people give mentoring skills to companies they know nothing about or it's not in their vertical or not in their space and they try to teach like I'm from manufacturing I'm going to teach you a company that's developing AI you know how I did it right so I think that's very difficult you have to understand both sides and I think both sides have to learn from each other so that's what I do as well like there's a lot of startups in the cohort that I think how can I help this company I have no idea about what they're doing but I find out that they need things that I am very strong at right they don't need help on that so it's very interesting it's a win-win so that's why I feel good about doing it it's not like I'm telling you I'm like your teacher it's not like that it's actually a back and forth well in an Asian family a part Asian part Asian family your dad is Chinese yes yes a big thing for a young man to do is to prove his value to his father yes that's a traditional cultural thing that's very profound yeah and it's baked into you from the youngest age you think your dad is pleased with how you're doing I think he wanted me to be a tennis player like a famous tennis player so I think I've let him down on that and then I have a brother and he was going to be the famous tennis player in the family but he didn't do it either kind of a tennis player yeah exactly I feel like I'm ping-ponging at least between the world around the world around the world so but I think that as long as I'm healthy and happy and enjoy what I'm doing I think he's I think he's happy and your mom's good mom's good too yeah she loves Hawaii too so she likes to pop over here she's a Canadian so she loves to come here of course of course yeah yeah so what's your favorite blue startups company you mentioned Volta tell us a 30 second sure description of Volta so Volta is very a very interesting company I think I don't want to say it's my favorite company I don't know them that well but they're one of the early ones in the blue star program and we went to see their office in San Francisco just recently and it's quite an amazing company so what they've done is they set up chargers for electric cars in shopping malls all right and you probably see them in Kahala mall in Alamoana things like that and because that Hawaii had a law where you had to have a charging station in your mall parking lot and so they came here and took advantage of that and started putting them in front of all these kind of like whole foods and these kind of upper-scale stores with advertising so it's free for the user free for the mall and they make their money off advertising on it and it's growing crazily in the mainland right now which is great because electric cars are taken off so you know if you came to me with that idea well nationally doing now it's growing quite well but you came to me five years ago before this like Tesla's and stuff that came out and said do you know this is going to be next big thing you'd have to like really believe in it right that this is going to be the next big thing and then that Hawaii was the place where we're going to launch something like this okay we're going to put a bookmark in it for now okay Casey maybe you can come back another time I have a lot to say obviously about specific events and specific companies sure a specific technology that really grabs you yeah and I know we're going to have chanoa come in yes so we'll be hearing more about blue startups here definitely excellent thank you thank you Mike I want to thank you for your time Casey Lau and for think tech Hawaii and the art of thinking smart aloha