 Welcome to Adventures in Small Business. My name is Victoria and this is a collaboration between US Small Business Administration, Hawaii District Office and its partners, where we showcase the stories of local entrepreneurs as well as organizations that are helping Hawaii's small businesses. This show is a special show, Halloween edition, so I'm very excited to have great guests from Hawaii Technology Development Corporation and Box Jelly and today we're going to be talking about co-working space for small businesses in Hawaii. Welcome Dan, welcome Sandy. Hi. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having us. I love your costumes too by the way. Happy to be here. Happy Halloween. So first of all, can you please introduce yourself briefly? Where are you from? What do you do and what does your organization do? I work for the, yeah, I work for the Hawaii Technology Development Corporation, our small state agency attached to DBED, Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism. So our agency focuses on helping technology companies. The technology also spans innovation startup manufacturing type companies and we've been around for about 30 years and what I do for the agency is contracting, I also do operations for our facilities. Helping Hawaii's small business. Exactly. And economy. That's wonderful. Thank you Sandy. Where are you from? So my name is Dan, I'm with Box Jelly, I'm the director of operations and so I pretty much run all operations, have the team around me. We've been working closely, Box Jelly's been working closely with Sandy and HDDC to get the sandbox up and running. But yeah, it's been pretty much all hands on deck with the thing, just trying to get in there and make sure that we're doing the best we can. Great. So happy to have both of you talking about co-working. Co-working space here in Hawaii. I think you're one of the best people to talk about that since you're working so closely with co-working space. So when I did some research about co-working spaces, I found an interesting fact that by 2025 it is predicted that 48% of population will be working as independent contractors or freelancers. So what you guys doing is really serving our communities and helping small business owners. Thank you for doing that. But for those who don't know what co-working space is, maybe we can just start by talking about, okay, what is co-working space and why should small business owners care? So co-working is essentially an office space where we provide all sorts of different types of working environments, so collaborative areas, task chairs, and all other types of, so we have cubicles, private offices, and essentially what it is is just a community of people who have the ability to work remotely or don't necessarily need to be tethered or tied down to a single location. And it's basically a combination of a bunch of these different types of professionals who get together and purchase a membership in order to work in this office. And what we do is we provide programming and certain events to really create this tight-knit community. So a lot of people have been really attracted to that model just because it breaks a lot of these molds. Yeah, co-working is kind of the future. Do you have anything to add? Yeah, I guess we could just back up a little bit and talk about Sandbox. Exactly, so Sandbox. I think people have been asking us what's the history of it or how did it come to inception? So HCC has a history of running incubators for past 30 years. We've been around for 30 years. We had the Manoa Innovation Center. We still have a facility on Maui called the Maui Research and Technology Center. The Sandbox is an idea that started about five years ago, maybe six years ago now. And our agency wanted to expand the capabilities of what we wanted to do to help small businesses and technology companies. We're a bit constrained at the Manoa Innovation Center and we wanted to expand that. And so we put in a grant application with the EDA Economic Development Administration or grant money to do this project, this community center. And we were super fortunate to be provided with $3 million from the EDA and then our wonderful state legislators, thank you state legislators, for matching it with $3 million. And then we had some private investment from Stanford Car, who's our developer for 1.5. So that's pretty much the project, started five to six years ago. And then since that time, we've been working to develop it, design it. We just got the keys to the facility. It was actually brought up in one year, which was amazing that the building broke ground last year and pretty much in ten months it was done. And around March timeframe we were handed the keys. And then since then we brought a board, Box Jelly. Box Jelly, we brought them aboard as our partner to help us with developing the co-work program that Dan will talk more about as well as help us with coming up with programs and also bringing the community together. We just launched our sandbox two weeks ago. So we did a soft launch several months ago just within our community and to get them to know about what the sandbox is. And also, it's a blank slate for us. So we've been talking to a lot of different partners in the community, tech companies to figure out what it really should be, how it can be useful to the community and to all of our partners. But since then we did the formal grand opening on October 10th. We opened it to the public. And then now the co-work space is open. And Dan's been doing an awesome job with Box Jelly and his team designing the co-work space program as well as all the furniture and everything in there. I think both of you did an amazing work and congratulations on such a big achievement. Thank you again for helping a Hawaii community. So how sandbox is unique or different in terms of co-working space or what is the difference between Box Jelly and Sandbox? But those who would like to learn more? Sure. Okay. So for Box Jelly, I didn't really go into the history of it, but we've been around since 2011. So we're pretty much the first co-working space in Hawaii. We've been around and we've seen kind of all these communities come and go. But it originally grew out of a project from Ray Chung Fujihira, a college project where him and a couple of his original co-founders ended up setting up a co-working space in the back of Fish Cake. And Fish Cake is this interior design, furniture store, slash art gallery. So ever since the very beginning, Box Jelly has had this very creative DNA. Ray Chung was more on the entrepreneur side, so he attended Shamanad and went through the Hogan Entrepreneurs Program. So he really kind of pushed the, he kind of bridged the gap between the two of bringing all of these different type of tech events, but also maintaining that artistic, creative DNA. The entrepreneur Sandbox has a little bit of a different vibe to it, and that's because we have partners of Hawaii Technology Development Corporation who are more tech focused. So we have been developing certain channels and platforms or kind of like an angle to just kind of address this kind of community of the tech community. So if we were to talk about the difference between Box Jelly and Sandbox, Box Jelly is again more ingrained in kind of like that lifestyle of creativity. You know, we have our motto is work hard, live better. With the Sandbox, we created, everything is pretty much different because our membership plans are a little bit different, the vibe is a little bit different, the community that we expect to develop around them are a little bit different. And that's just because people naturally gravitate, you know, like the way that we interact with space, that's a really important factor. So a lot of people who like the hominess, kind of like the patina of life or like to feel like they're going home usually select Box Jelly, but the people who want to like a little bit more professional environment, a little bit more, you know, a little bit more precise and a little bit more systematic will go towards the Sandbox. The other difference is the memberships that I mentioned before and Sandbox is a really accessible site. So when we crafted the plans, we were looking to open up co-working to an entirely different environment or an entirely different demographic. Co-working on Island is anywhere between $225 to $250. For a lot of people, and that's per month, for a lot of people that's challenging. And we kind of acknowledged that and we saw Sandbox as the opportunity to really open it up to people who haven't had the opportunity to actually experience co-working. So our plans are $85 a month and it comes with a beaky membership. So we understood kind of the accessibility issue and wanted to bring it pretty much throughout the entire plan. So again, there's just differences in the type of communities that will develop, but also the different type of partners that we have also make it a little bit different. So yeah, it's just an entirely different product. Equally proud. Equally proud. A different audience. Nice. So $85 a month plus beaky membership. That's great. Okay. And so what if I, let's say, I'm not sure if I want to do a membership, but I would like to feel the vibe and just come in and maybe try one day or so. Is that possible? Yeah, we can set it up so we do free trials. Because that's one of the important things too is that we don't want to push anything on anyone, right? So everything is month to month. There's no commitments or anything. So if you ever feel like it's not the space for you, then more than welcome to. We always want the best interests for our members. So if it belongs somewhere else, then that's fine. But we want to make it as easy as possible and part of that is just trying out the environment, seeing whether or not it sticks. Because again, you don't know if co-working has been for you, right? So with this new audience, we also need to make sure that they feel, you know, they feel welcomed and they feel like they're going to be able to take advantage of the space. Wonderful. So you also have an opportunity to rent a conference room or like event space, right? So not necessarily getting a membership, but maybe just getting a room for your event if possible. Right? So this is the also the really beautiful thing about the sandbox is that we have a variety of workspaces. So we have conference rooms. So we have two meeting rooms that fit from six to eight people, so smaller meeting rooms. And we have a training classroom that fits anywhere between 15 to 20 people. And these rooms are all equipped with large monitors, teleconferencing capabilities, webcam capabilities. Again, we're getting cutting edge technology into this facility. And then we have rooms that can fit anywhere between 35 and 50. So larger brainstorming sessions or training rooms. And then we have our event space, which fits up to about 150 to 200 people depending on the type of layout. And that one's equipped with like a 35 foot screen, dual projectors, brand new, like we got a sound system. So movie screenings, you know, all sorts of different types of events that can happen in that space. So very fortunate to have it in that area because it's hard to find large projection screens, presentation space, but also kind of like these nice amenities on the side as well. That's great. So you have everything that you need for any kind of event. So small business owner or organization doesn't have to worry about anything. Right. And plus I think I saw it on your website saying professional support. So let's say if I need some help with the IT person, like I'm not really good with computers and setting up projector, is that possible too? Like getting some support? Yeah. So our Box Jelly staff, our team members were really committed to kind of that experience to make sure that you, again it's all part of this making you feel welcomed, making you feel like you have all the tools and necessary resources that you need at your hand. So we do our best to try to provide that. All of our team members, the Box Jelly team members are really committed to ensuring that experience. So we're all like young millennials. We have the ability to kind of like tap into your computer to make sure that we can get the printer to work or the Wi-Fi to work. But then we also have other avenues where we can leverage other members. Right. We already have a pretty large network just from our Box Jelly and Kamani location. But we have this network where if you need to get a website done, we know who to reach out to. Or you need to get a video produced, we know who to reach out to, to connect you to make sure that you can get your project done. That's the beauty of being in the community and doing work in the community. Right? Yeah. That's wonderful. We're going to take a short break and we will be back in one minute. Hello, I'm Mufi Hanabit. I want to tell you about a great show that appears on Think Tech Hawaii. It's all about tourism. In fact, we call it Tourism 101 where we talk about the issues and challenges that faces our number one industry throughout the state. We'll have some interesting guests, very informative dialogue and allow you an opportunity to maybe learn a little bit more about why this industry is so important for our state. It's been great for us in the past. We need it today and especially going forward. That's Tourism 101 on Think Tech Hawaii. Mahalo. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. My program airs every other Monday at one o'clock on Think Tech Hawaii. Most of my programs deal with my own life and law experience. Recently, I interviewed Alex Jampel who I have known for over 30 years about his voyage across the sea as a lawyer from Tokyo to Hawaii. Those are the type of stories that I like to bring and like to talk about. Human stories about law and life. Aloha. Aloha. Welcome back to Adventures in Small Business, special Halloween episode with HTDC and Box Jelly. Today we are talking about Sandbox co-working space with Dan and Sandy. So Dan, you were talking a lot about Sandbox amenities that what do you provide? What about your overall mission and goal? What are you trying to achieve with Sandbox project? So we're trying to just bring the community together but the big goal is work for development and to help small businesses. So there's all those little goals that mesh together as well. So we're working on developing a program with Box Jelly and this program can integrate speakers coming in to talk about projects that can help small businesses. We have networking events that we're going to do to bring community together because we also realize that just doing these informal networking events people meet other people serendipitously and something can happen from that also helping people to find jobs but going back to the big goal of job creation we have a few tenants on the second floor. We have about offices on the second floor that are about 200 square feet each. It's a mesh of corporate companies as well as some start-up companies that we do have like Centro Pacific Bank Servco Labs which is their innovation team digital media strategy team. We're going to have soon Hawaiian Air and we have some smaller companies such as Shifted which is an energy company. We have Moose Bear Holdings so the owner of that company is from Latour but he does a variety of things under Moose Bear Holdings. Digital media restaurants real estate and then finally we have a small company start-up company called Magic Connection and her company bridges start-up companies with Japan investors but a lot of people have been asking us why do we have these big corporate companies at the sandbox like why aren't we holding it for start-up companies. So one of the interesting things is HCC has been trying for many years to figure out how to bridge corporates with the start-up community because we realize that they're this huge powerful resource but we're trying to figure out how to bring that community together and over the past several months there has been interest by Centro Pacific Bank and CERFCO to come in and figure out how they can be part of this exciting new effort and with that there's this project that's just starting up called the True Initiative so it stands for Technology, Readiness, User Evaluation so it's a project, it's a group that's been started by these private entities, these corporate companies and the idea is to bring public workforce together with challenges that current and future challenges that the private sector and corporates are having and having them work together collaboratively to come up with solutions. What does that mean? One topic that's come up recently is AI for call centers so AI is artificial intelligence and so these corporates have committed resources to work on a solution but the really interesting and exciting part is that they're also bringing in interns so this effort is also a collaboration with the state of Hawaii of course, HCC, the state of Hawaii university, community colleges and of course the private sector so it's just started and the whole idea is to create jobs, good-paying, high-wage jobs to keep our Kama'ina here in Hawaii, our students who are graduating for Kama'ina who want to come back home and find jobs so that's pretty much also what HCC is all about. So much more than just a co-working space, right? So much more than co-working, yeah. Job opportunities, business opportunities, networking, community dealing, education opportunities, so much you guys are offering. I really want to sign up right now. Yes, and we also have a lot of exciting tenants in the co-work space too, certainly. So I also heard that people sometimes meet in co-working spaces and they even start a new venture, a business, partnerships that's a huge advantage of being in a co-working space, right? Do you have any stories of how some companies met or people met and started business? Sure. So not only are we like the techies who kind of help you out making sure that you're settled but we're also community curators. So when we bring in people or we actually see someone who wants to join we try to figure out which niche would they fit in with most. So for our co-working space, which is kind of like our private not private, but our more higher tiered memberships we were pretty selective in who we wanted because you can't over saturate a profession in a space. So what we have to do is we have to make sure that we're getting the right people in the right components, right? The right professionals in that space. So for example in that co-working space we have someone who works on digital content creation, website design, we have writers, branders, we have architects, photographers and then we have like public people who do data analytics for public discourse. But by putting these people together all of them are engaging and talking with each other. So for example the person who does digital content creation and PR has teamed up with the photographer and they've actually been our onsite kind of PR and photography team but not only that they've also started getting jobs from the other partner who's part of Sandbox which is a creative industries division CID. So they've been working with them but they've also found projects with other individuals because it's like this massive amount of talent, right? We have all this talent in a single space and the idea is how can we leverage it and kind of find avenues for people to grow their business, right? And this really kind of speeds it up. So that's one of the most kind of like standout stories just because it's been like again this PR person's actually helping out HDDC and, you know, CBP also for press releases so it's been... Yeah and I just wanted, I was just reminded that yeah I guess another exciting future plan is the build out of the media studio. We call it the Black Box but we're partnered closely with our sister agency Creative Industries under Georgia Skinner and very soon we're going to get that entire Black Box outfitted with media equipment. So right now it's been used for a lot of creative things. We have a book fair coming up, print and book fair coming up. So it's going to be used as like a studio for performance but until then in the near future it's going to be used as a really cool digital video media studio. So even those types of connections once the CID space, the studio and the creative lab space is fully up and running and you're going to see a lot more cross connections between even more people. And I think that's what's the most powerful thing about this site is that the state and HDDC has done a really good job with selecting certain partners and the ability for these partners to work together even though that we thought that we were entirely separated or related and placing them together and actually having this relationship where we're seeing the community develop around this space and it's very good vibes. I believe. I can feel the good vibes from you guys. So yeah, I remember as I was a small business owner I had this dilemma should I just work from home and save money or should I just choose a co-working space. So now I really see that huge benefit beyond just having your separate desk space. There's so much more that you guys provide and just being in that environment of like minded people somehow changes your mindset and even especially people in creative industries they say they get much more ideas if they change environment if they're in between other successful companies. So that's a huge advantage that you guys offer. So if I'm interested in renting a place in Sandbox you mentioned it costs $85 but there are a lot of different other packages right? There are multiple variations. So at the moment all we have available is the $85 membership and that's for the main collaborative space. This is Access Monday through Friday 8am to 4.30pm and this is what I mean by we were surprised by how many people actually rallied around this project so our co-working space pretty much we put out like some feelers we did some public releases very very quiet but there's so much support by the time that we had our grand opening we only had about two desks out of six left and we tried to let the community develop organically and make sure that we're getting the right people in the space but at the moment all we have is the $85 membership but again you have access to all these different professionals right? So at $85 yes it's a cost right? Yes $85 may set you back a little bit but again we're more than two and a half times the national average and that excludes the beaky pass right? So we try to make it as accessible as possible. There are barriers like sometimes parking is a little bit difficult we're working from home right? So when you're working from home or working from a cafe working from a cafe it's too loud it's hard to meet your clients if you're a remote worker or you're meeting with clients it's just nice to have a professional environment to meet at. But yeah there's a lot of these different challenges but hopefully with the changing economy and changing culture that the sandbox will be a place where people can find an entry door to entrepreneurship Yeah I think this is a really high value for money what you guys offer and it's really the cost is not that high. So we have about just one minute to wrap up so if I want to sign up for sandbox what do you have to do? Where do you have to go? So you can go to www.sandboxhawaii.org and then you can also sign up for our newsletter which is pretty simple you can stay up to date with all the events that we have going on again we have print and book fair, Honolulu Film Festival VR Lounge a lot of these things are coming up and they're free to the public so again the idea is to get as many people in as possible and then just provide community public events and programming. Thank you so much I would highly encourage you even if you're not signing up for sandbox sign up for newsletter because they have a lot of resources a lot of interesting coming up. Thank you so much for coming here today it was a pleasure talking to you guys. Thank you for watching Adventures in Small Business. Stay tuned for more adventures every Thursday 11am Mahalo and Happy Halloween!