Hawaiʻi's Technology Community
Perhaps it's time for a seed fund incubator in Hawaii?
This latest TechCrunch post, "LaunchBox Unleashes Its First Nine Startups" really got me thinking of whether we could do something like this in Hawaii.
Ever since I met Paul Graham back in 2004 when I presented at MIT's Spam Conference (fast forward 21 minutes to see me make a presentation in record cold temperatures wearing so much clothing I looked as chunky as Santa Claus) I followed his Y-Combinator project very closely with great interest, always pondering its applicability to Hawaii.
A seed fund incubator basically is designed to give a couple of geeks a summer's worth of room & board money to belt out a beta version of a web company. In exchange, the incubator gets a small percentage of the company and the right to invest in future rounds.
This is something that just might work here. We could style the incubation process after the business plan competition (which also gives a sizable prize for the winner) and then perhaps as a community, agree to provide some of our expertise to help the startup succeed.
Is this something worth pursuing? I haven't spoken to Paul since '04 but I'm certain he'd at least return my email and perhaps give us some pointers of how to do something like that here in Hawaii (I thought about asking him to perhaps partner with us but he told me he really hates flying).
What do you all think?
Ever since I met Paul Graham back in 2004 when I presented at MIT's Spam Conference (fast forward 21 minutes to see me make a presentation in record cold temperatures wearing so much clothing I looked as chunky as Santa Claus) I followed his Y-Combinator project very closely with great interest, always pondering its applicability to Hawaii.
A seed fund incubator basically is designed to give a couple of geeks a summer's worth of room & board money to belt out a beta version of a web company. In exchange, the incubator gets a small percentage of the company and the right to invest in future rounds.
This is something that just might work here. We could style the incubation process after the business plan competition (which also gives a sizable prize for the winner) and then perhaps as a community, agree to provide some of our expertise to help the startup succeed.
Is this something worth pursuing? I haven't spoken to Paul since '04 but I'm certain he'd at least return my email and perhaps give us some pointers of how to do something like that here in Hawaii (I thought about asking him to perhaps partner with us but he told me he really hates flying).
What do you all think?
Views: 152
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Comment by Russel Cheng ラッセル チェン on September 2, 2008 at 10:44pm
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Yeah, I signed up and put it in my calendar.
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Comment by Peter Kay on September 2, 2008 at 9:52pm
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MG is on 9/25. I saw you will be attending. sound good?
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when's the next MG meeting? Do you work in downtown?
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good idea. perhaps we should leverage a tech meeting like a Manoa Geeks or something and have a sub-session there. what do you think?
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Let's meet in person to speed this up.
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I think we're right where we left it! :)
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where are we on this dialog?
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/08/ycombinator-the.html
open house!
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http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/14/y-combinators-demo-day-summer-2008/
Today is y-combinators demo day. See the list of companies.
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HiBEAM is a great orgnization and there's no question that I would not have been able to go as far with one of my previous company's without HiBEAM's help.
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Comment by John on August 13, 2008 at 6:06pm
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Just wanted to mention that I went to the HiBEAM founder's lunch today. I thought it was great and enjoyed the discussion. I would best describe it as a exchange of ideas on the business of technology. There was 5 of us including David Watumull, the CEO of Cardax and Mike Curtis, the COO of chi.mp. It was in-depth give and take about hiring executives, positioning companies, dealing with VCs, partners, figuring out business plans, etc.
If you are building a startup, I highly recommend it. I think it's a valuable service that HiBEAM provides to help Hawaii startups.
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