Let’s face it. For years, tourism, construction and the military have been the big cash generators in our state. Hawaii has tried to encourage the growth of tech startups, but with limited success. Of late the scenario has changed. The growth of tech incubators and "venture accelerators" fueled by the private sector have come into vogue. I think that’s a good thing. These lean and mean operations are funded and mentored by professionals who have succeeded in the industry, rather than bureaucrats.
Chief among them is Henk Rogers, the charismatic entrepreneur (and University of Hawaii graduate) and founder of Blue Startups, which provides promising companies with the ingredients for success. These include funding, mentorship, access to expertise, peer review, product testing and, perhaps most important, introductions to investors. In essence, Rogers and his cohort offer nascent startups the resources they need and an intensive 12-week program to kick-start their business.
Blue Startups currently has seven startups on its roster. We don’t have the space to write about all of them, so I chose two of interest to me. First is a company called SEE/RESCUE (SeeRescue.com), founded by Hawaii Kai resident Rob Yonover, a Ph.D. geochemist/volcanologist who you’ll more often than not find in the ocean. A North Shore big-wave surfer and Molokai Channel rough-water fisherman, Yonover has developed a solution to the problem that you don’t want to find yourself in: being lost in a vast expanse of ocean or wilderness.
More than 3,000 people are lost every year without a reliable and effective way to signal for help, according to Yonover. His answer is the See/Rescue Streamer, the size of a cellphone, which he believes can save your life. A bright orange plastic device that will float on water, it can be unfurled 25 or 40 feet (depending on the model) and has lights and reflectors for nighttime rescues. It’s been approved and adopted by all branches of the military. It’s available on Amazon.com.
Gibi Technologies, founded by sisters and Kaneohe natives Synette Tom and Sheree Loui, is another company that assists people in finding the lost. However, instead of locating people, Synette and Sheree help pet owners find their missing animals.
Their invention is a GPS-enabled device that attaches to a pet collar. If Rex or Kitty is lost, all the owner has to do is press a button on the Gibi and, voila, the pet’s location can be found on a Google map. The demand for this should be great. According to the American Pet Products Association and humane societies, 1 in 3 pets go missing in their lifetime, and 4 million are euthanized each year because owners cannot be identified — even with microchips.
Gibi allows you to view your dog’s location from a computer or smartphone and can even set up a virtual "fence" so that you can receive alerts if your pet has strayed from your virtual compound. Thus, if you are running errands while your dog is home and it decides to wander off, you’ll be notified.
How cool is that?
If you think that Hawaii’s revenue comes only from tourism or building condos in Kakaako, you’d be wrong. Companies such as Gibi and SEE/RESCUE prove that local entrepreneurship is alive and well.
It’s the high-tech companies that create the good-paying jobs, and we can’t forget that.
Mike Meyer, formerly Internet general manager at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, is now chief information officer at Honolulu Community College. Reach him at mmeyer@hawaii.edu
