Business plan competition offers top prize of $25,000

Entrepreneurial events are a key component of successful startup communities. These gatherings are crucial for startup operators to plug in and find resources and collaborators. Hawaii is fortunate to have dedicated individuals on nearly every island putting lots of effort into these community events.

On Maui the Maui Economic Development Board just hosted Startup Weekend Maui, bringing together 72 participants for a 72-hour weekend sprint to conceptualize, create and build new businesses. Past Startup Weekends have launched successful ventures including food entrepreneur Jen Fordyce’s Waikapu Pickles, which went on to the Maui Food X-celerator program. This year’s winner was Poi Belly, an on-the-go taro baby food product, with strong runners-up from the tech space including Motor Pig, an IT service for the e-sports industry.

On Oahu, Blue Startups hosts T.E.C.H. Hawaii on Friday at 3 p.m. The event will feature pitches from Cohort 9 and a keynote speech by tech evangelist Guy Kawasaki. Visit techhawaii.eventbrite.com for tickets.

And on Hawaii island, entrepreneur Jim Wyban and longtime Realtor Kelly Moran are putting on the second annual Hawaii Island Business Plan Competition, with launch events happening this month. Wyban operated a successful shrimp-breeding business at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) in Kona for 20 years before selling it in 2012. Looking for ways to give back, he and Moran identified a gap between the traditional business education offered at the University of Hawaii at Hilo and the true realities of the marketplace.

“I do think people need to be trained to become good entrepreneurs,” Wyban says. “My target was people who are actually out in the real world trying to start a business or people who have gone some distance down that path already.”

After studying startup communities on the mainland, Wyban saw that business plan competitions were a common feature. The Shidler College of Business in Honolulu, for example, puts on an annual business plan competition for its students.

Wyban raised enough donations to cover a $25,000 first prize for the inaugural 2016 competition and was blown away to see 49 business plan submissions, ranging from robots to hydroponics.

Last year’s winners were Chris and Wendy Klepps of Ono Queens, who raise and sell queen bees in Kalapana.

“We entered the HIPlan competition not just to win money, but a lot of it was for the learning experience,” Wendy Klepps said. The cash infusion and business advice helped them expand from just two breeding sites to 12.

“We’ve been able to expand into other states, and we have new equipment to be able to go international. We’ve got our name out there more,” she added.

Even the runners-up benefited from the competition. Michelle Mitchell, a family physician in Hilo, entered with an idea to develop a new office building and grow her practice to fill the space. Less than five months after the final pitch event, she received a bank loan and broke ground on her new facility. She told Wyban that the business plan competition helped her fully develop her idea and gave her the confidence to pitch the bank for financing.

This year, business plan submissions are due Sept. 10, with two networking events in July and a one-day workshop Aug. 9 hosted by the Kona Small Business Development Center on how to write a business plan. The $25,000 first prize will be offered again, though Wyban hopes to raise enough funds from donors to award second- and third-place prizes, too.

For more information, visit HIPlan.biz. You also can watch a promotional video at youtu.be/zyJM1JFDwA4.

Sara Lin, formerly a journalist in New York, Los Angeles and Honolulu, is now the associate with the Hawaii Strategic Development Corp. Reach her at sara.n.lin@hawaii.gov.