Hub Coworking Hawaii

Hawaii's Best Coworking Space

Startup Grind

Startup Grind Happens Tonight + This Week’s Newsletter

Startup Grind Honolulu Hosts Mai Lieu Tonight

Today, November 14, 2019 from 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM. Mai Lieu is an inventor, best selling author, & inspirational speaker, and is now a real estate investor and entrepreneur! Learn more and register ($15)

Some Holiday Notes! 🍂

Thanksgiving Potluck Lunch: Wednesday November 20, 12PM- 1PM. Sign up in the kitchen for what foods you can bring and share with members! All foods are welcome, and you don’t need to bring food to join.

Holiday Giving with Toys for Tots: From 10/23-12/2/19: We are accepting toys and funds for local children ages 0-12. Gifts must be new and unwrapped. Cash and Credit donations are accepted at the front desk.

Early heads up for Holiday hours! We will be closed Thanksgiving Day and the following day (November 28 and 29). In December, we will be closed starting Christmas Day, December 25, until January 2. As always, we’re open 24/7 for unlimited members and office holders.

✨UPCOMING EVENTS✨

Film Screening: She Started It

Friday, November 15, 2019 at 5:30 PM – 8PM. Meet & Greet Screening of “She Started It” with Hawaii Society for Technology in Education. Free! Learn more and register here.

Drawdown Deeper Dive Solutions Series!

Project Drawdown is a coalition of more than 200 researchers and other experts from 22 countries led by author, environmentalist, visionary and entrepreneur Paul Hawken. Learn more and register here.

Pono Home Truck Show

Tuesday, November 19 from 12PM-2PM. Stock up on sustainable, zero-waste body care for your holiday giving. Come try samples, learn more about natural body care, and shop! Free! Learn more here.

 

ImpactART: Vox with Aria Villafranca

Thursday, December 5, 6PM – 8PM. ImpactART happens in December with artist and illustrator, Aria Villafranca, featuring comic book-style sequences, standalone pieces, and animations, Aria invites us to examine the familiar through an unfamiliar lens. Learn more and register here.

✨COMMUNITY NEWS & EVENTS✨

17th Annual John Kelly Awards

This beautiful event awards environmental leaders in our local community while benefiting Surfrider Oahu to support their ongoing work to protect our ainaʻs ocean, beaches, and waves! Featuring music headliner Henry Kapono, along with a silent auction, ‘trashion’ show, and the environmental awards ceremony! Register here!

Each year, the Impact Hub network surveys a number of our 16,500 change-makers in 100+ locations across 55+ countries. We want to find out how being part of our network has helped them achieve their goals. Check out the results here, and find out how Impact Hub members around the world are working together for change.

Ka Maka ʻĪnana: Indigenous Worldview Project Design

This forthcoming design and venture ideation program is for students and adults interested in creating solutions that positively impact the pae ʻāina with our friends at Purple Prize.

In an intense 16-week program, you’ll learn design through a maoli worldview, connect with amazing people, ideate social enterprises, technologies, and sustainable consumer products that solve local problems, and positively impact your community and future generations. Learn more and apply at www.purpleprize.com/inana 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Event Spotlight: Startup Grind with Jules Sukhabut

Today we’re sharing a Member spotlight featuring Jules Sukhabut of TeraVault. He’s going to be speaking at the Startup Grind event on Thursday, July 18. This is a great opportunity to learn from a serial entrepreneur, and to network with other startups and founders.

You can register for the event here: Members get a $5 discount with code: impacthubmember

Andrea Bertoli (AB): What is your background and history – tell us the founding story of TeraVault.

Jules Sukhabut (JS): TeraVault is a boutique software development firm. In September 2018, we partnered with Hi Tech Hui, a cyber security company in Honolulu to help some of their clients with software projects, and we’ve been growing ever since. Currently we have team members in both Honolulu and LA, and we are growing our offshore team in Philippines who service clients on the mainland and Canada.

Before starting this company, I started and sold three others: WebWorks, Bagna Networks, and OrderDynamics. I have had successful exits from all of these companies.

AB: What advice can you share for entrepreneurs as they grow and scale their company?

JS: Sell through channel partners- In my experience, I found it easier to sell through channel partners. In the early days of a startup I sold through other companies that I knew and that had similar target clients. This strategy has allowed our company to quickly grow our SaaS or IaaS sales and client base, and allowed us to test and develop our sales processes, onboarding, and ongoing support.

This is not an original idea, it’s basically why some software companies sell through retailers, independent software vendors (ISV), value added resellers (VAR), and/or systems integrators (SI).

Another piece of advice is to attend trade shows and conferences: I’m always looking for trade shows and conferences in the market location that I’m targeting for sales. These are usually in the same industry as our company’s product / services is in (e.g. e-commerce), or in an industry that my target client is in (e.g. clothing retailers and brands). Once I identify these events, I start creating a workback schedule to exhibit and demo our product/services there.

AB: What are some of the key lessons that you’ve learned along the way?

JS: Don’t take on investors early in your company- In all the companies that I’ve co-founded, we didn’t take any outside investment from investors. We did take on debt/loans to help our business grow, but this didn’t dilute our shares and ownership. This helped us maintain control and direction of our company while allowing the founders realize the capital gains of our shares in the company when we sold. I do, however, agree with taking on investors (private or corporate) at later stages in the business, but only if the investment capital is used to significantly grow company sales or solidify a strategic partnership or product development.

AB: What can people expect from the coming Startup Grind event?

JS: At the coming Startup Grind event, I will share my personal experiences of starting a technology company, growing it nationally and internationally, and exiting the business through an acquisition and management earn out.

Thanks, Jules, for sharing your thoughts! 

You can register for the event here You can register for the event here; click to learn more about Startup Grind Honolulu Chapter.

Member Spotlight: Meghdad Abbaszadegan of Startup Grind

Today we’re sharing a Member spotlight featuring Meghdad Abbaszadegan. He’s the local Director for Startup Grind sponsored by Google for Startups. He’s coordinating an event next week featuring Jiwon Moon from Wefunder (the company we chose for our campaign). We chatted with Meghdad about his work with Startup Grind, his entrepreneurial background and about the coming event.

Click here to register for the event: Impact Hub HNL Members get a $5 discount with code: impacthubmember

What is your background and history – how did you get into your current role as a director for Startup Grind?

Back in 2014 I built a company in Phoenix, Arizona with a mission to create connected, collaborative communities; the project failed due to co-founder conflict, however, I got in contact with amazing organizations such as Startup Grind Phoenix. The local chapter helped us feel like we were part of a family. I was able to meet like minded people who are still to this day some of my closest friends. When I moved to Honolulu, I was surprised that there was no active Startup Grind chapter. So I decided to start one and give back to a community that gave so much to me.

Tell us more about Startup Grind: this organization promotes itself as ‘We are the community for the world’s entrepreneurs.’ – What does that mean for you as the director, for the Honolulu chapter, and for the global movement?

Startup Grind is the largest independent startup community with over 500 chapters across the world. We have hosted amazing speakers like Clayton Christensen (Innovators Dilemma), Scott Cook (Intuit), Jessica Livingston (Y Combinator), Ben Horowitz (Andreessen Horowitz) and more.

We believe our values have brought us this far. Relying on these values, I want to create a community where new ideas are generated and people are inspired to build meaningful projects together.

Tell us more about the events you’ve hosted here in Honolulu and the coming event with Jiwon. What are the goals and ideas we’re focused on and what can people expect from this event?

This chapter was inactive for two years, so this will be our first event. We want to document the process of entrepreneurship and highlight those who are active in the community. We love good stories that will inspire positive action in others. Our goal is to educate people on what it takes to build successful companies; ultimately spreading the entrepreneurship bug around leading to more inspiring stories.

We couldn’t have asked for a better speaker than Jiwon Moon for our first event. She is the Head of Community at Wefunder, running Workaway here in Hawaii! She has has hosted fireside chat with likes Nate Blecharczyk (Airbnb), Holly Liu (Kabam), Siri Srinivas (Draper Associates) and more via her accelerator XX.

We will be hosting Jules Sukhabut on July 18th. Jules Sukhabut is the Founder & Management Consultant of TeraVault, a boutique software development firm operating in Honolulu and Cebu. He has had multiple successful technology exits. He was a co-founder of OrderDynamics, an e-commerce SaaS platform and order management system. On May 2013 the company was acquired by eCommera, and acquired a second time in 2018 for $13.4 million by Tecsys.

Thanks, Meghdad, for sharing your thoughts! We’re looking forward to these coming events!