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Elemental Excelerator: Social & Environmental Impact Partner

Elemental Excelerator is a global climate-tech accelerator based in Hawaii that funds early- and mid-stage startups focused on impact across a wide variety of sectors to create measurable social and environmental impact. To date, they have supported 99 companies and 8 cohorts (#8 was just announced, and includes Member organization FarmLink Hawaii).

Each year their application process brings in some of the most innovative companies from around the world, and this year saw the most ever, at 800 startups. According to a recent article, 81% of those companies have technologies that lead directly to greenhouse gas reductions, and 67% indicated that their technologies have specific applications in low-income communities.

From its applicant pool, Elemental selects 15-20 companies annually to be part of their newest cohort. Companies chosen usually focus on solving systemic issues in agriculture, energy, water, mobility, and the circular economy.

Elemental has been an instrumental partner for Impact Hub, signing on as an official Impact Partner for both 2018 and 2019, and we are grateful for their support, guidance, and friendship over the years.

During our Wefunder campaign, the Elemental team talked about how the work they are doing aligns with work Impact Hub Honolulu is doing to build an interconnected Hawaii to support and grow entrepreneurs locally and beyond.

Hawaii Kai Sneak Peek: Check out our New Location!

On July 11, Members, friends, and the Impact Hub Honolulu’s team came together at Liko’s Tap & Tavern at the Hawaii Kai Shopping Center, and over beers and vegan tacos we got to see the first glimpses of the newest Impact Hub location in Hawaii Kai.

The Impact Hub Hawaii Kai location, projected to open in March 2020, is approximately 7,200 square feet, with collaborative marina-view coworking, meeting rooms of various sizes, communal kitchen, and several private office spaces on the second floor, overlooking the water.

As the new location is very much under construction at this time, visitors were reminded by our Co-Founder George Yarbrough to wear our ‘imagination goggles’ to see the bright future of our newest location. Of the new location, Co-Founder Anne Weber says, “Our vision is an interconnected Hawaii where one membership gives each member access to 11 locations across the islands and 100 existing Impact Hubs worldwide.”

We are raising the funds to build out this location with our current Wefunder investment campaign; we’ve currently raised about $150,000 to be used for this new location. If you are interested in investing, click here to get started!

Thanks to those who came out to share in this momentous occasion. Check out all the pictures from our event here in our gallery:

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!