On Dec. 4 the VC Summit and Startup Paradise Demo Day at the Sheraton Waikiki hopes to spark new interest in startups.
There are two organizers. One of them, Blue Startups, created by Tetris developer Henk Rogers, is a private accelerator that selects cohorts from a wider variety of applicants.
The other, the Energy Excelerator, has received $30 million from the Department of Energy to help energy startups. Indeed, some say that energy is the tech that tech was supposed to be. Although the VC Summit is more about startups than tech, can it signal a reawakening for tech? At the turn of the millennium, there was excitement about tech in Hawaii. The legislators who adopted Act 221 were proud of it. But when Linda Lingle came in as governor, she started working against it. She later floated her own version of diversification, the Innovation Economy, but that didn’t go anywhere.
The way we sunk Superferry and killed 221 didn’t make us look too good. Now we’re sending "agritech" away and fighting over clean energy, aquaculture and telescopes, and that doesn’t help. No one can say we’re interested in creating a tech center or moving to a tech economy, and no investor can be confident. Not even the Chinese are investing here. Ten years ago we had the Hawaii Technology Trade Association and the Hawaii Science and Technology Council. Now they’re both gone.
Then-Gov. Ben Cayetano created a tech advisory council but never appointed the members. Lingle made her own council but couldn’t get it to meet. Then-University of Hawaii President M.R.C. Greenwood’s council met but didn’t act. Gov. Neil Abercrombie never created a council. JABSOM II went nowhere. So did the Regional Biosafety Lab and the Asia Pacific Innovation Center. The Cancer Research Center got scaled back. Hoku Scientific went bankrupt. Sopogy moved to California. Even the beloved Manoa Innovation Center is on the way out.
Capital is critical for tech, but our two largest trusts have never invested in it. A workforce is also critical, but much of the 221-era workforce has gone or gone into real estate. And where is the workforce council?
Yuka Nagashima left the High Tech Development Corp. in May, but a successor hasn’t been found. Greenwood’s successor hasn’t been found. Dick Cox left the Office of Tech Transfer years ago, but his successor hasn’t been found either. We’ve lost momentum in other ways, too. It’ll be a while before we can regain the late U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye’s clout in Congress. And it’ll be a while before we can get the Legislature to fix the university or the state’s computer system.
We still have a mono-economy. We still have a big university with unrealized potential. We still regularly lose our best graduates. We still don’t see that this is all a recipe for backwater.
But we fight change. We don’t diversify; we don’t offer meaningful jobs to our kids; we don’t court mainland tech companies; we don’t invest in our own tech; we don’t export; rather, we import everything and pay too much for it.
Here are some suggestions going forward:
» The first thing we do is identify the icons for tech to rally around — a gathering place, a leader and a tech trade association that can camp out in the state Capitol.
» Make tech a platform issue. Start at coffee hours and finish at the ballot box. Don’t buy rhetoric and don’t vote for people you don’t believe.
» Make it stick. Amnesia is the enemy of the good. Never forget the mission of building an industry. Don’t be distracted by, well, anything.
» Let’s not limit ourselves to apps and games. We need to think big, cure the ills of the world, be disruptive and find the Next Big Thing.
» Lobby the business community. They need to belly up and be at the front of the parade. They should give us leaders and champions.
» Invest in local tech. That means the trusts and the Legislature, too. If it’s a matter of spending too little or too much, spend too much.
» Skip the kuleana. Everyone works together, nobody ignored or excluded. No internecine fights. If you like tech, tech likes you.
» For a rematch, let’s treat tech entrepreneurs like heroes. Pay them well and cheer them on. Win or lose, keep them happy and keep them here. Of course, there are glimmers beyond the summit. For example, the Legislature did set aside $2 million for tech this year, and UH did finally build a Cancer Research Center.
But we need a lot more to resurrect a Tech Spring in Hawaii. We need to make up for lost time and create a startup ecosystem. You can start by attending the Summit.
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Jay Fidell, a longtime business lawyer, founded ThinkTech Hawaii, a digital media company that reports on Hawaii’s tech and energy sectors of the economy. Reach him at fidell@lava.net.
