Startup companies and investors visiting from Asia and the mainland kicked off a two-day conference Thursday designed for budding businesses to meet a global network of investors.

More than 400 people are expected to attend the event, called East Meets West.

“There isn’t really a replacement for the energy and learning generated when you get hundreds of innovators passionate about solving problems in cool ways in the same room, and the East Meets West does that,” said Lauren Tono- kawa, spokeswoman for Energy Excelerator.

The conference is one way the local community is looking to bolster the innovation ecosystem in the state. The investors at the event from Asia and the mainland U.S. manage more than $1 billion.

Meli James, head of new ventures at Sultan Ventures, said the conference helps Hawaii showcase the local startup community to investors that may have previously overlooked the islands as a spot for innovation.

“I believe it actually takes people having a reason to physically come here to really understand,” she said.

Some conference attendees spent the day Thursday touring the state’s five accelerators, programs that provide networking and funding opportunities for new companies. The tour stopped at Energy Excelerator, Blue Startups, ROC, GVS Accelerator and the University of Hawaii’s startup support program called XLR8UH.

There are now 145 companies in the innovation community in Hawaii, up from 18 in 2012 when the collective effort to build an innovation sector in the state was launched.

Blue Startups is co-hosting the conference with the state-run HI Growth Initiative, a program created to attract private investment to innovation in Hawaii.

In December, Gov. David Ige said he plans to propose $10 million of the state budget be used for the HI Growth Initiative program.

According to a survey of the state’s accelerators, startups growing in Hawaii created more than 1,000 jobs over the past four years and raised more than $250 million.

Speakers for the second day of the event at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki include Henk Rogers, the owner of the rights to Tetris and founder of Honolulu’s Blue Startups, and Christine Tsai, co-founder of Silicon Valley, Calif.-based 500 Startups, an investment firm managing $250 million in assets for early-stage startups.