Pacific Business News’ Inno Madness challenge is now heading into Round 3 — the final round — with two companies left: Ai.Fish and Parklinq.
Inno Madness is a bracket-style competition among businesses in the tech and innovation space. Readers vote to advance companies based on this question: Which would you invest in? How you answer that question is entirely up to you — you may consider a company’s mission, its product, its potential for growth, or maybe you just think they sound like the most exciting business.
The participating companies were assembled from reader nominations, as well as editorial input from the PBN staff. Seeding was determined randomly.
The contest launched last month with eight companies. Four moved on to the next round, and now, just two remain to fight it out for the title of Inno Madness Champion. You can help determine which is victorious by clicking the link in the bracket below to vote.
But first, to find out more about the origins of each of the companies, we asked their founders to tell us what makes them so passionate about their work.
Ai.Fish - a software startup dedicated to creating a more sustainable world for marine life and fisheries using cutting-edge artificial intelligence and computer vision technology
What makes you so passionate about Ai.Fish?
Jimmy Freese, CEO: Surfing and marine ecosystem protection have been natural allies for a long time. … Over my lifetime, I have watched Hawaii’s reefs erode and become overfished, and in 2019 I realized that I could do more to make a greater impact on ocean health. My background in starting and running the company that sells the machines and software that design and manufacture over half the world’s surfboards taught me a lot about building networks of people who care about niche problems.
After months of brainstorming with my colleague Justin and many discussions with both scientists and fishermen, we realized that the monitoring of fisheries is a very costly, and highly manual problem. Electronic monitoring, the process of collecting video data of commercial fishing activity, is a promising solution to address unsustainable fishing. But with more than 400,000 vessels with monitoring needs worldwide, it creates a massive data problem. However, this type of data problem is perfectly suited to AI — just nobody was doing AI for fisheries because it is such a niche problem with many challenges.
In 2020 we were awarded our first grant funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Our success has continued from there with continued grant awards in 2022 and 2023 and three additional submissions underway. We want to make Hawaii home to one of the world’s most innovative and successful ocean conservation efforts.
Parklinq – a Hawaii-based parking company that specializes in “rates for residents,” offering locals preferential rates or complimentary parking through smartphone-based ID verification
What makes you so passionate about Parklinq?
Tyler Saenz, CEO and product architect: In 2008, I had a bad car accident in Las Vegas that left me with a broken neck. After surgery and recovery, I was scared to drive a small car, so I bought a big SUV. When I moved to Hawaii, I found out my SUV was too tall for most parking garages, which led to lots of parking tickets and towing fines. One day, after searching for a parking spot for 45 minutes in Waikiki, I ended up parking in a coworker's driveway, which eventually led to the idea of Parklinq.
Parklinq came from my own experience and the realization that parking can be a headache for so many people. We started by making the process easier for drivers, and now we're working on making things better for property owners, too. We've come up with some cool ideas like solar-powered surveillance, a system for free and discounted parking for locals, and language detection QR codes for a more inclusive experience.
Our passion for Parklinq comes from knowing that we can make a real difference in the parking industry, making life easier for people in Hawaii and beyond.
Round 3 voting is now live and will continue through 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 27.
Read the contest rules here, and when you’re ready, vote by clicking the link below.
