Why should Silicon Valley have all the fun?
That question gnawed at Meli James as she worked as an entrepreneur for five years in the Bay Area, with all of the tech hotbed’s attendant advantages of capital, connections and collaboration.
James, a Punahou and Cornell alumna from Pacific Heights, came back home in 2012 with a vision of sharing those opportunities with a new generation of aspiring business owners. She spent time with some of the first local accelerators, Blue Startups and the University of Hawaii’s venture program, and began to network her way up.
In 2017, she co-founded her own accelerator, Mana Up Hawaii, with Brittany Heyd, a 2021 PBN Women Who Mean Business honoree. Amid a rise in the quantity and variety of incubator cohorts in the Islands, they decided to target a specific niche — locally owned consumer packaged goods companies they thought could grow the Hawaii brand worldwide.
“When we launched Mana Up, we were looking at how can we broaden how we view innovation for Hawaii, how can we support companies that not only start here, but stay here and thrive here, and what kind of strengths and regional advantages that Hawaii already has that we can double down on,” James, 43, told Pacific Business News.
Sixty-three portfolio companies and six cohorts later, Mana Up sensed it was time to take the next step. James and Heyd announced in September the launch of their venture capital arm, Mana Up Capital, with $6.3 million to invest in select graduates of their annual program.
So far, they have announced partnerships with two of their earliest portfolio companies, Big Island Coffee Roasters and Ko Hana Rum.
“For these types of companies, [funding] wasn’t part of their obvious equation,” James said. “We really got to know how these companies could utilize capital, where they were struggling … lots of them [were] never able to raise money like this before, because a lot of times they couldn’t even get bank loans.”
She has observed a global “tailwind” level the playing field for local companies in the last five-plus years, between the widespread connectivity of e-commerce and social media, and a rising desire for authentic, identifiable brands connected to a culture.
“We’ve always had great companies in Hawaii; they’ve always been our best-kept secret,” James said. “Something already exists from a resource standpoint. We don’t want to duplicate it, we will just connect them with that resource.”
How did it feel to launch your VC after laying the groundwork for the accelerator?
[It] was really feeling we’d created a shared vision with our community. Most of our limited partners with the fund are local. Many of them are institutional investors. These are corporations and organizations in Hawaii who are really getting behind this vision, and that is really neat to see. When we went out to fundraise, we got more “yeses” than “nos,” and [those came] from heavy hitters in the community.
What made you focus on Hawaii as a brand?
The Hawaii brand is bigger than tourism. … It’s an aspirational brand; people feel good when they have Hawaii products, whether it’s the smell, the taste, the look. All those things, it creates this warm feeling, this feeling of aloha, and it’s bigger than coming here.
We should not turn our backs on tourism. We should think about how can we leverage that into something bigger that can bring in even more dollars into our state and create that much longer customer life cycle that starts with them coming here, or even before. Wanting to get that candle, or that ulu chips, all those things are part of that global love for Hawaii, and that’s what’s super exciting right now with this whole diversification of our economy, and regenerative tourism. This … to me, is a huge piece of that.
Any tips for local entrepreneurs?
Always grow your network. Whether you’re in high school, college, 20s, 30s, continue to push yourself to meet new people, and not for reasons of wanting — for reasons of paying it forward, and continuing to just grow.
If you do have an idea … there are a lot of great programs to connect with, whether it’s the Patsy T. Mink Center for Business [and Leadership], or even applying to Mana Up and getting on our radar early. We’re happy to meet with people and give advice for where we think you should be working on a few things.
Co-founder of Mana Up Hawaii/Mana Up Capital
Address: 680 Iwilei Rd Suite 420, Honolulu, HI 96817
Website: manauphawaii.com
Instagram: @manauphawaii
