Every Big Idea from EMW 2025—In One Place

Couldn’t attend every session at EMW 2025? We’ve got you. This year’s East Meets West Conference brought together world-class founders, investors, educators, and creators to reimagine what innovation looks like when East meets West—and now, the full experience is just a click away.

From AI and storytelling to global entrepreneurship and Hawaii’s unique leadership role, dive into these powerful, bite-sized episodes:

Blue Startups YouTube

Welcome and Introductions

How Blue Startups and local leaders are building Hawaii’s innovation ecosystem.

Speakers: Chenoa Farnsworth, Monte McComber, Dane Wicker

Postcards From Hawaii’s Future

Education, sustainability, and generative AI shaping Hawaii’s next chapter.

Speakers: En Young, Gabriel Yanagihara, Tiffany Huynh

Moderated by: Olin Lagon

Next-Gen Engagement in the AI Era

How Gen Z and Gen Alpha are redefining marketing, authenticity, and community.

Speaker: Katie Penn

Moderated by: Liya Safina

AI – The Good, The Bad, and The Hype

What’s real, what’s dangerous, and what’s investable in AI—straight from top minds.

Speakers: Chris Yeh, Brian Bell, Jacqueline Hall

Moderated by: Chenoa Farnsworth

SHŌGUN: An East Meets West Story

Behind the scenes of FX’s hit show Shōgun with Rachel Kondo & Justin Marks.

Moderated by: Maya Rogers

The Perfect Game

The real Tetris story + building a mission-driven life—from gaming to planet-saving.

Speaker: Henk Rogers

Moderated by: Maya Rogers

Startup World Cup Pitch Competition

Top startups compete in the Startup World Cup Finals for a $1M investment prize.

Contestants: Symbrosia, Protosure, Nalu Scientific, Beagle Technology, AI Connect, Skidattl, Maiven Energy, Gloing, Reef AI

Introduction by: John Lim – Pegasus Tech Ventures

Building for Scale: Perspectives from East to West

How leaders across continents scale teams, tech, and impact—without losing soul.

Speakers: Caroline Tran, Zander Brumbaugh, Pamela Ryan

Moderated by: Mark Munoz

We want to extend a heartfelt mahalo to all of the incredible speakers who took the stage at East Meets West 2025.

Your thought-provoking insights, engaging stories, and inspirational perspectives helped shape one of our most dynamic conferences yet.

EMW YouTube Playlist

MAHALO EAST MEETS WEST SPONSORS

GOLD SPONSORS

SILVER SPONSORS

BRONZE SPONSORS

COMMUNITY SPONSORS

Blue Startups Alumni Job Opportunities

Outbound Sales Development Representative, Senior Sales Executive – Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) & Geospatial Data (Remote)

Mid-Level Quality Assurance Engineer, Senior Backend Developer (Java), Senior Frontend React Developer (Remote)

Teams Customer Service Agent (Remote)

Front-End Engineer, ML Engineer (Remote)

Blue Startups Partners

Let’s go global together.

Thrive with our accelerator program. Sign up for our newsletter to stay tuned with our journey.

Sign Up