Aloha from Blue Startups!

Cohort 18 spent the week on brand, sales, and the terms behind a round, and Guy Kawasaki came to the Sandbox to talk story. Here is what Week 6 looked like.

Week 6: Talk Story with Guy Kawasaki

Thursday afternoon Guy Kawasaki came to the Entrepreneurs Sandbox to talk story with Chenoa Farnsworth. He grew up in Kalihi Valley and calls his career Kalihi Valley to Silicon Valley: Iolani, then Stanford, then Apple, where he was the second software evangelist. He told the founders that within 10 seconds of a pitch, a listener should know what the product is and does.

Brand, Sales, and the Cap Table

Liya Safina opened the week on Monday with Worldbuilding, showing the cohort that AI has made startup websites look alike, and the real brand is the story true to its founder. As an activity, she asked us to strip away a brand’s logo and name to identify what a customer could still recognize. The big lesson: in today’s world of constant stimulation, a brand can often be identified by sound and color.

Morgan Abreu of Melia Strategy ran Tuesday’s session on building a sales process that leads to execution. She showed the cohort that compliments on a call are not the signal, and had each founder write one open-ended question to use on their next call. That same evening, the cohort joined Mana Up, a CPG-focused accelerator in Honolulu, for a pau hana mixer.

Chenoa Farnsworth talked with the cohort on Wednesday about the terms founders sign before an investment is made. She showed the cohort how post-money SAFEs stack at rising caps and then convert all at once, which is where founders are usually surprised. She told founders to hold off on valuation until a lead investor sets the number.

Tom Matta of Forecastr closed out on Friday with Go-To-Market Systems. As employee #12 at Carta, he was heavily involved with their growth and Go-To-Market strategy until it grew past 2,000 employees. Tom shared his experience to the cohort, providing insights on how much of Carta’s success came down to pinpointing one north star metric that every team could follow. Pitch practice ran again that afternoon as the cohort prepares for Demo Day.

Cohort 18 heads into Demo Day on Friday, September 4, during Hawaii Tech Week at the Entrepreneurs Sandbox.

Cohort 18 Spotlight Series

LuʻuLive

LuʻuLive Is Forecasting What the Ocean Looks Like Underwater

Matthew Feeley studied ocean engineering in Hawaiʻi and expected a Surfline for divers. Nothing like it existed, and nobody was forecasting underwater visibility at all. LuʻuLive is building that layer itself, with SurfCams above the water and DiveCams below it, so a diver can pick a site instead of guessing. It has reached 1,000 monthly active users and is growing about 25 percent month over month.

Learn more ›

Manai

Manai Is Personalizing Meditation Around Each User’s Own Goal

Manai is an AI meditation guide built around one person’s goal rather than a general library. Frank Schmidt started it because meditation apps try to appeal to everyone, so the content stays generic. Manai asks what a user is working toward, then writes the visualizations and practices for it, and learns whether they want silence, grounding, or no affirmations at all. One user built a physical therapy practice around an Achilles injury.

Learn more ›

Blue Startups Cohort 18 Honolulu Demo Day

Blue Startups in San Francisco

Community Events

The Official Mixer closes out Hawaii Tech Week 2026 Friday, September 4 at 1938 Indochine from 6:00 to 10:00 PM, picking up as Demo Day ends. Hosted by Hawaii Tech Week, the night brings founders, investors, builders, and creators together across the indoor room and the outdoor lanai.

Space is limited and tickets are required.

Blue Startups Partners