Eric is the Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of Clicktripz, a global travel technology company that builds innovative solutions to serve the needs of suppliers, publishers, advertisers and travelers, and has extensive experience in both the online travel and social networking categories.
Joey guides our companies with Entrepreneurship and Strategy expertise.
I am an entrepreneur and business strategist who revels in working with driven, creative people.
I am led both to existing, agile companies looking to leverage their present resources into new revenue possibilities or into adjacent spaces, and also to promising innovators who are interested in taking their early and untested concepts to market. In particular, I get excited about entering markets with high-value and high-margin innovative products.
My process is marked by speed, creativity, and short bursts of intensity. In addition to those already connected to a new project, I might involve several other entrepreneurs that specialize in other aspects to jump-start brainstorming.
My history is varied, and I find I use these experiences on a nearly daily basis to screen the “marketable” from the merely “interesting”. From my background in engineering, I revel in the possible, and how to change answers from “no” to “not that way, but how about if we do this?” From my background in communications, design, and marketing, I have insight into what will sell, and what particular audiences want to see and what they’ll pay. And from my background in law, I’m aware of the bottom line and the risks inherent in any venture (along with how to minimize them).
My efforts have been instrumental in helping to develop a high-growth national company from which I have had a successful, sizable exit, along with a number of early-stage concepts before and after roll-out. Two of the companies in which I participated in early stages have been recognized on the Inc 500 list: Vendormate (#25 in 2010) and BroadSource (#385 in 2007).
Specialties: Among my specialties, I assist in helping to distill creative ideas into viable and marketable concepts, researching and targeting audiences from initial stages to later growth, developing business plans, constructing marketing campaigns and plans, managing operations staff and product development teams, and planning for scale.
Matt guides our companies with Mergers and Acquisitions, Exits, Innovation, Strategic Consulting, and Leadership expertise.
Matthew Johnston is an experienced entrepreneur, businessman and executive director. He has over 20 years of start-up and commercial experience, including successful exits, with companies in both the service and manufacturing/distribution/wholesale/retail industries in Australia and the United States of America.
As a highly successful and accomplished marketer, CEO/President and board member, he has worked in industry sectors including insurance and legal, financial, automotive, technology, aviation and the outdoor leisure industries.
Specialising in M & A and exits, innovation, strategic consulting and leadership, Matthew is currently the Founder of ILA Global, a USA and Australia based International Business Accelerator, Owner of Suplove and investor in entrepreneurial endeavours. He holds several other board positions with Australian and USA companies and non-profit organisations.
Matt guides our companies with business strategy expertise.
An Oahu-based financial services executive with a history of implementing innovative business strategies with a focus on digital solutions including mobile, online, fraud, marketing, and CRM as well as leading product management teams, vendor engagement, and business development initiatives.
After earning an MBA from Cornell University, Paulette Jencks has spent years growing revenue for start-ups in the parent-focused space. At Kidstir, an ecommerce children’s cooking company, she grew the subscriber base significantly in the first 6 months of launch. At Weldon, a parent coaching and wellness start-up, she created and executed the go-to-market strategy for enterprise clients uncovering the largest revenue driver of the business. Paulette is able to put all the juggled pieces of a growing business together to focus on the most important areas to drive focused growth.
Prior to working with start-ups, Paulette spent years in healthcare consulting working across big pharma, specialty pharma and insurance companies. Her projects were focused across digital marketing, change management and strategy. Her success is contributed to the deep relationships she builds with clients to understand their needs and work together to achieve common goals.
Paulette has a passion for female entrepreneurship and enjoys being a part of Luminary and HeyMama communities to continue to support women in their careers.
Founder of Hawaii’s angel investor network, the Hawaii Angels. Co-author of Angel Investing: Matching Startup Funds with Startup Companies. Award-winning author on business negotiation and conflict management, has over 20 years of experience in coaching companies in valuation and other negotiations.
Steve Markowitz is a Honolulu-based impact investor and former public company CEO. His areas of expertise are healthtech and consumer internet. Steve co-founded and led pioneering loyalty marketer MyPoints.com, taking it public on Nasdaq (peak market cap $2.5 billion). He is an entrepreneur turned hands-on investor, serving as vice chairman of Blue Startups alumnus iFirst Medical Technologies and chairman of LifeDNA and BeeStripe, all based in Honolulu. Steve has been honored by his alma mater UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business with the coveted Richard H. Holton Teaching Fellowship, recognizing his well-received lectures in the Entrepreneurship and New Venture Finance courses. He is also a Japanese speaker and globalist who shares in Blue Startups’ vision of Hawai‘i as the ultimate East Meets West locale.
Steve guides our companies with business strategy expertise.
Steve was formerly the SVP of Product Strategy for MySpace and the company’s first PM. Many of Steve’s early product ideas led to the explosive adoption of MySpace. Steve grew up in Fresno and escaped to study at Pepperdine. He lives in LA with his wife and two kids. He’s had a lifelong passion for technology and science (especially magnetism – he keeps ferrofluid liquids in his kitchen to play with in his spare time).
Gregory guides our companies with Legal expertise.
Gregory Kim is a partner at Convergent Law Group LLP, a Silicon Valley based firm focusing on technology companies. Mr. Kim is a co-founder of HiBEAM, an accelerator program for emerging companies located in Hawaii, and is a founding director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Hawaii. Mr. Kim has also serves on the advisory board of the Hogan Program at Chaminade University, is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Punahou School, a Professional-In-Residence at the University of Hawaii Shidler School of Business, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Hawaii School of Law, teaching the Entrepreneurship and Small Business Clinic.
Mr. Kim has also served as the Chair of the Business Law Section of the Hawaii State Bar Association, and founded and chairs two subsections of the Bar Association–the Venture Lawyers Work Group and the DCCA Work Group, which worked closely with the government to formulate business-friendly legislation. Mr. Kim was the principal draftsperson of the Hawaii Business Corporation Act, and is also an editor-in-chief of the Corporations Law Manual. Mr. Kim is also the founder of the Business Law Corps, a legal nonprofit corporation that provides pro bono business law services to deserving entrepreneurs. Mr. Kim is recognized as a leader in the field of corporate law by Best Lawyers, Chambers USA and SuperLawyers.
Sr. Product and Marketing Executive with 10+ years growing early to mid-growth stage Mobile Technology companies into substantial market forces, maximizing their impact through disrupting crowded or semi-crowded markets. Deep experience in rallying the organization to the achievement of big hairy, audacious goals (BHAG’s) and challenging business problems. Recognized expert in launch in or transition to mass-market appeal.
• Active Angel Investor, mentor and coach to tech entrepreneurs and budding Angel Investors
• Over a decade as a cross-functional engineering leader in and for companies such as Adobe, Wells Fargo, passionate about exceptional customer experience. An expert in defining priorities, making critical engineering decisions, collaborating in a fast-paced, agile environment, partnering cross-functionally within the team and across organizations, a key contributor to successful software launches across mobile, desktop and web surfaces
• Strong computer science background and experience developing full stack web applications that are scalable, performant and high-quality using the latest technologies, while partnering effectively with product owners, designers, and engineering teams
• Passionately volunteer in community events, hiring the best talent, coaching team members, mentoring in the Girls Who Code and Girls in STEM programs, mentoring and investing in women-led businesses that make a positive social impact
Hoala Greevyis the founder and CEO of Paubox, the leading provider of HIPAA-compliant email services. Paubox’s end-to-end email encryption works on any device without requiring additional apps, plug-ins, or logins. A serial entrepreneur, Hoala also founded Pau Spam, an email-filtering software service. Paubox is based in San Francisco.
Hoala recently celebrated Paubox’s 1,000th customer by giving away 1,000 spam musubi to San Franciscans and donating funds to Project Homeless Connect. An avid kayak fisher, Hoala holds the world record for the largest caught finescale triggerfish.
Holly Liu founded the venture backed mobile gaming company, Kabam in 2006 with UC Berkeley alumni. Her work has contributed to record revenue growth for Kabam year over year from $0 to $400MM annually, that led Kabam into the unicorn club in 2014. She led the design for Kabam’s award-winning “Kingdoms of Camelot” franchise, which has grossed over $250 million in less than four years. She was also the founding mobile designer for extension Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, which was the top grossing app on iOS in 2012.
She was Chief Development Officer in charge of developing Kabam internationally through key relationships – starting with China. Among other things, she continues to develop global cultural initiatives within Kabam.
Prior to that she was Kabam’s Chief of Staff and oversaw HR, leading corporate culture and talent experience for over 1500 employees (including contractors) at Kabam globally. Holly oversaw the team responsible for recruiting and retaining top talent, and has grown the Kabam staff 500% in three years.
Holly is a consummate entrepreneur, executive, and startup mentor. She is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, and has named in Fortune and Forbes as a leading woman in gaming and entrepreneurship.
Holly has been named in:
* Fortune – “10 Most Powerful Women in Gaming”
* Forbes – “12 Women in Gaming to Watch – Entrepreneurs’ Edition”
* Forbes – “10 Women Entrepreneurs to Watch from Google Ventures’ Portfolio Companies”
Holly is an experienced keynote speaker. Speaking engagements include:
* Women 2.0 San Francisco Conference Keynote – “Going Big: The Secret to Going Big, so You Don’t Have to Go Home”
* Haas UC Berkeley Asia Pacific Conference Keynote – “Define Your Moment”
* A. Richard Newton Distinguished Innovator Series – UC Berkeley SkyDeck – “Finding Your Way”
* 500Startups: Weapons of Mass Distribution – “Shake, Mix, Stir, KABAM : $0 – $360MM in 4 Years
Flat”
* Casual Connect – “The Pitfalls of Passion”
Celential.ai transforms how organizations hire and retain a diverse workforce with Virtual Recruiter, an AI and human-assisted recruiting service that provides hiring managers with engaged high-quality talent across both the passive and active markets. Virtual Recruiter currently focuses on the top-of-the-funnel sourcing problem for recruiting software engineers. Celential.ai’s Virtual Recruiter service uses precision matching and 360-degree mutual-fit assessment, simulating human experts, to match candidates to job openings from its graph of over four million software engineers in the U.S. and Canada. Virtual Recruiter then engages qualified candidates through AI-driven automated and personalized communication before delivering results in the form of qualified and engaged candidates in a matter of days.
Experienced digital marketer passionate about brands, product strategy and entrepreneurship. I love connecting untapped consumer insights to new business opportunities, and have been praised for my endless positivity, inclusive leadership style and ability to bring teams (like Product, Engineering, Sales and Marketing) together.
James was a management leader at one of Hawaii’s largest broadcast companies before joining OMG. Utilizing the latest in analysis tools, he currently strategizes plans and buys multi-media for such clients as CVS/Long’s Drug Stores, Howard Hughes, Windows Hawaii and other leading retailers. He specializes in designing sophisticated media plans that leverage the power of unique multi-media buys, innovative promotions, and utilizing high profile local celebrities as spokes persons for OMG clients.
In the non-profit arena, Avis is the co-founder of the Hawaii Children’s Foundation. HICF is blazing a progressive path building PRODUCTIVE relationships between teachers, schools and local businesses. The HICF programs connect business reality to Public Education; with the overall goal of Improving Student College and Career Readiness.
James Huie is a corporate and securities partner in Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati’s San Francisco office. James advises life sciences and technology companies on general corporate matters, mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, strategic partnerships, and private equity and debt financings. He also has extensive experience in representing venture capital firms and other investors in private equity and debt financings.
Entrepreneur and expert in media, marketing, brand management, and event coordination. As CEO and founder of Nella Media Group, responsibilities include overseeing multiple businesses divisions with annual, quarterly, and bimonthly publications focused on culture and creative concepts, managing a team of editors, designers and sales and marketing professionals represented in Hawaii and the West Coast, building partnerships with national and global suppliers, and consistently looking for unique opportunities to expand the business and strengthen the brand by developing core relationships with customers.
Jason currently serves as Co-founder/Curriculum Developer of DevLeague (http://devleague.com), a software development boot camp, and Co-founder/Solutions Architect of Sudokrew (http://sudokrew.com), a software solutions company specializing in custom software solutions in the verticals of education, energy and infrastructure. Both companies were founded with the common mission of creating jobs and opportunities here in Hawaii. Prior to co-founding both companies in mid 2013, Jason served as the Senior Programmer at Outrigger Hotels & Resorts specializing in high traffic consumer web architecture and B2B interfaces across the enterprise, and has served as a team member on various startups and projects over the last 10 years. In the past year, DevLeague has received awards in the Most Innovative Business category from both Pacific Business News and Hawaii Business magazine as well as a personal finalist nomination for the HVCA Entrepreneur of the Year.
Jay guides our companies with financing, marketing and management expertise. He has a wide range of business and education contacts.
He has co-founded two startups — one in wholesale distribution (Hawaii Frozen Beverages) and the other in television advertising production (Mercury Media) — is currently CEO of a financial management firm and member of the Deal Screening Committee of Hawaii Angels helping evaluate startup business plans and presentations.
Jeff guides our companies with Venture Capital, Mergers, Entrepreneurship, Mentoring, Strategy, Development, and Online Marketing expertise.
Jeffrey Char is a serial entrepreneur with experience in social and technology ventures. CEO at J-Seed Ventures and Chief Mentor at Venture Generation, a Tokyo-based venture community. He is also Managing Director at SEAbridge, an investment and M&A advisory firm that specializes in the ASEAN region with a particular focus on technology. Originally from Hawaii, but a long-term resident of Tokyo, Japan.
Technical Evangelist with experiential training, project management, team management, business analysis, and software development experience. Adept at helping clients in identifying business needs and relating them to corporate or project vision, mission, and objectives. Skilled at presenting technical topics to non-technical audiences and bridging the gap between tools and audience needs. Experienced with ECM and CMS deployments, systems- and application-level software development, product security, and data analysis.
Specialties: NLP practitioner, experienced trainer, Scrum and other Agile methodologies, object-oriented architecture, database design and implementation
Jeff started and manages the Founder Institute in Singapore where he is currently overseeing its expansion in Southeast Asia, and Japan. Since 2010 the Founder Institute in Singapore has graduated over 100 companies. He is a recipient of the Founder Institute Director Award 2012 for “Greatest Ecosystem Impact” Worldwide (Singapore).
He is a Singapore native and graduated with a Bachelors of Business Administration (Information Systems) from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
I am passionate about building scalable processes that enable growth. I love coaching, whether I am coaching the lacrosse or basketball team, coaching my teams at work, or coaching my clients to improve business results, I get true joy by helping others succeed.
I am a lifelong learner and constantly challenge myself to learn, grow and achieve success – both in my personal and professional life.
I am always looking to build relationships with other like minded people, so feel free to connect.
World adventurer, military veteran, and overall people person. From the Air Force to tech, for ten years, I managed cross-functional teams, strategized with senior decision makers, and transformed their vision into action. I have the leadership, courage, problem-solving abilities, and passion to drive creativity and community in the workplace.
Jennifer Apy is an accomplished growth marketer with 30 years of success at fast-growing B2B, B2C software, SaaS and services companies, from Fortune 500 companies to startups. She excels at aligning sales, marketing, product, and development to drive revenue growth using traditional and digital marketing strategies.
Former roles:
DISCOVERY TOYS, VP of Marketing
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, VP of Product Marketing
ADOBE SYSTEMS, GTM Group Marketing Manager for Creative Cloud
INTUIT, Quickbooks Online, Director of Marketing
NBC UNIVERSAL GAMES (Knowledge Adventure), Sr. Dir of Marketing & Strategic Planning
MATTEL (The Learning Company), Group Brand Manager
Wrote “Growth Acceleration Guide™ Workbook” to help small businesses succeed. 1) Cultivate key market insights to guide effective marketing and customer-centric product development. 2) Infuse metrics-based marketing excellence into omnichannel, integrated demand-gen campaigns. 3) Drive results that help startups grow profitably; mentor teams to success. www.innovatestrategygroup.com/results-driven/
General Management: Build, Manage & Mentor High-Performance Teams, Business Development, Strategic Planning, New Market/Product Assessment, Partnerships & Alliances, P/L Planning & Budgeting, Inventory Management, Creative Services.
Product Marketing: ROI focused integrated, multi-channel demand generation programs (web/display/retargeting, channel, retail, direct), market research & analysis, collateral, product positioning & messaging, packaging, product line planning & sourcing.
Services/Subscriptions/SaaS Marketing/Sales: Customer acquisition/conversion/retention, marketing automation & account based management, funnel nurturing & lifecycle engagement, lead scoring, B2B and B2B2C outreach, metrics analysis.
Digital Marketing, Brand-building & Sales: Communications & messaging strategy, cross-channel customer intent/behavior-based digital advertising, Ecommerce, SEM & PPC advertising, SEO optimization & growth, email automation, public relations & social media, influencer marketing, branding & licensing, sales enablement, content marketing, corporate brand identify development
Products: SAAS Online subscriptions, Software, Consumer Hardgoods, Educational toys & games, Publishing.
Specialty Knowledge: Institutional sales (K12, Higher Ed). Library media-tech, maker & coding competitions, assessment tools & testing, homeschooling, healthcare education.
Jeremiah guides our companies with Web Security, IT, and Web Development expertise.
Jeremiah Grossman is the Founder and Interim Chief Executive Officer of WhiteHat Security, where he is responsible for web security R&D and industry outreach. Over the last decade, Mr. Grossman has written dozens of articles, white papers, and is a published author. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, NY Times and hundreds of other media outlets around the world.
As a well-known security expert and industry veteran, Mr. Grossman has been a guest speaker on six continents at hundreds of events including TED, BlackHat Briefings, RSA, SANS, and others. He has been invited to guest lecture at top universities such as UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, UoW Madison, and UCLA. Mr. Grossman is also a co-founder of the Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) and previously named one of InfoWorld’s Top 25 CTOs.
He serves on the advisory board of two hot start-ups, Risk I/O and SD Elements, and is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt. Before founding WhiteHat, Mr. Grossman was an information security officer at Yahoo!
Startups that transform their industry and the world don’t depend on luck or “gut feelings.” They seize every bit of information (data) available to them and use that data to feed their growth. They do this by defining a data strategy: an articulate plan for how they will extract value from the most important resource of the 21st-century business.
Attempting to craft a data strategy by yourself is like trying to build a spaceship out of cardboard and duct tape. Defining your data strategy does not have to be overwhelming and you don’t have to carry that burden alone.
Expected X has the expertise and practical understanding of how to define and implement a multifaceted data strategy that will position your startup to successfully “win with data.” From basic data management and cloud infrastructure to analytics and MLOps solutions, our partnership will allow you to improve your processes, set you up for long term success, and “wow” potential investors.
Get on the phone with one of our experts and secure high-level guidance (and a clear path forward) for your data strategy & Series A pitch!
John Trbovich is a Co-Founding General Partner of Arsenal Growth. Mr. Trbovich has more than twenty years’ experience advising growth companies, having previously been a co-founding principal of E*OFFERING and a senior technology banker at Robertson Stephens & Co. Mr. Trbovich also worked in merchant banking for Metzler Corp., the oldest privately-held German bank, and the investment banking department of Smith Barney. Mr. Trbovich is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and the School of Engineering at Columbia University.
Global travel technology evangelist in the corporate travel and mobile world with proven ability to start new business or develop new services within large companies as well negotiating and closing “impossible deals” between global enterprise buyers, start-up suppliers and major established industry players.
All-round background in software services ranging from actual code writing to marketing of new products and services and creation of completely new business models with associated go-to-market strategy and significant disruptive innovation resulting in new customer value creation.
Proven presenter at very large travel industry events in both EMEA, APAC and US, with audiences ranging from 10 – 1,000 delegates.
Named as one of the 25 most influential people in the travel industry in 2010 by Business Travel News (BTN) as CEO and co-founder of conTgo, a UK-based startup acquired by Concur technologies in March 2013
Names as one of the 25 most influential people in the travel industry in 2018 by Business Travel News (BTN) as VP of Strategy and Partnerships for Mezi as well as strategic advisor for multiple startups.
Global network of business contacts within the travel, procurement and mobile world after living and working in 5 different countries in EMEA, APAC and now USA.
Strategic advisor/ board member for the following companies
– Medical Travel Companions (since March 2016)
– Riskline (since June 2017)
– Winding Tree (since July 2017)
– TroopTravel (since April 2018)
– Ansero (since September 2018)
– TravelOperations (since February 2019)
– TRVL Porter (since April 2019)
– PAT (Since May 2019)
– Shep (since July 2019)
– Nordico(Since January 2020)
Exit history
2000 – Part of GetThere when acquired by Sabre (Head of product marketing)
2013 – Part of conTgo when acquired by Concur (co-founder & CEO)
2018 – Part of Mezi when acquired by American Express (Head of strategy and partnerships)
2019 – Board member for Gaest.com when acquired by Airbnb
2020 – Strategic advisor for Stabilitas when acquired by OnSolve
Stay tuned with our journey, and thrive with our accelerator program.
