About HSE

Hawai’i Student Entrepreneurs (HSE) started accepting our first members in the Fall 2012 semester. Within the first year, HSE has had 13 student businesses part of the club, with 2 of those businesses launching the in that year.  One, an online e-Commerce store (Pacific Roots Apparel, http://www.pacificrootsapparel.com/) and the other, a brick-and-mortar Vietnamese restaurant in the Ward area . Check out the other student businesses here.

In the short year, HSE has grown to be one of the top collegiate entrepreneurship clubs in the state of Hawai’i. We’ve been privileged to gain tremendous support from the community and had the opportunity to have our meetings at The Box Jelly Co-working Space, thanks to Rechung Fujihira (CEO) and Tony Stanford, Co-founders of The Box Jelly. We’ve participated in the Startup Weekend Honolulu events and sponsored two. Our members have been part of the 2nd and 3rd place teams  and have also participated in the  Entrepreneurs’ Day at the State Capitol (http://vimeo.com/63306008) to show our support for entrepreneurship in Hawai’i.

The Pacific Asian Center of Entrepreneurship (PACE) (http://pace.shidler.hawaii.edu/) at the Shilder College of Business is one of our biggest supporters. PACE supports us with office space and offers students at UH Manoa valuable programs, resources and opportunities. HSE members get the chance to volunteer at the High School Business and Marketing Plan Competition and the UH Business Plan Competition held by PACE. HSE members have also participated in Startup Weekend UH.

HSE members have also volunteered for Lemonade Alley, a Kids Business Competition (http://lemonadealley.com/). In the Spring 2013 semester, four HSE members had the opportunity to intern for the Blue Startups Venture Accelerator, which was founded by Henk Roger’s (famous for securing the rights to Tetris and founder of The Tetris Company).

The club has since expanded and is now open to all UH students interested in entrepreneurship. Students have the opportunity to learn how to start a business in Hawai’i, hear from entrepreneurs and professionals on a variety of entrepreneurial topics, meet established entrepreneurs, and have access to resources and opportunities that they can use to start and grow their own business.

We also encourage our members to get out of the UH bubble, attend community events, and start networking. We’ve attended events hosted by the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Hawaii (http://www.efhawaii.org/), High Technology Development Corporation (http://www.htdc.org/), The Box Jelly (http://www.theboxjelly.com/), The Founders Institute (http://fi.co/posts/1145), and Hawaii Venture Capital Association (http://hvca.org/) to name a few. We also encourage our members to extend their learning and attend workshops put on by the community, like workshops put on by the Small Business Development Center (http://www.hisbdc.org/).