Venture Capital Group Celebrates Success
The Hawaii Venture Capital Association (HVCA) will hand out a whole slate of awards on Thursday. The "Startup Paradise" community is invited to the Waialae Country Club to celebrate the best of local innovation in the past year.
Described as the 15th annual awards gala, next week's event comes after a year of change for the HVCA. The last set of awards were given out in 2013, with Bill Spencer stepping down from his post as HVCA president in February of last year. Spencer, who is still working hard to guide his aquaculture firm Hawaii Oceanic Technologies toward success, had served as president for 15 years.
The group re-launched last April with Meli James (program director at Blue Startups) appointed as president and Chenoa Farnsworth (co-founder of Hawaii Angels) joining the board. When she took the helm, James said the group would be "bringing back the VC in HVCA."
"So many things have changed over the last few years... the entrepreneurial community has grown so much," she added. "Just the example of Blue Startups being a venture accelerator, having that next stage of startups, having a place to go to get funded, mentored, those kinds of things didn't even exist back in 2012."
The award categories, covering calendar year 2014, are:
Deal of the Year (Presented by Sultan Ventures)
Entrepreneur of the Year (Presented by HTDC)
Social Impact Entrepreneur of the Year (Presented by AT&T)
Clean Tech / Ag Entrepreneur of the Year (Presented by Energy Excelerator)
Tech Entrepreneur of the Year (Presented by Blue Startups)
Student Entrepreneur of the Year (Presented by XLR8UH)
Life Science Entrepreneur of the Year (Presented by HiBEAM)
The nomination deadline for the awards was last Friday, Feb. 13.
The awards gala calls for cocktail attire and runs from 5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 26. For more information on the event, visit the HVCA website, or go straight to the Eventbrite ticket page. Early bird tickets are available for $65 (plus a $4.24 ticket fee) for three more days, then general admission is $75 (plus a $4.74 fee). The price at the door will be $95.
