A record-breaking applicant pool reveals the quiet ambition powering the islands’ next generation of product founders — and what they’re building toward.
Every year, Mana Up opens its doors to Hawaiʻi-based product founders looking to grow. Every year, more founders show up. This cycle, 256 entrepreneurs from across the Hawaiian Islands submitted applications to Cohort 11 — the largest pool in the program’s history and a 28% increase over last year’s 200 applicants. Those chosen are being introduced this week.
The companies that made the cut will participate in Mana Up's six-month accelerator built specifically for Hawaiʻi-based consumer product companies. Through weekly workshops, one-on-one mentorship, and access to sales channels including the House of Mana Up retail locations and e-commerce platform, the program helps founders tackle the specific challenges of scaling a business from the islands — and into global markets.
Since its founding, Mana Up has supported the growth of 105 companies, which together generated $105 million in revenue and created 1,035 jobs across the state in 2024 alone.
The overall number of applicants this year is a milestone. But the story behind it runs deeper. Taken together, the Cohort 11 applicants paint a portrait of a product economy that is more geographically distributed, more categorically diverse, and more optimistic about Hawaiʻi’s future than most outside narratives give it credit for.
“The quality and diversity of this applicant pool reflects just how much Hawaiʻi’s product economy has matured. These founders aren’t waiting for opportunity to come to them — they’re creating it.”
A groundswell from across the islands
Applications arrived from every major island in the state — Oʻahu, Maui, Hawaiʻi Island, Kauaʻi, and Molokaʻi — along with a small group of off-island founders from the Hawaiʻi diaspora based in Japan, New York, Las Vegas, and Florida. The diversity of origin underscores that the drive to build Hawaiʻi-rooted businesses extends well beyond any single community or zip code.
The breadth of what Hawaiʻi makes
Food and beverage leads all categories at 46% of applications — and the range within it reflects the full depth of the islands’ agricultural and culinary identity. Fourteen coffee companies. Twelve craft beverage makers. Nine chocolatiers. Nine tea, matcha, and kombucha brands. Alongside them: seafood producers, pantry staple makers, farm-direct operations, and nutraceutical startups.
Fashion, apparel, and jewelry follow at 25%, with beauty and wellness at 11%. Floral and lei makers, keiki brands, home goods producers, and a cohort of service and tech companies round out a pool that spans virtually every corner of the consumer economy. More than 40% of applicants explicitly named giving back to Hawaiʻi as part of their motivation for applying — a figure that speaks to the civic dimension of what these founders are building.
Optimism as a data point
Perhaps the most striking single figure in the dataset is this: 91% of Cohort 11 applicants said they are optimistic about Hawaiʻi’s economy. Seventy-five percent feel that local government is supportive of small business. In a media environment where coverage of the islands often centers on cost-of-living pressures and economic fragility, the founders themselves are telling a different story.
Forty-five percent project year-over-year revenue growth from 2025 to 2026. Only two applicants projected a decline. Twenty-seven companies reported over $500K in 2025 revenue; twelve crossed the $1 million mark. Taken together, the applicant pool already represents a conservative lower bound of 750 jobs — 366 full-time, 381 part-time — spread across the state.
The founders range widely by stage: 62% are solo operators, 36% founded their companies in 2023 or later, and roughly 13% have been in business for a decade or more, some dating back to the 1970s and ‘80s. First-generation startups and multi-decade makers, side by side, applying for the same opportunity.
What founders are looking for
The support these founders say they need maps closely to the structural challenges of scaling a product business from a geographically isolated market. Marketing strategy topped the list at 80%, followed by sales (66%), e-commerce (60%), distribution (51%), and finance (49%).
What’s notably absent from the top of that list is capital. Only 14 applicants — out of 256 — cited funding as a primary motivation. Far more came for mentorship and expertise (141), community and belonging (128), or brand visibility and exposure (122). The dominant motivation, cited by 161 applicants, was simply to scale and grow. These founders aren’t looking for a shortcut. They’re looking for a system.
The hiring signal
Sixty-two percent of all applicants plan to add employees in the next year. Among companies generating over $1 million in annual revenue, that figure rises to 92%. These are not figures from companies in maintenance mode. They are figures from companies that intend to grow — and that intend to grow here.
Roughly one in three applicants this cycle found Mana Up through a past alumnus or personal referral — 42 traced their awareness directly to program graduates, 40 more through word of mouth. The alumni network is now a meaningful part of how the next generation of Hawaiʻi founders finds its footing.
