The Purple Prize
We accelerate excellent teams with ideas for innovative technology products to start and launch mission-driven companies that amplify community and regenerate our ecosystems.
What is the purple prize?
Since 2016, the Purple Prize has empowered the people of Hawaii to create impactful technology startups that are truly rooted in Hawaiian values. To date, we have worked with over 40 teams and deployed significant monetary awards to those with the highest potential to create real impact in Hawaiʻi nei.
The incubator runs for six-months (April to September) and is consciously designed to help criteria-aligned projects refine their idea and build traction in preparation for launch and/or future investment.
Kilo Hōkū Demo Day
Every year since 2016, we have hosted an event to inspire us of what our future can look like and to remind us of what our community is truly capable of.
We call this Kilo Hōkū, the Purple Maiʻa Foundation’s version of a startup showcase or demonstration day.
Learn more…
An Indigenous Technological Innovation Challenge
The Purple Prize is an innovation competition that brings together people across sectors to build technology solutions that create value for land and people. Purple Prize projects are forces for sustainability and systems-change and are the foundation of a local technology sector rooted in Kanaka Maoli values.
We believe that the exponential power of technology can be a vessel for scalable, positive impacts when innovation is grounded in the ethos of Native Hawaiian culture; cross-pollinates with the priorities and competencies of the related fields of social entrepreneurship and sustainability; and builds impactful, scalable technology companies that transform the status quo and plant the seeds of an Indigenous innovation ecosystem here in Hawaiʻi.