Rooted & Rising: A Community Celebration
Rooted & Rising is where tech meets the people it's built to serve — a bridge between the innovators shaping what's next and the small business owners who show up every day to keep our community running. Join us 11am–1pm for the event that brings the entire week together: food, a raffle, reconnections, and a reminder of why building responsible, community-centric businesses in Hawaii matters.
It's also a celebration of Gidens itself. Two years ago, we set out to build technology that doesn't extract from local business owners but stands beside them. Rooted & Rising is us coming back to center, celebrating how far this mission has carried us, together.
This gathering also marks the culmination of our week-long community scavenger hunt, where attendees explored 10 selected local businesses across Waikiki, Ward, and Downtown Honolulu, making purchases and collecting stamps along the way on sponsor-branded punch cards. Anyone with 5+ stamps can turn their card in at the celebration for a shot at the grand prize raffle.
Rooted & Rising is more than a party. It's the bookend to a week that brought national thought leaders to Hawaii, connected local businesses with builders, and proved that growth can stay rooted in community.
About Gidens:
Gidens is a Hawaii-based SaaS company building Gidget — a workflow intelligence assistant designed for small and local businesses. Gidget reveals what's working, what's missing, and where to focus next, so business owners can make clearer decisions and stop losing time to work they can't even see.
Gidens was founded on a simple belief: small businesses deserve a real shot at thriving, not buried under the administrative weight that holds them back before they can scale.
Gidget's methodology — Reveal, Quantify, Decide — gives business owners a living operational picture of their company, turning invisible friction into clear, actionable next steps. Active integrations include Square, HubSpot, QuickBooks, and Google Business Profile.
Gidens was named a Top 5 Startup to Watch in 2025 by Pacific Business News, is a member of Blue Startups Cohort 16, and is part of the Biz Boost Program through the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii.
Founded and led by CEO Vincent Brathwaite.
Mission: Unlock freedom for 1 million local businesses.
Vision: A world where running your business doesn't cost you your life.
Who's in the Room:
Attendees from all Gidens hosted events reconnecting at the close of the week
Hawaii-based founders and startup operators
Small and mid-size business owners
Sponsors and partners
Local tech community members
Students and early-career technologists
Community members who want to support local tech and local business
Takeaways:
A sense of community and shared purpose with Hawaii's builders, operators, and entrepreneurs after a full week of programming
Connections made throughout the week are reinforced in a casual, celebratory setting
A reminder that Gidens (and Hawaii's tech ecosystem) is rooted in community: built here, built for here
Scavenger hunt raffle drawing, celebrating the local businesses that participated throughout the week