What if Bandit Heeler Worked in Tech?
A candid talk about startup stress, parenting, and trying to be the kind of person your family still wants to play "keepy-uppy" with through the ups and downs. This is not a technical deep dive. This is the conversation founders and operators actually need to have: about the real cost of building something from scratch, the ups and downs, and what it looks like to do it from Hawaii while raising a family.
The event opens with a moderated fireside chat covering startup stress, parenting, building from Hawaii, and what it takes to show up for your family when everything at work is on fire. Alongside the conversation, an expert specializing in work-life balance will be on hand to provide resources and practical tips grounded in real clinical expertise. Not just advice, but tools you can actually use when you walk out the door.
After the conversation, the walls come down. The ice cream social brings local ice cream, real conversation, and the kind of networking that happens when you drop the pretense and just connect as people building things in the same place. The event closes with open networking: no agenda required, just the Gidens team, fellow founders and operators, and Hawaii's tech community talking story.
About Kent Salcedo:
Kent Salcedo is CTO of Gidens. He is a builder-first CTO and founding engineer who specializes in taking ideas from 0 to 1 and turning them into products that actually ship. Most of his work lives in the messy middle: unclear requirements, evolving teams, real customers, real constraints.
He has led and built across AI, automation, and modern web stacks, with a focus on pragmatic decisions that compound over time instead of chasing trends.
Kent cares about systems that are understandable (not magical), teams that can move fast and sleep at night, shipping something useful before perfect, and long-term thinking, sustainability, and showing up consistently. He is a technical leader who can both set direction and write code, someone who translates between product, engineering, and reality, and a calm hand when the plan changes (because it always does).
He values long-term thinking, sustainability, and showing up consistently more than performative hustle. Although he will be the first to tell you: he hustles.
Who's in the Room:
Hawaii-based founders and startup operators
Technical leaders and engineers building from the islands
Working parents in tech navigating the balance
Small business owners curious about the startup world
Students and early-career technologists
Community members who want to support local tech
Investors and ecosystem builders
Takeaways:
An honest look at the tradeoffs of building a startup from Hawaii: the isolation, the constraints, and why Kent would not do it from anywhere else
Perspective on navigating the founder/parent balance without the usual "hustle culture" framing
Real talk on what it takes to lead a team, ship a product, and still be the person your family wants to be around
Connections with other founders, operators, and parents in Hawaii's tech community in a low-pressure, relationship-first environment
A reminder that building something meaningful does not require burning everything else down
Resources and practical tips from a licensed family counselor specializing in counseling services for families, providing expert support for the work-life balance topics discussed during the session