Overview:
While Pacific leaders gathered for the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, Palau students were getting a hands-on lesson in turning everyday island problems into business opportunities. The Pacific 100 session challenged young entrepreneurs to listen first, test ideas and build solutions that work for Palau.
By: Laurel Marewibuel
KOROR, Palau (Sept. 2, 2026) — “Start small, start ugly, start now.”
That message summed up an entrepreneurship session Wednesday that brought Palau Community College and high school students together with entrepreneurs, impact investors and companies working on solar energy, circular production, health and other island solutions during the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting.
While Pacific leaders discussed climate finance, ocean protection and regional priorities across town, students taking part in the Pacific 100 session focused on a more immediate question: How do you spot a problem, find out whether people need a solution and turn it into a business without wasting money?
The session was organized by Pacific 100, the Island Life Systems Forum convened by APAC 2 IMPACT in Koror during Forum week. It was delivered with the Palau Medical Hub and Forward Edge and hosted with Palau’s Bureau of Agriculture and House of Delegates, in collaboration with Pacific Essentials and Belau Wellness Centre.
Romona Guan of Pacific 100 opened the session by emphasizing that the students were not there to be sold products or ideas. They were there to identify what Palau actually needs.
The morning session was led by Eric Adolphe, founder and CEO of Forward Edge-AI, a Brooklyn-born serial entrepreneur and National Inventors Hall of Fame honouree with long ties to Palau. Adolphe has founded four companies and sold three, and received one of NASA’s highest civilian honors for safety and security technology.
His message to the students was direct: Build a company around mission, freedom and the value you create for others, rather than money alone. Passion, he said, is what carries an entrepreneur through difficult days.
Students immediately put the lesson into practice.
They were asked to make three lists: five things they could become world-class at within 10 years, five things they would do for free and five ways they could make serious money.
The business idea, Adolphe said, can be found where those three lists overlap.
The session then moved into a practical toolkit that Forward Edge has adapted for Palau.
Students learned why one in five new businesses closes during its first year and about five habits that can help avoid failure, beginning with talking to real customers before building a product.
They were also encouraged to look for business ideas by following complaints, money, imports and their own skills.
Adolphe introduced the lean startup cycle of build, measure and learn, along with a simple rule: Do not spend $1,000 building something until someone has given you $10 for it.
The students also worked through a business model canvas using a hypothetical Palauan taro chip company. The exercise traced one pound of taro from a $1.50 purchase at the farm to a $16 product on an airport shelf, illustrating how value can be created along a supply chain.
Another lesson focused on 10 ways entrepreneurs can bootstrap businesses in Palau, including selling through Facebook Marketplace before renting a storefront, booking a free session with the Palau Small Business Development Center and approaching the National Development Bank of Palau after establishing sales.
The classroom exercise then became a real-world assignment.
Through the Blaise Discovery Sprint, students were enrolled as field researchers for Blaise, a startup participating in the U.S. National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program.
Blaise is developing a handheld device designed to identify unknown biological and chemical hazards on the spot. The device has a target price of about $800, compared with legacy laboratory systems that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Working in teams of two or three, students will interview military officers, health professionals, government leaders and tourism operators visiting Palau for Forum week.
The instruction is simple: Don’t pitch. Just listen.
Each interview will be recorded through an online form and become part of Blaise’s official discovery record, which will be reviewed by the company’s founder and mentors.
The top student teams will be eligible for cash prizes at the first checkpoint, scheduled for Sept. 4 at 6 p.m.
The afternoon session shifted from entrepreneurship training to presentations by companies participating in the Pacific 100 delegation.
Rather than traditional sales pitches, the companies presented potential pathways for addressing island challenges.
Pacific 100 organizes its work around six island life systems, including energy, water and ocean resilience, circular production, health, digital infrastructure and education.
RHINOSHIELD, a Taiwanese protective-case manufacturer, discussed its move into circular materials and its CircularBlue river and ocean waste-collection boat. The company is also scouting potential wave-energy sites in Palau waters.
ArchiPilot demonstrated how artificial intelligence-driven optimization of air-conditioning systems can reduce building energy use by about 30% and invited students to become involved ahead of its upcoming fundraising effort.
The Island Solar and Storage Team presented a 10-panel rooftop solar system with battery storage that could cut a Palauan household’s electricity bill by about half, or roughly $1,000 a year, while also providing enough energy to charge an e-bike for short trips.
Synko International Technology presented a four-stage waste-to-energy system that steams, dries, gasifies and converts municipal waste into electricity without relying on a landfill.
Investor Susan Fu, who has backed 20 businesses across three countries, told the students that a good business is one that helps people while making money. She invited students to contact her for mentorship and potential funding.
The session also connected modern entrepreneurship with Palau’s history of innovation and exploration.
Students heard about the lineage of non-instrument navigators descended from Mau Piailug and a recent 14-day voyage from Palau to Taiwan using celestial navigation. The voyage is now the subject of a documentary.
Throughout the day, the focus remained on putting Pacific priorities first.
Guan said Pacific 100 is built on the principle that Pacific communities should identify their own priorities, while expertise, technology and capital can come from anywhere.
The initiative encourages people to identify problems, governments to put their real challenges on the table, technology providers to offer solutions suited to island conditions, and impact investors and professionals around the world to participate.
Its goal is to establish 100 trackable project pathways across the Pacific by 2030.
People in Palau — including students, families, villages and government offices — can submit an island priority or contribute ideas, whether the issue is better internet, affordable energy or another community need.
Submissions can be made through APAC 2 IMPACT’s Pacific 100 platform at apac2impact.com/en/pacific-100. Governments, investors and development partners are expected to receive a response within 72 hours.
For Guan, holding the student session during a regional leaders’ meeting was intentional.
Every pathway begins with someone recognizing a problem worth solving, she said, and young Palauans are among those best positioned to identify what is difficult to obtain, what costs too much and what people complain about in their communities.
The students left with practical homework: Write down three problems they noticed during the week, talk to 10 people about one of them, sketch a business model canvas in pencil and sell one thing to a stranger.
The final instruction remained on the whiteboard:
Start small. Start ugly. Start now.
