Stories

September 13, 2023

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Founded in 2015, Pokeworks emerged as a culinary venture stemming from a shared vision. Drawing inspiration from numerous trips to Hawaii, the founders were captivated by the distinct flavors of poke, prompting them to bring this fresh, healthful, and beloved island delicacy to the mainland United States.

With a steadfast commitment to a wholesome lifestyle and premium ingredients, Pokeworks offers a culinary experience that reverberates with authenticity. Their menu artfully captures the genuine essence of Hawaiian flavors, showcasing a medley of signature creations and customizable options.

Aside from this, Pokeworks champions sustainability, prioritizing responsibly sourced seafood and conscientious material choices. This ethos extends to all aspects of the brand’s operations, affirming a holistic dedication to social and environmental responsibility.

Asian Hustle Network had the chance to sit down for an interview with one of Pokeworks’ co-founders, Peter Yang. Join us as we delve deeper into their story and uncover the insights that drive their success.

HOW IT ALL STARTED

The idea of Pokeworks dates back to 2015, when my co-founders, Mike Chen and Mike Wu, met over lunch. Mike Chen just had his wedding in Maui and Mike Wu had just come back to the mainland after months in Oahu launching a restaurant. They reminisced about the delicious poke they enjoyed on the island and wondered why it’s not a staple on the mainland. We took inspiration from build-your-own fast casuals like Chipotle, and ran with the idea of “Poke Your Way”. As cliche as it sounds, we spent months R&D’ing out of Mike Wu’s garage until we all felt the flavors were perfect.

Several months later, we opened the doors to our first location in midtown Manhattan – a tiny 750-square-foot space. It was a cold December, and most of the city had left for the holidays – it was quiet… and our sales were bleak. Besides correcting our guests on the pronunciation of “poke”, I had to turn away several guests with “Sorry, no, we do not sell Pokemon cards.” Educating the market was definitely an early challenge we had to overcome.

The new year rolled around and our lines got progressively longer day after day. As business grew, we kept our heads down and continued to focus on operational excellence – great products and great guest service. Word quickly spread, and we became the popular kids on the block.

Fast forward 8 years and a pandemic later, we’re 70 locations proud across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Taiwan.

SUSHI BURRITO

THE CONCEPT OF SUSHI BURRITO

We aimed to create a handheld version of Poke by blending two of my personal favorites: a burrito and a sushi roll – what’s not to love? We had fun with it and added it to the menu.

Little did we know, this menu addition would become a turning point in our growth.

During a lunch rush one day, a representative from Business Insider walked into our tiny shop and asked if she could record a video featuring our Poke Burrito. Despite my initial hesitation – our shop was so small that my staff and I could barely squeeze another body in without slowing down our line – I agreed. Well, it was a good thing I let her shoot the video because once it was uploaded, it went absolutely viral.

It. Was. Insanity. This short 1 minute clip, triggered lines around the block for months. We had to hire bouncers for crowd control!

POKEWORKS’ COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABILITY

Early in our brand development, the co-founders took deliberate steps to define our core values. One of them is: “Sustainability – meeting today’s needs without compromising tomorrow.” The founders understand that it goes beyond just making a profit, but how we can leave the world a better place for our children. Personally, since becoming a father recently, this sentiment has never rung louder. We want to make sure it’s not just a marketing buzzword, but a core value that helps guide our every decision. 

All of the seafood that we source carries a “Best Choice” rating by the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch, procured from vendors that are environmentally and socially responsible. Our tuna is exclusively procured from Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified sources, a reflection of our commitment to ending overfishing and promoting sustainable fishing practices. Our salmon holds certifications from both the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) and Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP), embodying the highest industry standards for minimizing environmental impact and upholding the well-being of communities, workers, and animals.

For many of our store build-outs, the wood used in our dining rooms is of local species and is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. In some of our shops, the facade of our counters is made with recycled bamboo chopsticks.

Our commitment to sustainability extends to exploring alternative seafood and plant-based products. We are partnering with leading plant-based food manufacturers such as Impact Foods and Omni Foods to explore alternative seafood options. Our plant-based spam musubis are also a huge hit! We’ve also partnered with innovators like Wildtype, to explore cutting-edge cultivated seafood.

FRANCHISEE SPOTLIGHT

We seek franchisees who embody a passion for the brand and resonate with our mission statement and core values. One of which is being service-obsessed: We put the team’s needs first. We are here to serve our guests and community. We do this by being responsive, helpful, productive, and following through with our commitments, and spreading aloha.

I’d like to extend a big shout-out to Alvin Zhang, an exceptional franchisee at Pokeworks who embodies this value and who truly shines as both an entrepreneur and an outstanding individual dedicated to his community. At the peak of the pandemic, when hospitals were facing dire circumstances, Alvin and his Pokeworks team worked overtime to generously donate over 2000 poke bowls to 12 hospitals across Queens NY, and Long Island.

UPLIFTING THE AAPI COMMUNITY

We take pride in the Asian-inspired products and flavors that we serve. From spicy Sichuan poke to sweet chili gochujang poke. Sharing these flavors from our roots to the mainstream is a great privilege. 

During COVID, we partnered with Heart of Dinner to help nourish NYC’s community of Asian elders. They have a wonderful mission of supporting the AAPI community, and we’re proud to be a part of it.

We also take immense pride in having Regina Cheung, a Chinese-American, at the helm as CEO at Pokeworks, leading the charge with remarkable expertise and charisma. Furthermore, all of the co-founders are Asian-American and share the immigrant journey. 

We hope that our story and Pokeworks’ AAPI leaders can inspire future generations of AAPI entrepreneurs to dive confidently into their careers and passions. 

PETER YANG’S ADVICE TO ASPIRING ENTREPRENEURS

Don’t do it alone. Learn to ask for help. It all starts within your community.

We are very proud to say that there are a total of 8 co-founders at Pokeworks. Most advisors will tell you that’s crazy, but we made it work! We’ve learned to set aside our egos and each of us plays a distinct and vital role within the organization.

This principle aligns perfectly with another core value of ours: the incredible power of teamwork.

CONNECT WITH POKEWORKS

Instagram: @pokeworksco

Website: pokeworks.com

Franchise: pokeworksfranchise.com

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Steve Liu Knows How to Draw a Crowd. With TRI3E, He Wants to Help Communities Grow.

From producing shows with major artists to leading product design at Amazon and Palo Alto Networks, Steve Liu knows a thing or two about bringing people together.

With TRI3E, he’s using what he’s learned to help people, creators, businesses, and organizations build stronger communities.

Understanding What Brings People Together

Filling a venue is one thing. Getting people excited enough to bring their friends is another. Steve Liu learned that firsthand in San Francisco’s nightlife scene.

As a nightclub promoter and event producer, he helped organize shows featuring The Chainsmokers, Far East Movement, MC Jin, and comedian Ali Wong.

What stood out to Steve wasn’t just how people discovered events, but what happened when they came together. Friends brought friends, new connections formed, and people found a sense of belonging through shared experiences.

He realized that the most meaningful part of bringing people together wasn’t filling a room. It was creating experiences people genuinely enjoyed, felt part of, and wanted to share with others.

A Different Way of Looking at Problems

Outside entertainment, Steve was building a career in technology. He eventually led product design teams at Amazon and Palo Alto Networks, working on products involving cloud computing, global supply chains, and cybersecurity.

The work was different from organizing events, but it taught Steve how to approach complex, multidimensional problems. Working across technology, business, and human needs, he learned to connect different perspectives, navigate competing priorities, and turn complicated challenges into practical solutions.

His experience as an entrepreneur also gave him a firsthand understanding of how difficult it can be to grow a business, reach the right people, and keep them engaged.

Over time, those experiences started to come together. He had seen how people brought others into events and communities, and he understood how technology could help make those connections easier.

That got him thinking about what better community-building tools could look like.

Helping Communities Do More Together

Think about a restaurant planning an event, a creator looking to bring supporters together, or a community organizer trying to reach more people.

They already have people interested in what they do. The challenge is finding ways to get those people involved, keep them connected, and encourage them to bring others along.

That’s the thinking behind TRI3E (Tribe), the platform Steve is building.

TRI3E aims to help individuals, creators, businesses, and organizations build and grow their communities. Through the platform, they can share events and opportunities, invite others to participate, and give members more ways to stay involved.

For a restaurant, that could mean inviting regular customers to an event and encouraging them to bring friends. For a creator, it could mean sharing a new project with supporters. For an organization, it could mean helping members discover opportunities and meet others with similar interests.

The goal is to make it easier for people to stay involved, bring others along, and create more opportunities within their communities.

Building What’s Next

For Steve, TRI3E is an opportunity to bring together years of experience in technology, entrepreneurship, and entertainment around an idea with much broader potential.

Whether it’s a neighborhood restaurant, an independent creator, or a network like Asian Hustle Network, communities already have people who want to see them succeed.

What if those people had better ways to make that happen?

That’s the vision behind TRI3E: helping people turn their existing connections into more opportunities for their communities.

Join TRI3E

Build your community. Activate your network. Grow together.

Explore TRI3E | Connect with Steve

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Stories

ChargerGoGo’s Next Chapter: GoGoSpark Brings AI-Powered Entrepreneurship to the Future of Work

ChargerGoGo built its nationwide phone charging network by betting on everyday entrepreneurs.

That bet is paying off. In 2026, ChargerGoGo landed at No. 744 on the Inc. 5000 (top 15%), No.5 in Las Vegas, and No.41 in AI and Data industry, the annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America, after reporting 467% revenue growth over three years.

Led by founder and CEO June Zhu, the company has spent years helping local operators build businesses through its charging network. With GoGoSpark, it’s bringing AI into the picture.

Launched at CES 2026, GoGoSpark is ChargerGoGo’s AI-powered business copilot and operations assistant, built to help operators handle the day-to-day work of running and growing their businesses.

What Does GoGoSpark Actually Do?

As AI reshapes the workforce, the next economic opportunity is not only about making employees more productive, it is about giving more people the tools to become business owners.

GoGoSpark was built around that mission.

ChargerGoGo believes the future of work will include a growing number of people, across both white-collar and blue-collar professions, who want to build independent income, own productive assets, and operate businesses of their own. But becoming an entrepreneur requires far more than capital or a good idea. New business owners need help with sales, operations, financial decisions, technology, strategy, and the hundreds of decisions that come with running a company.

GoGoSpark is designed to put that capability in their pocket.

Serving as an AI-powered COO and business mentor available 24/7, GoGoSpark can help entrepreneurs analyze performance, identify opportunities, improve sales, troubleshoot operational issues, understand financial decisions, and determine what actions to take next.

The vision extends beyond operating ChargerGoGo stations. ChargerGoGo is building GoGoSpark as an intelligent business platform that can lower the barriers to entrepreneurship and help everyday people transition from employees into capable, technology-enabled business owners.

In an economy increasingly shaped by AI and automation, ChargerGoGo believes AI should not simply replace work. It should help more people create, own, and participate in the businesses of the future.

GoGoSpark does not replace the entrepreneur. It gives the entrepreneur a COO, an advisor, and a mentor in their pocket—so they can make better decisions and build with greater confidence.

Five Years in the Making

GoGoSpark came out of five years of working directly with thousands of operators, partners, and small business owners.

Over that time, ChargerGoGo saw the same kinds of questions come up again and again: How do I sell this better? Why is one location outperforming another? What should I focus on next? How can I run this more efficiently?

Those real-world questions helped shape what GoGoSpark became.

Rather than building AI for the sake of having AI, ChargerGoGo built a tool around the work its operators were already doing.

As Zhu said when the platform launched, “GoGoSpark is built to be a business co-pilot, helping operators learn faster, operate smarter, and participate in the post-work economy.”

The Bigger Goal Behind GoGoSpark

The Inc. 5000 ranking is a milestone for ChargerGoGo, but Zhu has been clear that she wants the company’s growth to reach beyond ChargerGoGo itself.

When the ranking was announced, she pointed to a bigger goal: giving ChargerGoGo’s Distribution Partners the technology, infrastructure, business model, and support to grow companies of their own.

She even said she hopes to one day see those entrepreneurs make the Inc. 5000 themselves.

GoGoSpark is one way ChargerGoGo is trying to make that happen.

As AI becomes part of how companies sell, analyze data, plan, and operate, smaller business owners risk being left with fewer resources to compete. GoGoSpark brings some of those capabilities directly to the people running businesses on the ground.

ChargerGoGo’s acceptance into the NVIDIA Inception Program also marks another step in that direction as the company continues developing its AI technology.

“The future belongs to those who engage with their AI,” Zhu said at CES 2026. “Our mission is to make sure everyone has that chance.”

ChargerGoGo made the Inc. 5000 this year. If its operators eventually start appearing on that list too, GoGoSpark may have played a part in getting them there.

Discover how GoGoSpark is helping entrepreneurs grow smarter.

📍Website

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The Day a Las Vegas Slot Machine Changed June Zhu’s Vision for Entrepreneurship

When June Zhu immigrated to the United States, she wasn’t chasing certainty.

She was chasing the possibility.

Like millions of immigrants before her, she believed in something uniquely American: that regardless of where someone came from, if they worked hard, solved real problems, and created value for others, they could build a better future.

That belief led her to found ChargerGoGo.

At first glance, ChargerGoGo looks like a portable phone charging company. Today, its network spans more than 6,000 locations across all 50 states, serving more than one million users.

But ask June what business she’s really building, and her answer is unexpected.

“I’m not trying to just build the biggest charging network,” she says. “I’m trying to build one of the largest entrepreneurship platforms.”

The Question Every Founder Faces

That vision wasn’t obvious in the beginning.

Like countless founders, June spent years trying to answer the same question that keeps entrepreneurs awake at night:

How do you build something nationally without billions of dollars from venture capital?

Every new market required more equipment.

Every new customer required more investment.

Growth always seemed tied to raising more capital.

The Las Vegas Moment

Then one ordinary afternoon in Las Vegas, while talking with her team, she witnessed something that unexpectedly gave her a new perspective.

A few teammates each pulled a small amount of cash from their wallets and decided to play a slot machine together.

Nobody risked very much.

If they lost, the downside was limited to a few hundred dollars each. But if they won, everyone shared in a prize far greater than they could have won individually.

“It wasn’t about the slot machine,” June recalls with a smile. “It was about the ownership.”

She watched people willingly contribute because everyone had a stake in the outcome.

At that moment, the question in her mind changed.

Instead of asking, “How can I raise enough money to own every charging station?”

She started asking, “Why should I own them all?”

What if every charging station could become an income-producing asset for a local entrepreneur?

That idea transformed ChargerGoGo.

Rather than building a company that owned every charging station, June built a platform where local entrepreneurs could own, operate, and grow businesses under a shared brand.

Every charging station became more than hardware. It became an opportunity for someone to build recurring income and grow a business within their own community.

Building an Entrepreneurship Platform

For June, that model reflects something she has admired since arriving in America.

“The greatest strength of this country isn’t just innovation,” she says. “It’s that ordinary people have the opportunity to become builders.”

Instead of measuring success solely by the size of the network, she measures it by how many entrepreneurs it helps create.

Through ChargerGoGo’s distribution partner model, local business owners can build recurring income while expanding the company’s nationwide footprint. As the platform grows, so does the number of entrepreneurs building businesses of their own.

Why Ownership Matters More Than Ever

That belief feels even more relevant as artificial intelligence reshapes the global workforce.

While much of the conversation focuses on jobs disappearing, June believes the more important conversation is about creating more owners.

“The future shouldn’t belong only to companies with the most capital or the most powerful AI,” she says. “Technology should lower the barriers for everyday people to own businesses, generate wealth, and create opportunities for their families.”

That’s why she believes entrepreneurship is becoming more important, not less.

Her vision extends far beyond portable charging.

She imagines a future where platforms, AI, and connected infrastructure allow millions of people to own income-producing businesses that once required millions of dollars to build.

Redefining the American Dream

For June, that’s what the American Dream has always meant.

Not that success is guaranteed.

But that ownership is possible.

Today, when people ask what ChargerGoGo does, she could talk about charging stations, technology, or nationwide expansion.

Instead, she prefers a simpler answer.

“We’re building a platform that helps more people become entrepreneurs.”

Because in the end, June Zhu isn’t trying to build a billion-dollar company.

She’s trying to help build thousands of million-dollar entrepreneurs.

Perhaps that’s the most powerful way to measure success: not by how much one person owns, but by how many owners they help create.

Learn more about ChargerGoGo here:

📍Website

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Stories

How Stephanie Lau Jensen Turned a Personal Identity Journey Into CULTR, a Marketplace for Cultural Brands

Stephanie Lau Jensen grew up between Hawaii and California. Like many Asian American kids raised in predominantly non-Asian communities, she learned early how to move between worlds. Parts of her culture stayed in the background, not because she pushed them away, but because the environment made it easier to leave them there.

She later returned to Hawaii for college, where her father is originally from. Being there placed her in a community where Asian culture was woven into daily life through food, language, and family traditions. It was not a rediscovery, it was a reminder of what had always been hers.

Years later, as a mother of three and a founder with a background in commercial real estate investing, she built CULTR, short for Created for Culture. A curated marketplace for AAPI  and third-culture families raising kids between cultures, one that makes cultural products easy to find and part of everyday life, not just special occasions.

A Birthday Conversation That Changed Everything

The idea for CULTR took shape at one of Stephanie’s birthday gatherings. She was talking with a close friend about identity and culture when a childhood friend overheard the conversation and joked that Stephanie used to be one of them before she moved to Hawaii and really leaned into her Asian side.

Everyone laughed. Stephanie included. But the comment stayed. It put words to something she had been sitting with for years. Culture is not something that automatically transfers to the next generation. It has to be lived daily. If it is not in the house on a regular Tuesday, it probably is not there at all.

When she became a mother and started looking for books, clothing, and toys that reflected her culture, she saw the problem clearly. The products existed. The founders were there, but their work was scattered across small websites and Instagram pages, invisible to most families who needed them.

The Platform She Wished Had Existed

Stephanie’s background in real estate investing trained her to look closely at markets and recognize opportunity gaps. As she continued discovering founder-led cultural brands online, she saw a clear problem: families who wanted these products had no easy way to find them.

That realization led her to build CULTR, a curated marketplace that brings modern cultural brands from around the world into one central destination. The platform highlights independent founders, many from Asian and immigrant communities, whose products carry culture through everyday objects, from children’s books to home goods, apparel, even everyday products you would have never known were made by AAPI makers. With a refined, modern aesthetic, CULTR presents these brands in a way that feels contemporary, approachable, and deeply connected to heritage.

Building CULTR came with its own challenges because the platform did not fit neatly into an existing category. It sits somewhere between a retail marketplace and a cultural storytelling platform, which meant Stephanie had to develop the platform while also helping people understand the vision behind it.

Bringing Culture Into Everyday Family Life

For Stephanie, culture often lives in the smallest everyday objects. A children’s book written in the language your grandparents spoke, a toy tied to tradition, or a piece of clothing that carries a story can shape how the next generation understands identity and belonging.

Alongside CULTR, she is also building PenPals Collective, a project designed to spark global curiosity and connection for children, and launching a podcast called Series M that explores career, motherhood, and identity. Each project reflects her interest in connecting people across culture, family, and generation.

Through each project, and while raising three young children, Stephanie continues working toward the same goal: creating spaces where culture is not something people rediscover later in life, but something families live with every day.

Learn more about CULTR here:

📍Website