Dominique Toyozaki: Founder of Bevey

I met Dominique Toyozaki last year through Galvanizer, a community for female founders. When I first met her, I was instantly impressed with her maturity and confidence in herself and her company, Bevey. Bevey is an app that allows people to make new friends based on shared hobbies. I love this idea, because I’ve experienced firsthand how difficult it can be to make new friends once you graduate college and your friends live all over the country. Bevey is launching early 2021.

Below, Dominique and I discuss her unique mixed identity, growing up between Hawaii and Las Vegas, and the inspiration behind Bevey. 

Photo courtesy of Dominique Toyozaki

Rebecca: Can you start by telling me about yourself and your upbringing? 

Dominique: So, my full name is Dominique Kapuananimaikeakualani MeiLing Toyozaki, and I’m Japanese, Hawaiian, and Chinese. I live in Las Vegas right now, which has a really large Polynesian population. No one really knows how that happened, but it’s jokingly called the ninth island. My parents are both from Oahu, Hawaii, and there’s a stereotype that almost every person there is mixed. I grew up thinking it was normal to be able to list off all of my different ethnicities. When I'm with my cousins or close family friends, we try to list off who has the most ethnicities. We even go all the way to the two percents, which is so funny.

Growing up, I realized my experience is pretty unique. My parents didn’t have many friends when they first moved to Vegas. It’s very different from Hawaii, because when we go back, they have so many family friends that we see. I see so many people there who look like me, because Japanese-Hawaiian is one of the most predominant ethnic backgrounds there. When they came to Vegas, most people and even our friends didn’t know much about our culture. When we were growing up, my brother and I always just stuck together. We didn’t really celebrate or recognize our culture too much when we were kids, because my parents were focused on finding a stable income in a new city. 

Rebecca: What brought your parents to Vegas? 

 Dominique: It can be hard to have enough economic stability to raise a family in Hawaii. There are sayings about “leaving the rock” or “rock fever” and that’s what my parents had - they wanted to get up and move. They’d been to Vegas a few times before and at that time the housing market was really, really cheap, especially compared to other places they were looking like California and Washington. My parents don't like snow and didn't want to go anywhere that got too cold, because they are used to perfect weather of 70 - 80 degrees for most of the year.

Rebecca: Okay, so you mentioned you’re Chinese, Japanese and Hawaiian. Which one of your parents is Chinese, Japanese, or Hawaiiwan and how did they end up in Hawaii?

Dominique: My grandpa on my mom’s side is native Hawaiian. That part of the family's been there forever and are a native indigenous population. It's also on my mom's side where we get part Japanese and Chinese, because my grandma is half Chinese and half Japanese. On the other side, my dad is mostly Japanese, with a little bit of Portuguese. My dad’s parents moved here in probably the worst time possible, a few years before Pearl Harbor. History happened in the way it did to Japanese American during that time period, so unfortunately, we don't know a lot about our Japanese culture and that side of the family.

Rebecca: How do you balance learning about and practicing the culture of your Japanese, Chinese and Hawaiian sides? 

Dominique: On my mom’s side, a lot of the culture became illegal after Hawaii became a state. So neither of my parents were that knowledgeable about their cultures when they were growing up. My grandpa didn't speak the native Hawaiian language, because when he was very young, it became illegal. It wasn't until both of my parents went to college that there was a focus on revitalization of Hawaiian culture. So now they both know a lot about Hawaiian culture, but it's gotten modernized and preserved in a lot of really weird ways. One example is there's a slang in Hawaii called Pidgin that’s a mixture of Hawaiian and broken English. When Hawaii was becoming a state, they brought in a lot of Asians to be plantation workers as slaves, and Pidgin evolved from there. 

Growing up, we would go back to Hawaii once or twice a year to visit family, and we’d stay in touch with the culture and do more traditional Hawaiian and Japanese things. For example, we would eat mochi soup over New Years for long life and longevity. 

During middle school, my brother and I did this culture camp called Explorations. You go to Hawaii for two weeks, and learn parts of the culture like hula and some songs and stories. I really appreciated being able to do that, and it's something that my mom really pushed us to do. She’s really proud of her Hawaiian identity, but it’s always a little solemn when she talks about it, because it’s a sad family history that she knows. But she does want us to learn about it and experience it for ourselves. 

During my childhood, Japanese culture was pretty popular with Super Nintendo and anime, so I was able to have exposure to bits and pieces of Japanese culture that way. I didn’t experience much past modern pop culture, which is important, but not all there is to the culture. Right before high school, I took a three week trip to Japan. I had a host family, visited a high school, went to all the temples, took a few language classes, and it was a great experience overall. 

Although we are Chinese and it’s not a small part of me ethnically, no one in the family really knows about that side as much, so we don't really celebrate it. None of us would know where to start, and that’s why we mostly focus on the Japanese and Hawaiian side. 

Rebecca: Do parts of your culture ever seem incongruous or at odds? 

Dominique: My family does retain some East Asian ideals which can sometimes contradict Hawaiian ideals. For example, I used to be pretty tan when I was younger. For native Hawaiians, being tan is something you’re proud of, because it shows that you’re athletic and strong. But since my grandma is Chinese and Japanese, she really values pale skin. When I was in middle school, she told me that since I’m becoming a woman, I need to start wearing more sunscreen and playing indoor sports so I would be less tan. When I was younger, I didn’t know if I should try and look more Hawaiian or stay out of the sun to look more Japanese. My hair is wavy like traditional Hawaiian hair and when I was tan in Hawaii, some people would recognize that I was Hawaiian. I liked that, because I don’t enjoy being misidentified. A lot of people assume I’m Filipino, and people don’t really think I’m Japanese unless they hear my last name.

Rebecca: Do you feel like you relate more to either your Japanese side or your Hawaiian side? 

Dominique: I think it always flips flops, depending on what stage of my life I’m in. When I was younger, it was very much the Hawiian side, but now it’s more of the Japanese side. Now in college, I'm the president of the Japanese Student Union. Because I’ve focused more on the Japanese side in college, I feel more knowledgeable about it. And usually I feel more connected to the side of me that I’m more knowledgeable about. At Stanford, there is a divide between Pacific Islanders, Polynesians, and Asians, and there's actually tension between all of them. We have two cultural departments: the Asian American Activities Center (A3C) and the Native American Cultural Center (NACC). A lot of Polynesians, Pacific Islanders, and Micronesians love hanging out at NACC, because there's a lot of overlap about what we value, our traditions and what happened to us in history. The A3C also hosts a lot of Pacific Islanders, but because there are a lot of ethnic groups on campus, there are a lot of groups fighting for that space, and smaller groups kind of get pushed out. It’s hard when you're fighting with a group like the Chinese Student Association, who have 200 - 300 members, while at NACC we have maybe 50. Within NACC though, you feel like you always get heard because it’s a smaller group.  

Rebecca: It’s always interesting to hear about the dynamics between different types of Asian Americans. “Asian American” is a pretty broad umbrella term for so many distinct subgroups. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your company Bevey. Can you start by telling me about the inspiration behind Bevey and how you got started? 

Dominique: During summer quarter, I took an entrepreneurship and technology class online, and I've always been interested in business. My dad actually has his own small business in Vegas, which has always inspired me. I didn’t love the idea I had for the class, so I joined another group. But the whole time during the class, I was thinking about another idea that I could work on. I really wanted to meet new people and be accountable for hobbies. During quarantine, I started at least 20 different projects and I finished maybe two of them. One of them was baking bread, so I had to finish it. 

I wanted something that pairs people together automatically, so that you have fun groups based off of shared interests and skills. Something that I saw later on this year that helped validate my feelings about it was Among Us, that online phone game. I thought it was interesting that random people are willing to put in the effort to come together and play this game. To me it indicated that people are willing to try to make new friends based on similar interests.

Rebecca: Can you talk about the progress you’ve made to date and where you’re at with Bevey? 

Dominique: It started with me asking my friends whether or not they thought the idea would work, and a lot of them thought it sounded pretty cool. I wasn’t working on it with anyone for a couple of months until I had a good friend who was already taking a leave of absence decide to join me. After that, we found someone else to help us with front end development and luckily, some of the people I live with are CS majors and helped me with the back end part. I’ve also joined great programs like Galvanizer, which helped provide me guidance and make this process feel a lot less lonely. I also joined an accelerator program called StartUpNV, which helped me with pitching and helped me get a lot of great expert advice.  

We're aiming to launch at the end of January 2021, and we want to start with a smaller group of customers, similar to how AirBnb started. They only had a few customers, and personally tailored everything to give everyone the best experience. 

Rebecca: That’s awesome. You mentioned your dad runs a small business, and I’m curious to know how your parents feel about you working on Bevey. Do they follow any Asian stereotypes about careers or are they more lenient? 

Dominique: Yeah, they definitely are stereotypical Asian American parents in that way. When I chose mechanical engineering as my major, they were really happy for me. Now that I’m working on Bevey in my gap year though, they’ll ask me at least once a day if I’m going back to school and if I’m going to continue studying mechanical engineering and become an engineer. Even though I am going back to school, I want to continue working on Bevey in the longer term. I think my parents think it’s just a fun project I’m working on during my gap year, so we’re kind of on different wavelengths about that.  

It’s funny, because my dad and I are actually kind of similar. He started his own business partially because he hates working for other people. I like working with other people, but I don’t like being treated like an underling and given busywork. I love being on a team when it feels like all of us are equal. So my dad does understand my desire to start a company. My parents know nothing about technology or apps, so that’s another reason they were very hesitant about me working on Bevey initially. But then they got excited, because they thought it meant I was going to change my major to computer science. Overall though, they are pretty supportive of Bevey and I’m lucky for that. My dad started his small business in a field that he doesn’t really love, but it had a lot of demand when we moved here. He’s happy that I can do something that I actually enjoy. 

Rebecca: Yeah, it's definitely a tricky situation. My parents are also typical Asian parents in that they want me to have a stable career, but also to be happy. And it’s not always easy to balance the two. What advice do you have for someone who is interested in starting a company, but maybe is intimidated by the process or not sure how to get started? 

Dominique: If you have an idea that you're very passionate about, go for it, but make sure to do your research. It’s okay if it takes some time to prototype, because very few people are fortunate enough to be able to just completely quit and work on a prototype when they have no financial backing. Do your research - there are so many great resources online. Sometimes if you look on the second page of Google, things pop up that you would never expect.

I believe that if it's something that you're really motivated about and believe in, you'll get it done somehow. If it’s an idea that you’re constantly thinking about, but you don’t necessarily have the right background or experience, find other people who believe in the idea with you. Being a solo founder is so hard, because it’s kind of you against the world, so it’s really helpful to find a co-founder or even just to have other people who you can talk to during the journey.