From a Lake House to the Finals: Inside Paniolo with Jaidon and Cam

A Hawaii Small Business Spotlight by Treehouse Coworking

Somewhere in the middle of a venture-competition finals round, their product quietly secured second place before they could even share their pitch. From sharing samples in the moment, the room was already sold.

Two University of Hawaii friends walked into that competition with a tallow-based skincare line they'd been building for seven months. They walked out with second place out of forty teams, also competing as the only product-based business in a finals lineup otherwise stacked with AI startups. We pulled them into the Kailua Treehouse to talk about how a sunscreen idea is growing into a wellness brand, why they refuse to let a robot answer their customer emails, and the family corner that flew out to cheer them on.

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"Did we just become best friends?"

Jaidon Matthews and Cam Holt met about a year ago through a mutual friend, and Cam describes the first hangout the way you'd describe a long-lost sibling.

"It was like that scene in Stepbrothers," Cam said, "where they're like, Did we just become best friends? Instantly. Kind of realized we had a bunch of things in common and wanted to start a business together. And the rest is history."

They cruised as friends for five or six months before anyone said the word "business." The idea finally landed at Jaidon's family lake house in Washington — two surfers, sunburned and talking about the gap in the market for sunscreen that's actually good for you and actually works.

The pivot that probably saved the company

The original plan was a reef-safe sunscreen — clean ingredients, real SPF, designed for people who actually live in the water. Then they did the homework.

"After doing a deep dive, it became apparent how expensive it was," Jaidon said. "The regulations, the FDA rules — it just costs a lot to get there."

"As two college kids without a lot of money," Cam added, "trying to compete with Australian Gold and Sun Bum? There's no chance."

So they pivoted to tallow. Beef tallow has quietly become one of the most talked-about ingredients in clean skincare — bioavailable, nutrient-dense, ridiculously good for the skin barrier — and the category is full of people who actually care. "The tallow space is connected with the health-and-wellness space, which is way more accepting and collaborative," Cam said. "Honestly, more me and Jaidon than just sunscreen."

Cam called it "sneaking behind enemy lines." We'd call it strategy.

The lineup

Paniolo launched with three SKUs, each with its own scent profile.

The Daily is their SPF 20 sun balm — tallow-based, with zinc oxide, arrowroot, and beeswax. The Nightly is a face moisturizer built around blue spirulina, an algae that supports cellular regeneration and acts as an antioxidant. And the Tallow & Honey Balm is the body version, built for eczema, dry skin, and anyone whose skin tends to act up.

The newest release is a plumeria scent in the Nightly. "It sold out pretty quickly," Cam said. "The scent is hard to acquire. It's all organic plumeria extract, and it's expensive — they send us a vial about that big." He held his fingers an inch apart. "So we have to be really careful with it."

Wellness brand, not skincare brand

Ask either of them what Paniolo is, and they don't say skincare.

"We were trying to articulate ourselves as a wellness brand that uses skincare to practice that," Jaidon said. The longer-term plan stretches well beyond what's on the shelf — electrolytes first, eventually something gym-shaped. But the "gym" they're describing isn't really a gym.

"Gym is code for ‘run club’. It's code for ‘let's go surf with a group of people’. It's code for ‘sauna, ice bath," Jaidon explained. "We're a direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand. You don't get to meet with your people as much. We want to cultivate a crowd big enough to actually run a pretty sweet event — or eventually, yeah, a physical space."

Cam put a finer point on it: "We are for the people. Beach cleanups, surf clubs, run clubs. Help out the community."

The underlying philosophy is straight-up longevity. "We want people to be gearing up to live their longest, healthiest, happiest life," Jaidon said. "There's no doubt in my mind that it's best served through clean and natural products. You can feel a certain way off drinking a Red Bull — that caffeine's going to hit you — but you know for a fact there's going to be downsides."

What actually wins a venture competition

The business plan was twenty pages. Jaidon called the financial projections the hardest part.

"We were the only team that had actually cracked a dollar in sales," he said. The other finalists were projecting from estimates. Paniolo was projecting from real, compounding numbers — and from a structure the judges had to wrap their heads around. "We don't pay ourselves. We're fully invested in the company. All dollars go back. We have a really high gross margin. It was hard for them to grasp that."

Their assigned mentor turned out to be the same nine-figure CPG e-commerce coach who'd coached Jaidon's brother Preston and sister-in-law Lexi through the same competition years earlier — the founders of Aloha Standard, the candle company whose office is, in Cam's words, "one door down from the same office we're starting our business in. Crazy full-circle moments."

The corner

Talk to enough founders and you start to hear how much the people behind them matter. Jaidon's family showed up for the finals in force.

"Everyone we just named was in our corner," Cam said. "Preston, Lexi, his parents, — everyone right there cheering us on. We had the biggest corner of any team there."

"Families flew out," Jaidon added. "We were the only corner that had that."

The bench goes deeper than the cheering section. Jaidon's brothers, his dad, his mom (who runs her own business), his sister at the London School of Economics. Cam's family is cut from the same cloth. "We have in-house counsel across the board," Jaidon said. "They're doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to ideas. We execute. But they're a massive help."

The theme runs through everything: you don't do this alone. "Imagine running Paniolo solo," Jaidon said. "It'd be impossible."

The bootstrap reality

There's no investor money in Paniolo. Both founders put in a small chunk of cash and a massive chunk of time — 60 to 70 hours a week since they started. They cook every batch themselves. They built the website, designed the labels, customized the jars, dialed in every formula. (Roughly three dozen tries per product, by their count.)

They run roughly eight farmers markets a week between the two of them. One recent four-day stretch from Friday to Monday: seven markets. "All over the place, just grinding the markets." That activity is most of the revenue — the split right now is about 80% markets, 20% e-commerce. Ad spend? Zero dollars.

There are also mornings like the one before our conversation, where a thousands of dollars mistake happened before lunch. "It's just part of the game," Jaidon said. "We've had plenty of $12,000 wins. They cover each other up."

The AI take

Both of them use Claude every day — for website work, projections off Shopify data, batching math, idea pressure-testing. "Claude has really been our good friend," Cam said. "You'd be a fool not to leverage AI to your advantage."

And then there's the line they won't cross.

"I would feel terrible having a customer reach out asking me a question about the Daily and getting back an auto-reply that says, Hey there, sorry, we're out of the office, we'll respond in 24 to 48 hours," Jaidon said. "I'd never shop there again. I'd be furious."

This isn't theoretical for them. A few weeks back, a customer's package arrived destroyed — UPS had been caught on video dropping it, the glass jar shattered, tallow soaked the other product in the box. She texted Paniolo. They responded in three minutes, sent replacements free, and slipped in a handwritten note (something they do with every order).

She wrote back. Not to complain. To say the note made her day.

"That just goes to show you," Jaidon said. "The human touch is valuable. Customer service is valuable. We like doing that stuff."

Cam was even more direct: "I don't think customer service and AI go hand in hand. AI-automated responses are something people are going to be so over in a very short amount of time."

Advice, in burrito form

We asked what they'd tell someone thinking about taking the entrepreneurship leap.

"Don't have someone else do work for you that you can't do yourself," Cam said. "If you don't know how to do it, you won't be able to develop that skill through someone else. You have to know everything first, and then outsource."

Jaidon's version came from a food metaphor.

"You ever been to a Mexican restaurant with five thousand things on the menu? You have choice fatigue. With entrepreneurship, you just have to pick one. And then eat that same burrito every day for seven months. And not only can you not get tired of the burrito — you can't even say out loud that you don't like the taste."

We laughed. He didn't, really.

"It's the days where we grind all day, the days that suck, the days you don't look forward to — that moves the needle. The lake house was the idea. The burrito is the work."

Treehouse, briefly

Paniolo runs out of an office, and the founders have leaned hard on the alumni network. At Treehouse, Hawai'i-based entrepreneurs across every industry are mostly just a text away. "If you have a need, there's someone in here who's going to help you out," Jaidon said. "The power of an alumni network is very valuable these days. Especially when it's challenging out here to raise capital."

Cam noticed the vibe on the way in: "Four people working with their headsets on, grinding. That's the atmosphere. That's the group we want to be around."

One more thing

We had to ask about the morning routine.

"Yes, we do have coffee," Jaidon grinned. "We put NAC in it — helps your lungs and brain health. MCT oil. Raw honey." He paused. "The honey doesn't do anything functional. It just tastes good."

That feels like the whole brand in three sentences. Function, quality, and a little bit of joy. No shortcuts. No AI customer service. No skipping the burrito.

Seven months in, sold-out scents, a venture-comp trophy, family in their corner, and the kind of momentum that only shows up when the founders aren't faking it. If you find yourself at a Lokahi market in Kailua, or anywhere else on island this summer, look for the Paniolo table.

Interested in becoming a Treehouse member yourself? We have private offices starting $550/month, plus flexible co-working at both our Kailua and Kahala locations. Cold brew on tap. Sometimes kombucha. Occasionally beer.