I love cleaning my Macbook, deleting this or that files, ordering them to this or that folders… It’s also moments I look back what I have done, especially for work so far. I’ve just done cleaning one more time.
I saw so many files, photos, plans executed or just planned, strategy,… what I have thought and done at Innovatube.
Now is November 2017, means I have been working here for 2 years. I started working as assistant to angel investing activity of my boss since Nov 2015, then I worked for Innovatube when he found the company with a friend. That also meant I got 2 bosses, both of who are really talented guys and bring me a whole new perspective on Vietnam startup opportunities (and drawbacks as well).
My initial job at Innovatube is mainly to help the company put its name in the Vietnam startup ecosystem, as we often say community building. We believe that by doing that, we will be able to capture the opportunities that booming startups community here will bring. Any kind of opportunity. Investment. Partnership. Clients. …
2016
We started with a free co-working space in the Old Quarter, which was quite rare at a time that even co-working space term was very new, let alone free. We got some groups of startups to work there, some of them disappeared now, some of them are growing really fast ( TopCV and Vexere Hanoi team). Whatever, they did show me their passionate entrepreneurship spirits which I had never got to know before.
Together with the co-working space, we ran quite a lot of small monthly events for both engineers and entrepreneurs, which I think an unique point of ours. Because most similar community building groups will either work for entrepreneurs or engineers. We were able to do this because of our nature, one of our boss is engineer — turned entrepreneur ( I still saw him coding sometimes!) and we had a engineering team (another business at Innovatube).
Another important mark for us was to host Rice Bowl Startup Awards 2016, the first regional awards for startups in SEA. Originated from Malaysia, they aimed to recognize the efforts in startup community in the region. What I liked about them was, while other startup awards only rewarded the entrepreneurs, RBSA recognized everyone in the community, including journalist, engineers, co-working space, investors,… I think that’s a very nice approach since entrepreneurs only can’t do that well. I got to know this award thanks to one of our portfolios in Thailand and he was the once that helped me bring RBSA to Vietnam for the first time. Frankly, I thought the event didn’t meet up to my expectation but it did enable us to reach influential and popular guys in the local startups, with who we had little chance to work before. They are really helpful us later in this or other way.
2017
In 2017, we changed our focus to deep technologies. Just note: we have been always working with tech startups only, but now narrow down the focus. We managed to run Innovatube Frontier Summit (IFS), aiming to connect various parties working in deep technology.
We saw a problem with deep tech supporting community in Vietnam. They are pretty cluttered and not well connected. Say, we know guys working in AI, IoT, Big Data, blockchain,… but they just focus on their own field. This is understandable because the deep tech is new and requires a lot of effort to do well, so focus on one strength is the best way. But as a business, you will often need more than one technology to build a deep tech product. For example, to build a peer-to-peer money transferring platform, blockchain and AI may be required. Or creating a farming robot should involve both AI and IoT. So the business that wants to apply deep technology in their product should be connected to a lot of separated institutions. Maybe Innovatube will be their one stop? That’s plan to put in IFS.
The event was more successful than we expected, which led us to another opportunity: co-host TECHFEST 2017 with the Ministry of Science & Technology, together with other 6 co-hosts. Each of these co-hosts is specialized in a certain vertical (like, Agritech, Medtech, Edtech,..). We were invited as specialist in Deep technology. This event with the sponsorship of the government did help us reach bigger pool of talented and influential people in the local deep tech ecosystem, which is still very immature but promising.
Next
Well, 2 years have gone. From a team of myself to a team of 6 ( part-time and full time mixed), from nothing to a lot of new things ahead. What I feel most proud is the current team. They’re really strong guys who even sometimes take be aback by their commitments and smartness.
We’re going to move to a new chapter, doubling the functions and the team. Saying that it will be an excellent new plan is a blind confidence, I think. But I know that business is not like climbing up a ladder , not up or down. It’s rather going through a jungle: try this or that, not sure it’s wrong or right direction, but can’t stand still.
San 
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