The entrepreneurial journey of a former Uber CEO

DNHN - Sharing his journey into a completely new field, Mr Dung believes that all change comes with risk, and the important thing is to identify what you need to trade off and whether you are willing to accept those risks.

Background from working for large corporations

After your experiences working for big names such as the world’s leading beer producer ABInbev, the strategic consulting firm McKinsey & Company, or senior positions such as CEO of Uber Vietnam, Director of Payment Business at VNG Corporation, what did you find most difficult and interesting when you moved into your role as owner of Nano Technologies?

Mr Dang Viet Dung: The companies I worked for were in many different fields, such as McKinsey, which was about strategic investment, ABInbev, which was about manufacturing and food services in the global market, the ride-hailing company Uber, and the technology payment platform Zalopay. All of these diverse experiences have helped me not only gain experience but also have a multi-faceted view of business and enterprise. In particular, in the latter companies, I had to play a leadership role in the organisation in Vietnam, and I had clearer experiences of responsibility. In short, when I was an employee before, if I did something wrong, only my boss would blame me. But when I became CEO, everyone would look at my results to evaluate me. Of course, although I am in the position of CEO, the nature of my work is still that of an employee.

All the experiences I have gained, added together, have led me to realise that if I had not had the experience from my previous employment, it would have been extremely difficult to run my own business. It is not only that the work itself is hard, but the most difficult thing is that I cannot organise my thinking properly. I know that there are now many young people who have started businesses, and I think this is a very valuable thing, even if they fail, they will learn a lot. However, there is one fact that I have noticed, if you are too young and become a business owner, you will encounter one problem: you will not be able to organise your thinking. You are likely to have thoughts that torment you, such as “I’m not good enough at this”, “Will I fail easily if I do this?”, or “I may not know this yet”,… I have experienced all these emotions many times, and when I first became a business owner, I would still have such emotions occasionally. I cannot imagine how bad my psychological crisis would have been if I had only been out of school for two or three years and become a business owner.

In general, I have found that the experiences I gained while working for large corporations are a valuable asset that has helped me build a solid foundation for my own business.

As the CEO of a foreign company in Vietnam and now the CEO of a startup, what are the most notable differences you have noticed in the way you manage, deal with risk and build a corporate culture?

Mr Dang Viet Dung: If we talk about the difference between working for a very large foreign company and working for a very small startup, we can say that the difference is very big. First, in large organisations with a long history, risk management is usually about protecting what has already been achieved and maintaining the rate of growth in the future. For example, when working in large companies, they often set a growth target of 5-10% per year and avoid operational or brand risks,… On the other hand, in a small company that is in the formation and growth stage, risk management will not be the same as in large companies. The nature of small companies is that if they do not make mistakes, they will die. It is natural to make mistakes, the only question is whether the mistake is big or small. If the mistake is small, it is good, because you can learn from it and correct it. If the mistake is big, it can easily drag the company down. Therefore, for small businesses, I have to apply a very different principle from that of large companies. Large companies have almost no risk, or they have to be very tightly controlled, with absolutely no loopholes, and if they make a mistake, they will pay a very high price. However, small companies are always at risk, and when risks occur, they will give me more lessons to learn and correct in the long run. That is the biggest difference. Small businesses will allow themselves to make mistakes, as long as they know what they are doing wrong. Large businesses, on the other hand, are not allowed to make mistakes or take risks.

Secondly, in terms of building a culture, I would like to say briefly that it is very difficult to build a culture in a large company. In contrast, it is easier to build a culture in a small company, especially one with a workforce of 10-30 people. There is one thing in common between large and small companies, and that is that the main culture lies in what we do and what we say. And to do that, we must start with the first people who do it, which is the manager. It is the same everywhere, building a culture starts with the leader and goes down to the people below. Managers, from CEOs, CTOs, or even ordinary managers, must be the ones who lead the culture, based on what they say and what they do.

The culture in a small company is something that people like me and my colleagues have to shape from the very beginning. For example, my company now has 60-70 people, so it has passed the first stage of building a foundation, because when a company has more than 50 people, employees start to forget each other’s names, and at that point, we usually work according to procedures. So, speaking of my business, it is now at a difficult stage to build a culture, as employees cannot remember each other’s names. This is because the culture is gradually taking shape, but the company is growing. When talented people come to the company with very different cultures and expertise, I can see that I need to prepare for a new phase in terms of organisational and personnel development. This means that now that we are starting to grow, with more than 50 people if the culture is not done well, it will be difficult to do it well. I am gradually transitioning from a very small company to a medium-sized company, and I hope that one day it will be an even larger company, but if I have not finished building the culture by then, it will be very tiring. Therefore, I am actively working on building the culture right now.

Seizing business opportunities for transformation

How did you come up with the idea for a salary advance solution for employees, and what motivated you to find Nano Technologies?

Mr Dang Viet Dung: I think this idea came about over a long period. And there was a stage when the idea became clear to me, to put it briefly. In 2019, the idea came to me, but it was not a coincidence that I had the idea at that moment. The process of absorbing and implementing that idea was something I had been accumulating for decades.

To be precise, in 2019, after working for many companies, I thought to myself, “What should I do now? Should I continue to work as a CEO for a foreign company? If I do well, they will use me, but if I make a mistake, they will be ready to fire me at any time and I will have to find another job. At a certain age, should I try something of my own?” I realised that I did not know what to do, of course, I did not know what to do, because those are two completely different stories. The difficulty for people who can do anything is not knowing what to do next, or what to do for now, for money or fame. At that time, I did not know what I wanted to do for a living. I felt that I did not necessarily have to do the things I had already done and that this was a good time to try something new.

During that time, when I did not know what to do, I agreed to be an advisor to a few people on the Board of Directors at major banks, on digital transformation and how to manage their investment portfolios. And when I looked at their documents, I began to understand more about the consumer finance and personal finance industry in Vietnam. One figure that shocked me was that in Vietnam, nearly 20-30 million people were borrowing at high interest rates of 100 %/year or more, not counting pawnbrokers or illegal credit. If we do a simple calculation, Vietnam has about 60 million adults, so if 30 million people borrow at high interest rates, on average, for every two adults, one person borrows at high-interest rates. That does not help our society to progress, because the nature of borrowing at 100%/year is that there is no tomorrow. For a business person, if they see a problem that is so painful and that many people have not been able to solve, then this is an opportunity to make money. Simply put, when you have a painful problem that you cannot solve, you pay me to help you solve it. I realised that this was a very big problem and issue, because it was not just a matter of thousands of people, but tens of millions. And of course, there could be a solution, and that is when I started to look into the model of salary advances for employees to see how they did it in the world. Through my research, I found that in the US they had been doing it for 12 years and had been very successful with this model. They were successful not only because they made money, but the most successful thing about this industry was that they changed something very difficult to change: the pay cycle, because it is a social contract, and it is calculated according to the Labour Code, which is usually changed very infrequently. The amazing thing is that in just 7-8 years, it went from being a niche industry to a product that banks could also do. It has become a product that any American business can use. So much so that in their country, employees are gradually forming the habit that if they apply for a job at a company that does not offer a salary advance service, they will not join. The use of this service is just a sign of the market, but more importantly, they have been empowered to do so. Many companies see this service as a formal benefit, equivalent to health insurance.

For me, when I saw that problem, I saw an opportunity to do business. Going back to the story in Vietnam, if we see that 30 million people are borrowing at high interest rates, if they were given access to a product like this, they would not resort to financial products that would harm them. Between a company that provides the benefit of a salary advance and one that lends at an interest rate of up to 100%/year, no one would choose the second option. I believe that in a few years, the Vietnamese market will be similar to foreign markets such as the US, India or other countries that have adopted this model, and this service will become a readily available benefit in businesses because businesses that want to develop sustainably will always protect and create conditions for their employees. I have seen foreign markets do this model and they have been quite successful. Looking at the Vietnamese market, I see that the market is very large, with too many people having to borrow at high interest rates and many businesses paying salaries late, while with the current average salary, many ordinary workers can only just afford to live and there will be times when they run out of money and cannot afford unexpected expenses. That is why they may have to resort to high-interest loans, and they do not yet have access to banking services, especially ordinary workers or low-income workers. This is both a pain point in the market and an opportunity for startups to see new ideas to create a useful product for all users.

Many people may see this salary advance service as just a credit card. And I have found that a good service has one characteristic: the user does not even remember that they are using it, it is like a habit and something they always need. The product I have created has been adopted by many small and large businesses and is used by ordinary workers in factories, supermarkets and office workers. I have seen that after four years of doing this, serving hundreds of thousands of people, the benefits it has brought have motivated us to continue doing it and developing it.

Although in the four years since we were founded, 2020 and 2021 saw the COVID pandemic, the business itself has grown tremendously, in very difficult conditions, even when the market seemed to be at its lowest, there was still demand. This motivates me, not only because there is a business opportunity, but because the service has helped people who need help at a much lower cost. Of course, the company still needs to pursue its profit targets, but if we can develop our business goals alongside social goals, and every service we provide benefits society, then that is the guiding principle that my business will always follow.

If in the future Vietnam becomes like the US or other countries that have adopted this model, I believe that in 5-10 years, there will be 10-20 million people using this service. And when a product has over 1 million users, the company cannot be bad. Therefore, I believe that if I keep thinking every day about how to get more users, the company will naturally grow stronger, rather than just thinking about revenue targets. If more people use it and they value it, they will naturally come to us.

How do you create a community of workers, businesses and investors who support a new model like this?

Mr Dang Viet Dung: When you build a business, it is like building trust. Why is that? Because even I cannot know whether it will be successful or not. When you start a startup, you are building something that belongs to the future, it may happen in the future or it may fail, but if you do it without faith, it will not be successful. Nowadays, I see that startup founders, especially tech startup founders, will face difficulties in business development if they only focus on technology. In my opinion, when building a large and fast-growing company, the founder or manager must know how to use a series of levers.

First, I can say that my profession is to build a series of levers. The first lever I have is that I have the skills, I have the credibility. When I researched this idea, I found it very good, and at that time I had the first lever, besides my credibility and ability, which was the idea. When I had the lever of the idea, and the idea was very convincing, I went on to find the second lever, which was the lever of capital. I talked to many investors, and one of my great advantages was that they trusted me very much, I had credibility, I had ability and I meant what I said. When I convinced investors, they only believed in me, and they also told me: “Your idea may only be good for the first year and may fail next year, so when I bet, I bet on you, and you can do whatever you want with the idea”. When I had another lever, which was capital, I started to build a team. At first, it was just me and another friend, and then it grew to 5 people working in a small office of less than 10m2. After we started working together, we started to have the fourth lever, which was the product. And as soon as we had a product, how could I go back and convince the original investors? It was all about the customers. At the very beginning, I had to go out and sell the product myself. After a lot of hard work, I gradually got my first customers. So, from the lever of the product, I got the fifth lever, which was the customers. And once I had customers, it became easier to sell. Typically, the first 10 customers are the hardest to sell to, the next 90 customers are still a bit difficult to sell to, but the 101st customer is easier. Of the first 20 customers, some were very pioneering, they liked what I had because they found it very modern and humane as well as cost-effective, and some of them were even very large companies. So, at this point, I had another lever, which was not only customers but also large corporate customers. And when we had an industry-leading company like that, we continued to have the seventh lever, which was the credibility to go and convince other companies in the same industry. If an industry-leading company has already supported it, then of course other companies in the industry will also consider it. When we had a number of customers who were industry leaders and within the industry, I continued to have the eighth lever, which was that many banking partners came to us to cooperate, they saw that I could do this product that they could not do, and they proposed to cooperate so that both sides could serve individual and corporate customers better. And when we had the lever of bank customers, it opened up a whole series of other levers.

Building a business first of all requires faith, then you can do it, without faith, you cannot convince others. And of course, faith alone is not enough, you have to understand what it takes to build a business. Building it is by a series of levers as I have shared.

Going back to the question of how to get investors to support you, I can summarise it by saying that you have to convince them why this idea is feasible because tens of millions of people need it and it can generate good revenue with very low risk. I also assure them that I can create a series of levers within a certain time frame and achieve certain goals.

From the whole process of building your business, can you summarise and share the most powerful personal motivation that you have held onto on your entrepreneurial journey?

Mr Dang Viet Dung: I am someone who always worries about everything, so when I start a job I always try to make sure about everything I am doing to be less afraid of it. The more I understand something, the less afraid I will be of it. This is very true psychologically, because we usually fear things that we do not understand, and when we understand them, we will not be afraid of them anymore. When we understand something, we will do what we can, and if we cannot do it, we will accept it.

The first thing is that I always know what my goal is and how long it will take to achieve it. For example, when I started my current business, I set a goal of five years, regardless of whether I make a lot of money or not, as long as the company develops according to the path I think the company needs and should take. If after five years it does not develop like that, I should rethink it.

In addition, during those five years, you have to understand that if the worst happens, will you accept it or not? Before I started, I wrote down a series of scenarios of what I would have to trade off and whether I would accept those things. If you do not accept those things, you will feel regret and will have to say things like “if only”.

The third thing I want to say to young people who want to start a business is that before you start, in addition to gaining experience, you also need to build up your finances. If you are not financially secure, you will not be able to rest assured and focus on building your business.

Another thing I want to say is that when you have prepared everything, will you be stressed, will you feel pressure in the face of challenges? The answer is of course yes, and that feeling happens all the time. I thought to myself that I had prepared so well, I had written down the worst-case scenario, and I had told myself that it would be difficult, but in the beginning, I felt very stressed about developing the company. I think this is not just my story but the story of every entrepreneur. There is a saying that I feel very strongly about, which is that the leader is a very lonely person. In the past, when I was working as a CEO, I played with many other CEOs in other companies, and I still had many people to talk to. But when you are the founder in an industry that no one else is doing, and your team members are still just your employees. And of course, not everyone can be a companion in every story of yours. There are some torments and heartaches that you cannot tell anyone and can only think about in your own heart. So there are many times when I still feel stressed and lonely. However, there is one thing that I think I have achieved in the past year, which is to accept reality. Sometimes our stress comes from the things we expect too much. Because the gap between expectation and reality is sometimes very wide. There are many things in the process of doing that I realise I have not done well, and the reality is that I have to find a way to fix it.

Thank you for sharing!

Bao Trinh