An introduction to Vietnam Startup Community and Ecosystem. Where to go to meet local startups. Where to stay while visiting the community. And if you plan to come to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. Please do contact me, our team has experience and technology to host monthly startup events here. In the past, we hosted special guests from Rackspace, Chartio, SoftLayer, JFDI and TechInAsia. Feel free to contact me if we want to learn more or add anything.

1. OVERVIEW OF
VIETNAM STARTUP
SCENE & ECOSYSTEM
Ver 1.3 Aug 2013

2. 1.Market Size
2.Funding landscape
3.Community
4.Startups
5.University
6.Talents
Contents

3. 1. Market Size
• Internet penetration: 36.5% = 16M internet user (2013)
• Broadband internet subscribers: 5.3M (Dec 2012)
• Mobile phone subscribers: 121.7M (Dec 2012)
• Smartphone penetration: 30%
• Ecommerce value at US$ 700M (2012)
• Population: 89M (2012)
• GDP: US$ 141B (2012) with 5% GDP growth

4. 2. Funding landscape
Amount:
• Angels: 5k – 50k USD
• Series A: 100k – 500k USD
• Series B: 1M – 10M USD
VCs:
• 8 local VCs
List of Deals:
• Investment: ~50 over 3 years
• Acquisition: 4

5. Investment Fund & Venture Capital
Have early stage funding Mostly series A and above

6. Interested Overseas VCs & Funds

7. Acquired Startups
Acquirers Valuation
$22M
(%50 stake)
$37M

8. High Valuation Gen 1
Series B$200M $75M $75M $37M

9. 3. Community
Two main cities: Hochiminh & Hanoi
• Coworking Space: 10
• Incubator: 5
• Training: 3 (Founder Institute, StartupWeekend, VYE)
• Startup Events: 2 – 4 weekly tech, startup events
• Conference: 4

10. Co-working Space – Hochiminh

11. Co-working Space - HaNoi

12. Incubator/ Accelerator
+
Vatgia.com

13. Training

14. Tech & startup events
.vn

15. Highlighted events

16. Event Resource

17. 4. Startups
• More than 400 startups
• A large percentage of startups who are achieving growth have
either foreign co-founders or co-founders study abroad.
• A rising trend that Vietnamese co-founders raise fund and set
up office in US, then have development hub in Vietnam.
• Endless and unethical competition: ecommerce, groupon, social
network.

18. Growing 3rd gen Startups
Vietnam’s Dropbox
All things T-shirt
Vietnam Search EngineVietnam’s Udemy

19. Blue Ocean 3rd gen Startups
Medical Service SoLoMo
Cab Sharing Crowdfunding

20. Overseas Achievement
Most Disruptive

21. 5. University
Issue 1: University still does not recognize the importance of
startups to the economy. Entrepreneurship is still regarded as a
hard way to make $.
Issue 2: Lack of mentors -> lack of entrepreneurial lecturers ->
(A few) Only teach at highly paid (international) universities
where rich kids and parents don’t want to do something
challenging.

22. Top universities
Technology:
• Ho Chi Minh University of Information Technology
• Ho Chi Minh University of Technology
• Hanoi University of Science & Technology
• Hanoi FPT University
Entrepreneurship
• John von Neumann (Ms. Innovation Leadership
Entrepreneurship)

23. 6. Talents
We are proud to have excellent technical skills ( love to hack things
and build things), are hard-working and risk-taking. However:
• Unethical work: usually do the wrong ways (black-hat SEO, buying
emails, ads spam)
• Poor revenue model: lack of innovative way to make $
• Mainstream of students still love corporate jobs

24. Talents
Region:
• Hanoi: more technical and logic
• Ho Chi Minh: more business and creative
Salary:
• Fresh graduate: $250 - $450/ month
• Mid-level: $500 - $1000/ month

25. Bonus: What are some issues?
• Lack of support from government -> No funding scheme
• No training and mentorship for startups
• No recognition from corporate -> No support +
challenge for B2B
• Lack of collaboration between startups in the community
-> Pushing down instead of growing together
• Don’t get benefits of coworking space -> Missing
opportunities…

26. Say Hi !
• BootStrap@StartUpOf.me
More info about Vietnam
startups here

27. Resources
• http://www.slideshare.net/pmtuan0/vietnam2020-tuan-pham-5-trends-v11
• http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations_and_Whitepapers/2013/2013_Southeas
t_Asia_Digital_Future_in_Focus
• http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Mobile-Propels-Web-Uptake-Vietnam/1009991
• http://www.tradingeconomics.com/vietnam/gdp
• http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/vietnam
• http://data.worldbank.org/country/vietnam