Meet Delegate: Bui Hai An
Twitter: @buihaian
Facebook: http://fb.com/buihaian
Organization Name: Silicon Straits
(From Viet Nam) Bui Hai An has been trained as an engineer and is an entrepreneur at heart. Besides building a great team of product developers at Silicon Straits, he is also working as Chief of Customer Development on two B2B Software-as-a-Service products which are part of the Silicon Straits Universe: Cognito and Adsbox.
About the Organization: Silicon Straits is a product-house and dot-connector based in Singapore and HCM City with a mission of gathering great people to build great products to create great companies. Started in May 2013, over the past three years, we have built up a portfolio of more than a hundred mobile and web applications, and hardware products for many satisfied clients and partners, and millions of happy users and customers.
What inspired you to start this organization? Vietnam has a large pool of raw, talented developers and designers who could learn to build great products. By taking on building various products from different industries from web, mobile to hardware … Silicon Straits is the best training ground to grow these raw talents into the top product developers of the region. While doing so, Silicon Straits is also able to connect the dots and partner with different big and small players in South East Asia region to deliver technology impact through their businesses.
What is the next big step you hope to help your organization reach? We are building Silicon Straits Universe — through various projects and products built directly in our foundry, to go way beyond conventional outsourcing and instead regularly form deep collaborations. This typically involves partnering with individuals, startups or existing enterprises who have deep domain expertise or market reach, an appetite for innovation, and are looking at jointly building great new businesses (co-creation). We also create our own internal products and groom them to be spun-off afterwards, preparing them to grow into sustainable businesses in their own right whilst having continuous access to the other elements of the ecosystem (spin-offs).
What has been your biggest obstacle as an entrepreneur? The biggest obstacle is always how to grow different types of people in the organization, at different sizes. When we started with 6 people and hit 30 a year later, managing a team effectively is already a big challenge, but also making sure everyone in my team will have the best opportunities and environment to grow is a tougher one. That is why my co-founders and I are always searching and experimenting different ways to solve this: from building the coolest office in town to providing the best working environment, to restructure from a flat organization to Squad Model, and create our own Growth Framework to provide the review and support for every members of the team to grow. And this challenge will continue to grow when our team expands bigger and bigger (we are at 75 now).
What advice would you give to other emerging entrepreneurs? My advice for emerging entrepreneurs is that they should focus on the entrepreneurship journey. Starting your own business is tough. It will be very lonely, stressful and you will sacrifice a lot of other things in life for it. That’s why the best reason to become an entrepreneur is self-growth. When looking back after 5 years, 10 years, you will know this is the best path for you to grow yourself quickly, then helping others to grow.
Lastly, on my path to #ges2016, I had the best moment … to be able to demo our Augmented Reality to President Obama during his visit to Vietnam on May 24th, 2016 in Ho Chi Minh City.
And I am really looking forward to this amazing opportunities to meet all great entrepreneurs around the world to connect, to share and to build a better future together. See you all at Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2016!
