CEO Don Thao Nguyen: A 15-year journey of start-up and the fate with Blockchain industry
In this article, we are talking about the person behind the vision of the Umbala Network’s Blockchain-based economy — CEO Nguyen Minh Thao or Thao Nguyen (Don).
Thao Nguyen was born in 1982 in Dong Ha, Quang Tri. Have been starting up since 2002, Thao is a well-known entrepreneur in the Vietnam technology startups community and used to own companies with great potential for growth.
A 15-year journey of start-up
Years ago, in a random chat with friends, he found out that the richest man in the world at that time was Bill Gates. Then he asked: “What does that guy do for a living?”. People said he did Information Technology (IT). Before then, Thao had no idea about IT, but he decided to learn IT and start his own business in this field.
Thao founded CNC Software from 2006 to 2012, CNC Mobile from 2012 to 2012, and Umbala Labs from 2014 until now. Currently, he is the Founder, CEO and product at Umbala Network — the Blockchain-based platform that helps solve balance problem the between the decentralization and scalability of Blockchain, in doing so, build an economic ecosystem of the first camera-based applications in the world.
Thao’s start-up journey started from his senior year in college when he reckoned that he needed to start his own business and have an entrepreneur’s mindset. 2006, Thao together with his college peers founded CNC Network and developed products for the inland market.
By the end of 2006, all his peers left the business, Thao was all alone and determined to continue his start-up company with outsourcing. All the profit made was used to build up CNC Software. After a year, CNC Software became a well-known outsourcing company with a size of 23 employees.
Until the end of 2008, the company got into an economic crisis severely affected outsourcing companies. At that time, CNC Sofware was investing in developing products yet did not succeed. Thao decided to restructure the business and resize the company from 23 to 5 employees.
2009, Thao rebuilt the company from 5 former employees and kept the business running with web outsourcing. However, he was looking for a new path for the company, riskier yet more promising. He chose Mobile (iOS, Android). 2010, the company size rose to 30 employees, and the first mobile product was Tim Books (Vietnam’s first mobile e-book social network), which got third place in the Vietnamese Talent that year.
2011, Thao officially launched CNC Mobile and developed Tim Shot (Vietnam’s first mobile photograph social network, released 4 months later than Instagram). With this app, CNC Mobile was ranked top 20 Asia-Pacific Creative Enterprises — a competition held by the global corporate Intel.
Success came after success, the company was invested by a Japanese investor and continuously released new products such as Tim Box (the first product by a Vietnamese-based company, designed and developed by the Vietnamese to join TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012), and uBox (achieving 500,000 users in Vietnam 2 months after launched). However, with the high expectation of success and the ambition of changing the world, Thao decided to terminate these applications due to not reaching the KPI of users.
As the matter of fact, in the battle of mobile social media platforms around the world happening soon later on, the winners are Facebook, Instagram, Youtube — giants that were poured billions USD and took years to develop. Nevertheless, seeing a trend that would form companies worth billion dollars and starting up from an early stage demonstrate the great vision of Thao Nguyen.
After redirection, Thao focused on a new trend of mobile camera/video apps, more specifically video chat and live streaming camera apps. He built up Umbala.Tv — a mobile apps offering users with 12-sec video messages that would exist in 12 hours and disappear when receivers reply. After launching, Umbala.Tv was ranked as one of the best new apps on AppStore in Germany, Switzerland and Australia without a penny for marketing.
After that, Thao redirected and made Umbala.Tv becomes the only app providing users with features such as recording short karaoke videos, lip syncing, performing special talents and livestreaming. With this app, users can use different filter and effects to make their video more lively and attractive. It is possible to envision another version of Umbala.Tv is TikTok — a popular Chinese video app was the world’s highest-priced start-up. Surprisingly, Umbala.Tv was released even
Umbala Network: Blockchain or the opportunity from the new revolutionary generation of camera-based applications
In the pitch at SharkTank Vietnam, Thao Nguyen mentioned the idea of using Blockchain for livestreaming apps in general and for camera-based apps in particular. In the future, with the huge number and diverse categories of cameras, along with the development of technologies other than Blockchain, there is a clear picture of a camera-based economy where all trades and communication between people are conducted via the camera.
Foreseeing this future, the idea of Umbala.Tv was upgraded to Umbala Network — a Blockchain-based platform for camera-based apps like Umbala.Tv.
Why did Thao Nguyen choose to join this new and challenging Blockchain industry? It all comes down to his start-up experience. Having been through many new technologies for 15 years, Thao understands that Blockchain, together with the proliferation of AI, VR or AR, is putting the world in front of the generation of the Camera Economy 4.0.
Camera Economy 1.0 was the era of phones with cameras, photos were taken and saved in the memory cards and shared offline via gateways.
Camera Economy 2.0 was the generation of smartphones and social media, when cameras helped us capture photos to upload on the social network sites and share with friends. The connection between people rose to a new level. Camera Economy 2.0 witnessed the formation of companies worth million to billion dollars such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
Camera Economy 3.0 was the time when the development of telecommunication and the Internet facilitate a new type of video camera: livestreaming. Livestreaming was used for different economic models, for instance, trading, e-commerce, creating digital content like streamers. Camera Economy 3.0 also saw the establishment of Pinduoduo — a Chinese company using livestreaming for e-commerce with the IPO value worth 33 billion USD.
At present, Camera Economy 4.0 is when the number of cameras around the world significantly grow in the next few years, while technological breakthroughs are proliferating. Blockchain bridges the gap between different types of data and helps to form new ways of communication via cameras.
Therefore, Umbala Network can totally be the pioneer in Camera Economy 4.0. This dream is turning into reality while Umbala.Tv has been upgrading to be the first application in the ecosystem created by Umbala Network. According to the project roadmap, in the fourth quarter of 2018, the MVP version of Umbala Network would be publicly launched.
To make all the mentioned dreams to be real, Blockchain itself has to prove its superiority when facing technological challenges: how to make Blockchain faster, more secure yet decentralized.
This is also a problem that Umbala Network has been working hard to solve. Having the solution, Thao Nguyen is really confident in Blockchain and cryptocurrency.
In his point of view, at this stage when the market is frozen, participants with forestalling psychosphere will be out of the game. By contrast, there will be more tech-savvy people, which would reinforce the Blockchain ecosystem. Thus, projects released at this point would focus more on the technological aspects and be worth investing.
With 15 years of start-up experience and 8 years working with camera-based platforms, Thao believes that his vision of Umbala Network and the Camera Economy is accurate and would bring about success for upcoming projects.
Articles on CEO Don Thao Nguyen on air on famous Vietnam-based outlets and newspapers:
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