It is Living by Passion and Leading with Obsession that drives Metub to Greater Heights

In a continuation of our International Women’s Day 2022, and part of our monthly Vertex Female Founder Series, we are sharing beautiful, untold stories of our female founders overcoming the odds and obstacles to build businesses that are disruptive, yet transformative to the lives of many. Today we are proud to feature Phuong Ha.

Vietnam’s Business Influencer

While Ha Thi Tu Phuong is not a household name in Vietnam yet, Phuong has been instrumental in creating Metub, the platform that empowers more than 2,500 local influencers to easily create and host video content. As a leading talent network in Asia, Metub harnesses the power of data to help creators and emerging talents reach their audience more effectively. A recipient of the prestigious Forbes Vietnam 30 under 30 in 2018, Phuong has been a remarkable driving force behind a new era of Vietnamese content creators. When we asked her about what helps an entrepreneur to succeed, she shares, “In business, nothing is a bed of roses. It’s often obsession, not just passion that enables one to ride the tumultuous waves and re-emerge victorious again and again.”

Vietnam’s Digital Landscape

In recent years, influencer marketing has taken the Southeast Asian region by storm, with a total addressable market of $638 million in 2019, projected to grow to $2.59 billion by 2024. Influencer marketing is viewed as a more reliable and sticky form of marketing compared to traditional marketing methods. It is estimated that 49% of consumers rely on influencer recommendations and 82% trust the opinions on social media channels. Combined with the rapid growth of young digital natives (Gen Zs) on social media platforms such as Tiktok, this makes for an efficacious ecosystem of growing budding influencers. Led by Phuong, Metub is well positioned to ride this growing wave in Vietnam.

A Nomadic Childhood

Unlike many of her peers, Phuong spent much of her childhood moving from place to place. Despite being Vietnamese, she was born in Germany. From the tender age of four, her parents started bringing her to their office most of the time, as they could not bear to leave her alone with a nanny. Naturally, Phuong spent much of her early childhood under the care of the “uncles” and “aunties” at work. Perhaps, seeing her parents hard at work all the time during her childhood inspired her hardworking attitude towards whatever she does. Phuong also commented lightheartedly that “maybe it wasn’t a stretch to say that I grew up in an office space. The good thing is that it made me less afraid of speaking to strangers”. At the age of five, she moved back to Vietnam and stayed in her home village till she was 15. Clearly, Phuong is also very bright, as she then moved 40 kilometers to study Mathematics at a high school for the gifted. Today, she is based in Ho Chi Minh, the headquarters of Metub operations.

Journey to Founding Metub

Curious and adventurous by nature, Phuong often opts for the road less traveled by. As one of the eight Google Student Ambassadors in Vietnam in 2013, she had the opportunity to examine and understand many of Google’s successful business models, including YouTube. Her dream was to work for Google at their Singapore office. Unfortunately, her plan failed to materialize following a series of rejections, but she remained steadfast in her convictions and continued to keep an open mind to pursue other entrepreneurial opportunities.

Staying in Vietnam provided Phuong with a precious bird’s eye view of emerging trends, where she had first-hand exposure to the nascent digital content industry that was awaiting disruption. While helping a few of her indie singer friends distribute their music on YouTube, she stumbled upon the immense potential of digital platforms. Back in 2013/14, she was amazed by how a musician residing in a small Vietnamese province could distribute his/her music to a global audience, and grow a follower base stretching to the US, Japan and even Brazil.

It was also during this time that she met Steven Nguyen, her co-founder and mentor. Steven is a serial entrepreneur with company building experience so Phuong felt they could make a good team. Pairing her idea of providing creators with a platform with his business acumen, Metub was eventually birthed to help creators “live by passion” — to make a sustainable living through monetizing their content more effectively.

The partnership worked out favorably, and business started to boom. Metub’s ‘C’ suite also expanded with friends whom Phuong had known and trusted for many years — Quyen Le and Tony Tran joining the company. Quyen was the firm’s first employee in 2014 and Tony joined them in 2018. The team worked well together, with open communication and frank feedback being their company’s modulus operandi.

The Most Challenging Experience while Building Metub

Recounting the most challenging experience in building her company, Phuong said “What I feared most in the early days was when anyone submitted a resignation, it not only depletes our human resource but more importantly, also decreases the confidence in me and my team, especially during periods where the business was not performing so well.”

Phuong chose to champion the creator’s economy, an unusual choice in Vietnam back in 2014. She noted “It was not easy explaining the business to other people, and attracting the right talents”. She found out later that most of the team members who performed well and stuck around to build the company “are those who truly believe in the company vision and are motivated for the mission”. This cemented her conviction that building her team is as important as building the business, as she admits that “one of our major focus as we constantly innovate and expand, is to continue looking for more highly motivated and senior talents, to grow our people and culture, and to build a strong team ready to drive the company forward.”

It’s Obsession, not just Passion

Since founding in 2014, Metub continues its mission of helping content creators to live by their passion by being constantly “obsessed” with the business. Phuong lives and breathes Metub as her commitment to Metub is not restricted to the working days within a week. Busying herself with operational duties on the weekdays, she notes that Saturdays are usually spent for high-level, strategic discussions with fellow members of the management team. Phuong recently took on kickboxing not only as a form of exercise and relaxation, but also as a practical way of dealing with work. In fact, when asked why she chose the sport, she replied with a laugh “Well… because I want to kick my problems in the face”.

Charting the Next Phase of the Metub Growth Journey

With Phuong’s leadership, Metub has grown to become the leading creator network in Vietnam today, with over 2,500 creators spanning across diverse content genres and generating over 7 billion monthly views across various platforms.

And this is just the beginning.

Phuong believes that Metub’s true calling is to empower every creator to make a living regardless of their passions and skills, be it content creation, live selling or otherwise.

Metub has been working with their investors, to chart the vision for the next phase of Metub’s growth journey.

Phuong candidly recounted her initial impressions of working with Vertex Ventures SEA.

“Vertex Ventures SEA is actually one of the very first venture capital funds we worked with. I feel that they are not only an investor but also a mentor to us.”

Phuong then went on to share more details about her working experience with the team at Vertex Ventures SEA.

“In the beginning, we honestly found the meetings with Puiyan Leung (senior executive director at Vertex Ventures SEA) tough, as she tended to ask us many questions about our business and also often challenged our thinking and assumptions. But gradually I grew to enjoy speaking with her, as she’s always asking relevant and helpful questions. I remember there’s a time when we felt confused about the direction of a project. Puiyan again posed us a few questions and answering her questions helped us see our business more clearly and firm up our next steps.”

“In addition, the Vertex SEA team supports us with useful industry insights which helped us sharpen our business strategies as well as valuable connections. We truly appreciate our partnership with Vertex SEA; their support and belief in the creator economy. It bolsters our confidence for our journey ahead.”

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