A new chapter for VietStartup London
Last weekend VietStartup London held Matchmaking: an event for solvers to find new inspiration and projects, and challengers to find a foothold to kick start their ideas. 20+ people got together, rolled up our sleeves and we solved problems together. As Minh said at the beginning of the event, it was a big step for us as we shape VietStartup London to become a home for doers — a young Viet generation that is into action. There is so much to learn from (and this is only the first out of many), but all in all, it was fantastic! Good job everyone!
Here are some highlights of the day:
Ane Phung, who works at a start-up called UENI, has been cooking up a project to connect all Vietnamese groups in the world. He discussed this with other VietStartup members at one of our previous Jams (VietStartup’s very own freestyling project management/brainstorm sessions), but there is probably no other better suited place to turn it into reality than Matchmaking. As it also turned out, and Viet, senior engineer from Bloomberg, has already set up his own world map of Vietnamese start-ups a while ago, so this ended up being merged into Ane’s existing data sheet. Viet and TA helped setting up the sheet & map link-up eventually. The MVP was finished in no time at all. One can navigate through the map and search relevant things on it. More polishing is required, but this is surely the start of something great!
Ha Nguyen, consultant at Accenture, is very inspired by the startup and entrepreneurship podcasts that she listens to on her commute. She came up with the idea of building a podcast to promote Vietnamese entrepreneurs and talents around the world. An outline of how the podcast would work was drawn up, what the content will look like and further potential collaboration. Ha is looking for people to join her team to make this happen!
Thuy Trang finds that looking for natural and authentic gifts from Vietnam can be a great frustration. Marou chocolate stood out as an example: it tastes great, the packaging looks good and it is definitely something to be proud of to be presented as a gift, but the problem is that there are not many products or brands quite like it in Vietnam. Trang had a sitdown with Bach, who has some experience in import/export and took in a lot of ideas from other participants. She came up with Facebook page for a gifts ideas in the end, so check it out here!
We had at least 5 more challengers who want to tackle education — such a hot and fundamental topic especially in Vietnam. There are some clear-cut challenges like the battle against plagiarism presented by Dat Nguyen, or other pain points in the Vietnamese education system like teaching critical thinking to students or the disconnection between learning materials and real-life experience. Last but not least, Pauline Phung from UCL wants to explore her idea of an online tutoring platform. Everything was in flow and exciting, but required a bit of deeper thought and organisation, so we connected our like-minded participants together to form discussion groups. Dat managed to hit up Duc Anh (Facebook software engineer) and Minh (data scientist), before he had to leave, and we were fortunate to have Dr ThaoNguyen, who has a lot of experience in education and has been working in tech transfer, to help with everyone else whose ideas are still in the early stage.
On the other spectrum, we have been able to identify long term projects and help challengers connect with problem solvers. Phuc Nguyen from Citibank is an keen and active investor who regularly screens the stock market for value stocks to add to his investment portfolio. He has set out a challenge to the group to build a quantitative framework to describe stock market behaviour over the past decades and use this as an investment tool. His approach initially relies on historic analysis and as the project moves into the second phase he intends to build a predictive framework to single out investable industries and stocks. As part of the workshop he was able to connect with TA who brings onboard technical expertise to handle large data sets. Both are in the process of completing this exciting challenge.
We at VietStartup believe that entrepreneurship will change the future of the world, and Vietnam itself. With these events, we hope to inspire the next generation of doers to drive this wave of change. Surely we have a lot more to learn from this pilot, but this is already off to a great start, and I am very excited about what to come next! Join us on our Facebook group for the latest info about our upcoming events.
PS: Our gratitude also goes to Duke Nguyen and Giang Nguyen, president of UCL Vietsoc for providing the venue!
PPS: Our session was also covered by VTV on the day. Ane and Minh were on point for the camera. Stay tuned!
