RMIT high school tour speech

The speech was to commence the RMIT high school tour for Tran Khai Nguyen, December 2013, and from then, has been revised multiple times for subsequent tours.


Hi guys,

My name is Khang, I am an RMIT alumnus and a software engineer. The slide behind me is showing all the major achievements I have acquired over the last 5 years. But I know that no one really cares about those, neither do I and that isn't the reason why I am here today. I was asked by the school to share about my studying and working experience. That is quite a challenge. I graduated from high school in 2008 and my memory about that period is vague. But I do remember the confusion I felt during those years, overwhelmed by all the options of life. So today I want to tell you three stories of my life, over a course of events that eventually define me as who I am.

The first story is about surviving high school.

High school was always a bit lonely to me. Don't get me wrong, I had friends in at school and I love them. We still hang out with each other very frequently. But there wasn't anyone who shared the same interests with me. My friends were at the age when girls knew about the names of Taiwanese F4 better than the names of boys in their class, and boys were all crazy about cool gadgets, mp3 and mobile phone. I don't know how much the situation has changed, perhaps it is about Kim Tan and iPhone now?
I was a little bit different. I spent most of my time with books, found the "boring" subjects like history and geography quite interesting and sometimes enjoyed talking with my teachers more than with my friends. So I was quite a misfit. But all of sudden, thing changed when I went to college. I started to meet other computer geeks and book lovers, and what I wanted to do in my life began to get in shape.
I think there have also been moments in your life when you feel left out and don't know where you are supposed to be. Don't worry, that is just the way high school is. There will be times when your life sucks, but one day you will be given the chance to determine how the story of your life would be written. Until there, be prepared.

My second story is about understanding what I want.

After high school, I got accepted to both HCM University of Technology and FTU (Bách Khoa and Ngoại Thương respectively), two of the most prestigious education institutes in south of Vietnam. Didn't really like FTU but my father did, so I tried anyway. And you know how the days at FTU felt like? Felt like high school. The young kids around me were all excited about being bankers, brokers or marketers and I was like "how is Windows Server different from the one I am having on my desktop?". And I was certain that I didn't want to experience being a misfit again. I dropped out after 3 days and went to HCM UT instead. And I thought I would be happy now, I was in an engineering school and supposed to eat, pray, love with computer science over the next 5 years. It turned to be, well, quite misleading. The staff were bureaucratic and unfriendly. And I couldn't understand how the courses would possibly make me a better engineer. I was learning the exact same stuff my father was, 30 years ago (given the speed of technology, 30 years is a very long time, it is pre-internet era).
I don't remember if I have ever been more scared and lost and confused in my life. I had two options, and both didn't work out. Fortunately, at that difficult time, I received a scholarship offer from RMIT, the school which I applied 2-3 months before. I was saved. I am not going to brag about RMIT from this point on, but as you proceed on the tour, I hope you will get the same excitement I got when I came to RMIT.
So I have learned that when life gives you the chance to write your story, make sure you follow no one else wish but the call of your heart. Or else you will suffer.

The last story is about connecting the dots.

As you can see on the list, acquiring an internship in Taipei, Taiwan is one of the most important milestone in my career which leads me to the position I am today. But the actual story began far before that. During my years at RMIT, I had done quite a few things. I founded the IT Club (which I am happy to announce that is still strong and operating till today). I engaged into multiple discussions with my professors (I am still the same kid who enjoys talking with older people). And I organized MultiUni and was a TA in the first iOS programming course ever in Vietnam. I had no hope for a practical application in my life from doing these things. I did them because they were fun. And I loved it, I was satisfied just by doing what I loved. But gradually, somehow the dots of my life connected together. One of my professors acknowledged my ability and arranged me an overseas internship. That was just amazing.
I have learned that we can't connect the dots looking forward, it only starts to make sense when we look at them backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future, You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, love, whatever. And life will put the rest into the right place.

If there is a common theme in my three stories, I believe it is figuring what you want to do in your life and work your way towards that. And for a high school student, I know it is easier said than done. But again don't worry, the fact that you are worried for your future is indeed a good sign. It shows that you are mature enough to be responsible for your life, and people with that attitude are destined to be successful. And whenever you feel lost, remember that you are not alone. You always have your family, school and friends by your side, supporting you on the rough journey ahead.

Now go exploring what RMIT has to offer.

Thank you very much.

RMIT Internship Q & A

• Should I choose an enterprise or a startup?
• Should I apply for a paid or unpaid internship? If it is a paid internship, what is a good offer?
• How can I find an internship abroad?

Question: Should I choose an enterprise or a startup?

Answer:

I choose this to be the first question to answer because I can tightly relate to it, back when I was preparing for my internship. Unfortunately, with all the small talks and experience I have collected, this is the type of question you have to look inside yourself to find an answer.

An enterprise is an established business. It has a stable business model, long-term business partners and sufficient resources to overcome market glitches. Being able to survive in the ferocious industry is an indicator that an enterprise knows a lot of things and has done a number of things right. Derived from that experience are a number of methodologies, policies and procedures that cover at the very least core-business activities. Joining an enterprise is a secured career option. It is not very likely that the company will be out of business in the matter of months, usually that happens over the course of couple of years. Look at Nokia or BlackBarry for example. You will be benefited from the experience of the company through various forms, e.g. training, documentation and mentorship. Your working environment is likely to be more luxury than that of your startup colleagues (though in Vietnam and over the world, the gap is narrowing down). A standard enterprise would provide you with hardware devices, free lunch, medical care, social insurance coverage, Tet bonus and everything else that is required by the labour law.

However, enterprises are no utopia. Due to its size, an enterprise is structured in ways that make most of its employees replaceable, even at manager level. A set of lego is my favorite metaphor for this. The number of employees in an enterprise might also be an issue. On one hand, your existence will be so insignificant that no one would know if you were eaten by a lion (good-old IBM joke). On the other hand, you might get crushed under peer pressure. Unilever is very notorious for this, every year it recruits hundreds of management trainees and lets them fight till death. Every enterprise would have a handful of long-term partners, which provide a stable source of income. But these long-lasting partnerships are placed on top of legacy systems, developed, who know, 20-30 years ago. For example, Cobol is a very ancient programming language, which was responsible for the infamous Y2K. By the time I took my internship in 2010, CSC was still known for providing technical support to such systems.

Compared to enterprises, startups are on the other extreme. Startups are on hype all over the world. Everyone talks about it. Startups attracts a lot of talents because it gives people a chance to visualize their own universe where imagination is the only limits. For anything you do, there might be a chance that you are the first one ever set out to do it, solving a unique problem for mankind. Oh Jesus Chris, the feeling that you are pushing the edge of the world, that is good. For experienced developers, startups hit a sweet spot when bureaucratic policies are replaced by the freedom to establish new standards. If you noticed, most of the new things in software industry came from startups, e.g Agile for methodology or RoR for development. Last but not least startups have been making countless founders and core-members millionaires. When Instagram was acquired with ONE-BILLION USD, it had around 12 members, effectively everyone of them can have their own yacht and island now.

But startup is a risky path. For every successful startup, 99 others fails. The working environment and benefit package in most of startups are every limited. Many founders and startup employees live on minimum wage or below until the business takes off, or fail miserably. Oh hey, but too much funding in an early stage can kill a startup too (Color of Bill Nguyen, or Skunkworks right in Vietnam are bold examples). Working in a startup is very stressful. It is a common belief that if you are working less than 100h/week, your startup is not going to success and investors won’t be convinced. While it sure feels good pushing the edge of the world, the same situation could be described as crawling in the dark if you failed, lost your direction and had no idea where  you were heading to.

There are pros and cons, and learning opportunities in both enterprises and startups. And always remember that this is just an internship. You can fail, you can make a bad choice and you should. What is the worst thing that can happen? You wasted 4 months of your life in a crappy company. But that experience, either sweet or leaves a bad taste, is priceless. He who never fails never succeeds. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” Steve Jobs, 2005.

Question: Should I apply for a paid or unpaid internship? If it is a paid internship, what is a good offer?

Answer:

An offer in a job, not only an internship, is the mutual commitment between employer and employee. By providing benefit packages and working environment stated in the offer, an employer has the right to expect its employee to legally hold responsibility for his work. Being paid in an internship is not only an indicator that you are valuable to your employer but also a call for your professionalism in being responsible for your impact to the organization performance.

In RMIT’s official internship agreement, it is stated that monthly allowance is optional. This is a move of the university to lower the entry barrier for some students who have not yet been excellent in their profession (the word “monthly allowance” itself is also to lower the barrier as it indicates that a legal contract is not required). Based on my pure assumption, students who are concerned about paid/unpaid internship are ones that haven’t got any previous experience in the industry. And by considering unpaid internship, students are trying to reduce the pressure they are about to face during the internship. That seems to be a reasonable option, but if you are serious about your career, I suggest not to. An unpaid position is an open message from the organization that your work, not matter how good or bad, is not going to matter, it doesn’t provide value to the organization, it is junk. You have spent a little fortune for your education, you better work on something matters. And this is kinda just for fun but receiving a paycheck after all of the hard work is part of the internship experience too.

Talking about offer, it is important to acknowledge that salary is a small part of an offer. For an internship, that portion is especially small. Ultimately  what an organization has to provide is its working environment, corporation culture and other experience coming along. A few items to notice when considering offers would include

• The culture the organization is embracing. Refer to the first question to know which type of company fits your taste.
• The people you are working with. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter what you do, it is who you do it with. An offer receives its incremental value if it comes from an organization where employees are top-notches in particular fields in the industry. Working with these gurus is an priceless experience (which might not always be positive, I know a handful of gurus who are truly sore losers). And the fact that they are gathering is one place is kinda an indicator on its own already.
• The type of projects you are going to work with. Is that some kind of project that you can freely write about in your school report or is it something you have to sign Non Disclosure Agreement (whether or not you pass the “course” depends on the quality of your reports, it is an important piece)? Is that the type of project you want to work on in the next few years? How do those projects align with your personal development?
• What are the growth opportunities the company provides? Do them align with your goals in the next few years?
• And finally salary, aka monthly allowance. As stated earlier, I suggest taking a paid internship rather than an unpaid one. The salary should be sufficient for you to live on it independently. Given the current state of the market, a salary of $300-700 is considered well-paid. You can refer to this survey to get a sense of what is going on in the industry.
  • Don’t jump into the conclusion that a salary is low or high with just the number. As an intern, there is a chance that you won’t be productive in the first few months (read, your entire internship) and that your salary together with other benefits you are receiving are nothing but cost to the company. Investing in an intern is usually a long-term investment, and no fool places all eggs in one basket. Carefully consider what you are receiving in big picture, not just a paycheck.
  • Many companies pay its interns the same amount as entry-level employee. It might mean that the company has a deep pocket. But it is more likely that the company doesn’t provide any special training/treatment to interns and technically you *are* a normal employee under the eyes of your direct boss (monetary award is mutually commitment between two parties, remember?). This does not necessarily mean good or bad, just something as a green horn you should look out for.

Question: How can I find an internship abroad?

Answer: 

Hard work and a lot of luck.

Firstly you should know that you are competing with a lot of native students whose education is tailored for the need of the local market. If your language is not fluent, your CV is not shiny, you have little to no working experience and all you have is a cold contact, your chance to win this competition is extremely slim. The interview processes of different companies are quite identical and if you have been attending WPP workshop, you should know about the art of answering interview questions better that I do now  So in this answer, I will only focus on the parts before the interview.

Spend time on it, decently. There is no place for luck in this competition. It is not luck that brings you a reference to an overseas internship, it is years of hard work for a nice transcript and reputation among fellow students. It is not luck that your CV passes the screening step, a decent and well-written CV does. And little can luck help to boost your English for an interview, on phone. Furthermore the whole visa a truly a pain in butt. Internship visa is especially troublesome. In many countries, the only visa types that are available are Resident, Work and Visitor visa. Work visa are for professional only and there is a quota on how many expats a company can employ. Visitor visa usually lasts for only 1 month for Vietnamese citizen and visa bearer can’t be employed (legally). Due to its nature, this is something you need to discuss and coordinate closely with your employer. It can easily eat up 2 months of your time, and if it mixes up with exam period, ain’t gonna be nice.

Choose a company. All companies expect long-term value  from investments they make. A fact you should know is that in RMIT Melbourne, there are many Vietnamese students who can’t find an internship over there and have to reluctantly travel back to Vietnam for an employment opportunity. The reason is that companies are concerned about the work permit for the student once his/her education in Australia is over. Compared to native students who speak a faultless language and have no problem with visa, investing in a Vietnamese student is too risky. Same logic applies when you are seeking for an internship overseas.

However, there are two types of companies where being a Vietnamese engineer is an advantage. Firstly, those are companies looking at Vietnam as a potential business partner. The purposes can be various, ranging from extending market to talent acquisition. These companies are in great need to understand about from multiple aspects and a Vietnamese employee is an useful resource. The second type are young (relatively) technology giants, like Google, Facebook or Twitter. These companies succeeded in the new waves of technology and greatly appreciate the power of diversity. They are always try to balance the demographics of employees. When you look into companies of this type, the company size matters. Acquiring visa that permits work in most countries is are troublesome and time consuming process. Unless the company is big enough to have its own legal department, most will pass the burden.

Get a reference. From my experience in recruitment, most companies value hiring opportunities coming from its internal network, aka word-of-mouth reference. So once you have a good idea which company you want to apply to, you need to approach the company from different direction, and as soon as possible. You can approach the company HR’s via social network such as LinkedIn. If your LinkedIn profile is attractive, you will receive many offers, good and bad ones. This might not be common in Vietnam (yet), but quite popular in neighbor countries, like Singapore. Even more effective, you approach the company’s employee through open source project. I really love this approach because not only you gain a valuable internal reference, your application profile can also be pre-filtered. Similarly approach the group of Vietnamese people working in the company  . Lastly approach the company through developer group, competition and event held by the company. There is actually one last approach which is to become excellent in the field the company is starving for talents, but that is quite hard for students so I don’t really want to stress on.

I assume I should talk about closing an offer as well. But wait, if you are a bright student, you have been studying hard and now you are getting an overseas internship, it is no time for QnA, it is time for party \m/ So perhaps another time, or you can always email me 

RMIT Career Week 2012 - IT & Entrepreneur

Below are the slide and text of the presentation about IT and Entrepreneur I delivered during the Career Week of RMIT 2012. Enjoy.

IT & Entrepreneur on Prezi

Who I am and why I am qualified to talk about entrepreneurship.

First and foremost, I am an RMIT alumnus. During the time at RMIT, I founded of the IT Club. Together with my team, we were building a platform to facilitate professional and personal development of our fellow students. I am also among the first organizers of MultiUni, an NPO aiming at turning the community into a university with high quality and free courses. In 2010, I was the first IT student of RMIT Vietnam to have his internship overseas. Being the first had some problems with it, but the experience and knowledge I gained was a blast. Every hardship and difficulties was worth it. Back to Vietnam, at the age of 21, I established Cogini Vietnam, the main R&D center of the company in Asia. I have experienced different working environment, namely Taiwan, Singapore and Dung Quat industrial zone. I have got precious opportunities of working with gifted entrepreneurs from all over the world and contributes an essential part to their successful startups. 

It is quite obvious that my profile is no where as profound as any of the professors you are having and my achievement in the industry is minuscular. But I enjoy what I have been through in the world of entrepreneurship and I believe that "Finding joy in the journey is more important that reaching your destination". I hope my experience will be entertaining.

Who is an entrepreneur?

Now we are here, talking about IT and Entrepreneur, but what does it actually means by "entrepreneurship", how to be classified as an "entrepreneur"? The definitions on the internet are countless.

Some are funny.

"My son is now an 'entrepreneur'. That's what you're called when you don't have a job." - Ted Turner

Some are inspiring.

"The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity." - Peter Drucker

And this is my favorite

"Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one." - Bill Gates

Before we proceed, lets try to agree upon what "entrepreneur" we are talking about. Later in life, each of us will develop a different definition of entrepreneur. But only for today, lets try to reach an agreement. Although the word entrepreneur and the meaning it conveys are very motivating and inspiring, I believe it is the most overused and misused word in this century. When I was a kid, I never heard of such word. The closest synonyms that I could possibly find are "businessman", "businesswoman". But nowadays, you have a side project, your are so entrepreneurial; you open a shop, you must be a entrepreneur then. 

There are many creative creators out there. In the tech world, they are usually hackers who create applications with little or no idea how will they make money from that. They don't even need that. They do it just because it is satisfying for them to do so. And there are small business owner, too. There is a high risk in running a business, but that doesn't necessarily require any brilliant ideas nor create any new value for the world. An entrepreneur, in my opinion, is one with great idea and know how to turn that into a business with thorough vision, foresight and understanding of the market. The entrepreneur is a visionary executor. The creator and business people are necessary support, but not required. Based on that definition, further down the talk I will be focusing on realizing the vision, rather than how to create a product or how to run a business.

What does it takes to be an entrepreneur?

Even though market factors can affect the success and the scope of your business, they have little to do with entrepreneurial spirit. Some tend to complain a whole lot about it, that the local users are so conservative, that the lack of infrastructure prevents the business growth or most frequently the market is not ready for this idea. Well, bullshit. Vietname actually has a very strong potential for ICT development. The country is one of the countries with highest number of mobile and Internet users. The population is young and adopt quickly to new products, just look at how they pick up Facebook and groupon. And did you know that Vietnamese users are the most skillful one when it comes to DNS config? And if that is not convincing enough, there is always the rest of the world. I agree that there are a lot to do with the infrastructure of the country, but that should be considered an opportunity, not a barrier. Clickmedix is one of our joint product. Clickmedix is a healthcare service for rural areas. It in fact applies the advantages of technologies to overcome the lack of infrastructure in rural areas all over the world, to bring modern healthcare to more patients. Last week, Clickmedix won the Recommendation Award from World Bank.

Now that we have excluded most negative external factors, what does it take to be an entrepreneur? I think the two most dominants one are an idea and some love.

An idea that is suitable for a startup is one that tackles an existing yet-not-satisfied need of users and provide it elegantly and profitably. 

When I was a kid, everything that I needed was provided, I didn't have to go seeking for it. So I used to think of a good idea as something very rare, hard to perceived, "beyond the reach". But the more I experienced, the more I realized how wrong I was. The needs of human beings turn out to be quite basic: get stuff done, make them laugh, stay connected, fill downtime, etc… 

The initial idea for your business should be big and bold. Be expansive in how you think about its features, the target users, the opportunities to set it apart from the rest. Let crazy ideas roll. Fill the drawing board with your wildest ideas. Don't set any constraint or limit on you, other people will do that for you, there is no point of doing so for yourself.

However, no matter how good an idea is, it cannot be a cow cash. Why? It is just a thought, it is valueless. To realize an idea, you need to build a product. And it is the time you need to kill your darlings, your wild and beloved ideas. I call it "survival of the fittest". You are not just building a product, you need to build a good one that people will know about it, use it and even better, recommend it to others; and build it fast. Hence, there is no room for nice-to-have features. Every feature surviving the slaughter must be a must-have one. 


Eventually that leads you to a bigger picture. You need a business model. Anyone here can tell me what is a business model? In short, a business model defines the way you operate your business. But I have this brilliant idea, it is all in my mind, I don't need this form of "documentation". Documentation sucks, lets just roll it out. That was exactly what did I think whenever I wrote a proposal. But listen, you can't run a business all alone, you need a means of communication that you can share and inspire others. Furthermore, entrepreneurs are typically hopelessly optimistic. They tend to underestimate the complication of little details. There might be a hidden risk some where in the plan, writing it down, think about it while you are writing, is the first round of fail filtering.

I usually refer to "the canvas" from Business Model Generation as a standard form of business model. It is illustrative, detail enough to understand the business yet general enough to leave room for idea to flower. And believe me, many investors love it too.

The second factor that matters on the path of an entrepreneur is love. 

Or to put it more accurately, love, fear and the dots of life. Let me tell you my journey. My adventure started from the day I entered RMIT, became a part of its young and talented students, like all of you down there. Here, right in the campus, I met amazing people, friends of my life. One of them, I can never forget. He is Le Ba Huy. Huy came from Silicon Valley, the heart of the IT world. I was blessed to have Huy be my lecturer in my very first semester. Huy was a very inspiring lecturer, his lectures were filled with excitement and brilliant ideas. He then was my first employer, mentor and friend. 

Under Huy's guidance, I proceeded to teach myself iOS programming. The topic was smoking hot as the app store first came out. Developers were provided a whole new era to explore, the post-PC era. There was not lot of resources back in the day, the sample code from Apple was barely enough for Hello World programs. To improve our competencies, we started to pick up freelance projects and initialize in-house projects. Balancing 4 courses at school and intensive iOS programming was hard. But sweet Jesus, those days were so exciting, inspiring and wild. Pizza & coke in the room, computers on 24/7 and hands moving non-stop on keyboard, we discussed, we hacked, we created products that never existed before, felt like we were having the world in our hands. Those days was incredible.

And I thought that that was it, my hands were full and I couldn't take anything else. But no. In the world on entrepreneurs, good enough is never enough. We decided to share our knowledge, meet more amazing people out there. We organized MultiUni, a innovative form of university, driven by the community. I went panic with all of my group assignments, almost failed an elective course, but screw that, during one year, I had met more awesome people than I ever had in my life.

After the success of MultiUni, I was convinced that there were always room for improvement in conventional education system. The need of IT students to have a more active learning environment besides the classes was undeniable. Therefore we established the IT club, promoting an active student-centered learning environment.

Besides iOS, I had no hope for a practical application in my life from doing these thing. I did them because they were fun. And I love it, I am satisfied just by doing what I love. But gradually, in my life, somehow, all the dots are ultimately connected together. Working in the IT club gave me chances to meet various professors in my program. Fortunately, one of the professors acknowledged my ability and arrange me an internship overseas. That was a amazing.

Back to Vietnam, I established Cogini Vietnam. It was challenging, given that my major has always been software engineering. But the experience and relationship I developed during the time at MultiUni and IT Club was the real deal. Guess what, the first four staff of Cogini Vietnam, including me, were the management board of the IT Club. Running a company has lot of pressure, it is real money and business we are handling there, not assignments. But in the nutshell, I found that it is similar to running the club back there. How fortunate.

None of these I would have achieved if I wasn't given the opportunity to do what I love. How important it is to do what you love? Once you set you footstep in the software industry, you would have recognized that you have to keep learning new thing everyday, at school, at home, after graduation, just to keep on pace with the rest of the world. The moment you stop learning new thing, is the moment you are left behind. To work sustainably, you need to work 40 hours a week and enjoy your life. I think it is the biggest lie among the entrepreneurs that I have ever heard. The entrepreneurs that I work with, they don't sleep. Because if there is anything for those who wait, that must be what left behind by those who hustle. And where is all this energy comes from. Little money, glory, fame, what are you doing, you are doing that for your love itself, for the challenge, for the thrill of discovery.

How to find what do you love? I don't know, I am not you. But if you don't know what you love (except the money and fame) you are probably thinking of entrepreneurship like a fashion trend, not an achievement in your life. But I never found anyone succeed doing entrepreneur half-hearted. You have to put your heart into this. If you haven't got the answer, perhaps it is not the right time for you to start up yet.

Whatever you are doing. Failure is an option, but fear is not. No innovation in life has been achieved without risk, you have to be willingly to take those risks. Many people hesitate to work on something they aren’t familiar with because they are afraid of the unknown. But just do it. Explore new ideas. Experiment with new things. If you are successful, the reward could be huge. Even if you aren’t, you will still come out better than before.

What does it take to execute your ideas. 

It is said that idea is cheap, what is important is the execution. I do not entirely agree with the statement. But it is true that not all entrepreneurs succeed in implementing their ideas. And it is how you operate the business that makes the difference. Any startups have to deal with issues that I found suitable to be grouped into these 4 groups.

• The Product
• The Team
• Financial Issues
• Legal Issues

I covered pretty much all about the product previously so I won't repeat myself here. But did you know that many startups get acquired or receive invest because of its awesome team rather than the idea? 

I would like to divide a team into two parts: the founders and the members. Founders are one who join the startup from the very first day and own a part of it. Choose a founder as wisely and carefully as choosing your life partner. A good founder is the one who can help you shape up the business and place the product above the relationship with you. That is harsh, but that harshness is necessary for a good product. That's why it is very risky to invite your high-school or college friends to be your co-founders. Do it right, and you gonna have the sweetest time in your life. But do it wrong and you lose a friend for good. Founders in a team also need to possess supportive skills that by working together they bring the harmony to the team. I usually refer to this as the three hats rule: Developer, Designer and Business People. Find your place and look for co-founder that can compensate what you are lack of.

Members are those who got hired to facilitate the business development. There are many sources of talents in Vietnam: universities, enterprise staff that are looking for a new breeze in their career, or right from your competitors. Wherever you are looking for talents, I suggest embracing diversity and welcoming new schools of thought in your team. There was time where 100% staff of Cogini was RMIT. At first, it was fun, we understood and work with each other pretty well. But at some point thing started to get boring because we were too alike. But the situation changed dramatically when we brought in the first non-RMIT member. He was superb. Not only that he fit well in the team, he also compensated what we were lack of, offered us the new school of thought that hadn't been found among RMIT members. Yes, talented team members are great, but how can I find them? It depends on the company's strategy though. Some where in the early state, Cogini looked for its staff with the assistant of mass media. It turned out to be highly unproductive. We received a huge number of CV, spent many hours interviewing but hardly found any outstanding applicants. We then changed the strategy to actively seek for the talent ourselves, with the support of the word of mouth network. It has been quite good so far, the quantity of applicants greatly reduced and the quality hooped up. But Cogini business is software development, we look for genius developers. If you are working on one of those enterprise solution like Java or .Net and need a lot of monkey coders, hand picking might not be efficient.

And a team always requires an environment to develop. And this is crucial, it is the team culture, all its dynamic nature, motivation, inspiration, that sets you apart from others and attract talent. Like a bonsai, team culture need caring from the very first day. I am lucky because I was given the authority to shape up the culture of the company, and from that experiment different methodologies in management. And here is what I have learned: be like water. Like water hitting rock, don't expect immediate effects from your changes or new policy. Embrace what the team is having and slowly yet firmly change it into the direction you want. Once everything is in the right flow, rewarding the team for the good job and maintain the flow, it will help the new comers get into shape quickly. 

A good working environment is also what talented employees are concerned about. Enterprises and well-established companies possess very professional working environment, back up by their strong flow of venue. If you want to provide a better working environment in term of facility, you gonna have a bad time. But that doesn't put you in the disadvantaged position. This is an area where your creativity can shine to make the company unique, unlike enterprises which have multiple layer of policy, regulation and are considerably slow when it comes to changes.

Financial Issue

Every startup needs survives till they receive the first round of investment or make the first sale. In other word, startup founders are on their own till the prototype of the product is formed. 

Unlike many other industries, the financial barrier for hardware and facilities in software development is relatively low. In fact it is too easy to equip a software engineer that almost any coffee shop in this city would do. Founders are not very likely to received salary for the work as they own the business. And with all the amount of adrenaline running in their blood, they can literally live on bread and roses. 

But eventually you need more people to help you accelerate the development speed and soon you will find out that  this entrepreneur game is an expensive one. You need money to pay for these people and pay them generously if you want to keep the good ones. 

Most startups in Vietnam I have been talking to depend on either self-fund or friends and family investment or both at this stage. One more support that is very popular in countries with strong startup screen is Business Incubator program. Typically you will be provided an office with basic infrastructure such as furniture and internet connection. This usually take places in a warehouse or university campus. Besides that, the organizers behind the program are usually high-profile investors who can provide you various help. Last but not least, the chance to work with other hot startups is very compelling on its own already. Soon this model is becoming the next trend in Vietnam startup screen. 

When you finally manage to reach to the next stage, a prototype of the product, you will be able to aim at higher targets: angel investors and venture capitals. It is both a bless and a curse to work with these investors. On one hand, they will be able to help you tremendously, thank to their investment, experience and network. On the other hand, your company might easily become their property. Remember what happened with Steve Jobs in 1985? Got fired from his own company.

Legal Issue

This issue is ignored by a lot of entrepreneurs. Cogini Vietnam had been operating for 8 months by the time it acquired its legal status. I am not the best person around to talk about legal factor in Vietnam economy, but from my point of view, it is only matter when you have grown to a certain size and start to go public. Prior to that, no one even know if you can make it that far or not, so why wasting your time for these paperwork? On the other hand, I acknowledge the importance of a proper legal status, it is just not your duty as a business owner to the government, but also to protect yourself from other competitors.

That's pretty much it. Thank you for the listening. Drop me a line if you find the world of entrepreneurship interesting.