Anphabe’s CEO, one of Vietnam’s rare female tech founders, speaks out

Anphabe is a Vietnamese version of LinkedIn. The largest online network of management professionals in Vietnam at 85,000 registered users, the website also hosts events, a forum, and helps with headhunting for local companies. Anphabe recently received an investment from Recruit Global Incubation Partners. What’s also interesting about this platform is that it’s started by Thanh Nguyen, part of a really small pool of female tech founders in Vietnam.

Entrepreneur, marketer, TV host, mother

Thanh graduated from Hanoi Foreign Trade University in 1997 and became one of very few people to pass the first Management Trainee recruitment programs of Unilever Vietnam for Hanoi’s top fresh graduates. Then she moved to Ho Chi Minh City and worked at Unilever for seven years as a marketer, including three years based in Bangkok to manage three Unilever regional brands in five Southeast Asian countries.

In 2007, she returned to Vietnam and started a corporate-backed venture, Caravat.com, which is Vietnam’s first job portal with networking features, specializing in executive jobs in the $1,000+ per month category. This arrangement between Thanh and Caravat’s mother company Navigos Group, a leading HR service provider in Vietnam, lasted for more than three years before she moved on again to start Anphabe in early 2011.

In addition to Anphabe, she’s also an editor and a host of the Share to Success TV show on FBNC, a domestic finance and economics channel, for the last two years.

Thanh is married and is a mother of two girls. Balancing time and effort for work and personal life is a constant trial for her, but she believes in wholeheartedly loving her family and fulfilling her personal passion, and striking a balance between both of them.

Thanh’s startup and her role

Anphabe is a pioneering agency in Vietnam providing integrated Employer Branding (EB) solutions for big companies, which involves making her clients more attractive to employees. Under Anphabe’s umbrella is Anphabe.com, which also serves as a valuable database and channel for many of the company’s employer branding activities.

The name ‘Anphabe’ is a Vietnamese word for the alphabet. It reflects the company’s philosophy: “Like 26 letters of the alphabet creating a whole world of language, 26 good connections through Anphabe can connect you to the whole world of opportunities.”

So what does she actually do on a day-to-day basis?

Legally, she’s the founder, chairwoman and CEO of Anphabe JSC, but her business card names her the Chief Opportunity Connector. Thanh says the title actually explains who she really is. She also defines her role of CEO as the Chief Energy Officer, which involves encouraging and creating energy for her team to work smarter and achieve better results everyday. She says:

By nature, I’m a true networker who loves connecting people and information and it feels great to see people get something out of my connections. So I initially created Anphabe.com with a big vision of helping millions of professionals in Vietnam to be more successful through connecting them with other professionals and leveraging that to progress in their careers.

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