Will the rise of vibe coding bring on Vietnam’s next unicorn?

In the mid-1990s, the internet’s rapid expansion sparked a surge of entrepreneurial activity, with small teams launching startups that would become household names. The launch of the iPhone and App Store in the late 2000s had a comparable effect.

We’re seeing a similar transformation today with the advent of generative AI. The tech enables a new paradigm known as “vibe coding,” which allows developers to translate natural language prompts into functional code, significantly lowering the barriers to software creation.

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While vibe coding is gaining traction globally, its impact is particularly pronounced in Vietnam thanks to the nation’s pool of skilled software engineers. Accessible AI-powered development tools are also empowering solo entrepreneurs and small teams to build sophisticated applications rapidly at low cost.

The rise of these AI-native, one-person startups in the country represents a dramatic shift in how businesses are built. But it also raises a question: Can these lean, fast-moving teams drive the kind of large-scale economic transformation Vietnam needs to escape the middle-income trap and compete globally?

The AI-native, solo startup

We’re still in the early stages of the genAI revolution, with ChatGPT not even three years old. But OpenAI and its peers have put open-source tools at the fingertips of anyone with an internet connection.

For software engineers, these tools are force multipliers.

The investment firm NFX coined the phrase the “three-person unicorn startup,” arguing that in the future, a trio of people will be able to “grow software-centric businesses to US$100+ million in revenue with automated workflows.”

See also: VN startup banks on co-ops to defy agritech skeptics

While we aren’t there yet, it’s not a distant dream. For example, Gamma, the US-based AI presentation startup, has 28 employees while serving around 50 million users. It’s also been profitable for over 15 straight months.

As Grant Lee, Gamma’s CEO, wrote on LinkedIn, The traditional startup playbook is to “raise massive funding, hire hundreds of employees, and worry about profitability ‘later.’” His company, meanwhile, “could fit in a small restaurant.”

‘Vibe coding’ and Vietnam

One example of a vibe coding startup in Vietnam is Byterover, founded by Da Nang-based Duy Anh Nguyen, whose goal, as stated on LinkedIn, is to make “vibe coding accessible.”

Byterover offers a tool that helps AI agents get smarter over time by remembering what they’ve learned from past projects. The company has fewer than five employees and has users across 22 countries.

Others include ChatGPT-powered productivity tool Typing Mind, an AI app built solo by Vietnam-based Tony Dinh that claims to have hit US$170,000 in revenue in April. Entrepreneur Noah Tran, meanwhile, founded ProxyMan on his own, and the firm has around 275,000 monthly users of its debugging tools.

A new era of innovation