Q&A: 500 Startups’ Eddie Thai on the Vietnam tech ecosystem and its ‘secret weapon’

500 Startups Vietnam partners Eddie Thai (L) and Binh Tran. Photo credit: 500 Startups.

Vietnam is one of the best kept secrets in Southeast Asia’s tech entrepreneurship story. In a region full of promising emerging markets, it might be the most promising of all – it boasts a booming digital economy and a rising, tech-savvy middle class with increasingly more money to spend.

According to a report (PDF link) by Vietnam-based mobile app service provider Appota, smartphone penetration in the country skyrocketed in 2016 to 72 percent in cities and 53 percent in rural areas.

Vietnam boasts a booming digital economy and a rising, tech-savvy middle class.

Mobile is the country’s preferred way of accessing digital services, especially among the 18-49 demographic. According to Emarketer, 85 percent of those users use their phone to access the web.

The country has been catching the eye of international investors. Last year, Goldman Sachs went in on a US$28 million funding round into Vietnamese ewallet and payments startup Momo.

US-headquartered venture capital firm and incubator 500 Startups doubled down on Vietnam in 2015. A new fund for the country was announced shortly thereafter, led by startup advisor Eddie Thai and Binh Tran, co-founder of US social influence ranking startup Klout.

Thai joined 500 Startups after months of talks about collaborating in Vietnam. He described his hiring process as mirroring the VC’s approach to assessing startups during our AMA in 2015.

“Forget guessing how the person will work and what she/he will get done based on a one-page interview and few hours of conversation,” he said at the time. “Observe real activity to see how the candidate can ‘get shit done’ without being an asshole.”

Right after graduating from college in 2007, Thai consulted on product and business cases for fintech startup Nodal Exchange. He then spent some years working in strategy and finance for larger corporations but always kept a foot in the tech startup space to learn more about it. This included an internship at VC DFJ VinaCapital and an advisory role at the Harvard Innovation Lab. He switched to Vietnam’s startup scene full-time in 2014.

Thai recently sat down in Ho Chi Minh City with Jide Adebayo, strategist at US-headquartered startup builder Rokk3r Labs, to talk about the opportunities and challenges in the Vietnam ecosystem. This is a condensed and edited version of that interview.

See: We’re Binh and Eddie, Venture Partners of 500 Startups. Ask us Anything!

Give us a few details about your background, your passion, your story here in Vietnam.

My connection with Vietnam goes back to my roots. My parents were born in Vietnam, grew up here and left in the 70s. So, while I was born in Massachusetts and grew up in Florida, I’ve always kept an eye on Vietnam as well. I’ve been visiting here since 2001, when I was in high school.