As the year is coming to a close, we’d like to use this opportunity to take a step back and reflect on our journey so far.
As the year is coming to a close, we’d like to use this opportunity to take a step back and reflect on our journey so far.
Our team has been kept busy as well. Our investment manager, Sohun Bae, spoke about hiring mindsets and best practices for startups in a webinar series (more on this in this volume’s Spotlight section.) We also organized and participated in an array of events and activities to share learnings and build founder-focused communities, including a social for fintech startups and financial institutions, a series of talks and events in HCMC for a group of international investors, and continued training and mentoring for women founders.
“Family” is a commonly used comparison for early-stage founders and organization leaders when referring to their teams. The term is endearing and fosters a sense of closeness that develops from enduring the many trials that early-stage teams face together. On the other hand, this view can also easily set founders and leaders up for behaviors that might lead to failure. In a recent webinar on “Hire right, hire better, hire the best”, AVV Investment Manager Sohun Bae, reiterates an alternative mindset of treating a startup team more like a sports team, an idea made popular by Netflix. Sohun explains that while families are built on the concept of unconditional love, sports teams are organized and created to win championships. This fundamental difference naturally leads to performance-oriented behaviors and decision-making that leads the team to realize its full potential.
On to AVV updates – June and July have been very eventful for the AVV team. We announced our early-stage fund, AVV Alpha, which is focused on investing in diverse founders that are building global startups from Vietnam. We also hosted the SHINE Women in Tech Gala and a range of other founder social activities in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, as well as participated in various external events. AVV is planning more educational and networking events for the ecosystem in Q3 so stay in touch with us.
Funding winter is a global macro event and is already happening across various financial and tech centers of the world including Silicon Valley, India, and Singapore. However, preparing for a slowdown in investments may not be top of mind for Vietnamese entrepreneurs as the country still boasts economic growth and a healthy tech scene with little indication of macroeconomic recession signals being experienced in other parts of the world.
We are excited to share that we have exceeded the $50M target for our flagship early-stage venture capital fund, AVV Alpha. We are actively investing in the next wave of globally iconic tech companies emerging from Vietnam.
In the tech ecosystem, lively deal activities continue in late April and May, including a couple of late-stage fintech deals and various early-stage financings in agritech, EV manufacturing, e-commerce, and robotics (see deal highlights in Vietnam Tech in the News.)
Hiring a great team is essential for building an enduring startup, regardless of sector or market. However, in today’s world of lofty job-seeker expectations and fierce competition for skilled workers, hiring is no easy feat. It is even more difficult for resource-constrained, early-stage startups. This is one of the biggest areas in which founders in our portfolio seek guidance and support.
Increased investments and fierce competition, combined with the innate characteristics of Vietnam’s social commerce market could mean that the next big Vietnamese company will evolve from this space.
