From debt to exit, and back to Vietnam.

Francois Le Nguyen

0:00I owed $20,000 at one point as a 17-year-old. It's a lot of money and my parents are well off enough that doesn't really hurt them. But to my mom and asking for help at that time, it might as well have been like $10 million. It's like such a such a failure. Like how can you do this? Like we worked all the way through this and did all this to give you like the red carpet and how could you do this to us? I try to be kind. I try to learn and I try to do my best. And as long as I'm doing those three things, like genuinely doing those three things, then I cannot be unsuccessful.

Quang Do

0:30Right, Frankie? Yeah. We've been connected since 2020. You said 2020. You did not reply to me back then.

Francois Le Nguyen

0:37No, no, I ghosted you for a few years. And then you posted a VC list. I was like, "Oh, like that's you know, clickbait, but let me let me buy into it." And now we're here.

Quang Do

0:462025, 5 years later, you are in Vietnam. Welcome to Saigon. Welcome back. And I've you know I've I've known you for a little bit. Yeah. But for those who don't know you, how would you introduce yourself?

Francois Le Nguyen

0:59Yeah. So to most people I'm François or Frankie. I spent a decade over the last 10 years as my career as a founder, as an investor, as a product manager. And I've lived in Montreal, Toronto, Singapore, and now Vietnam as of last week. So that's my work side. My personal side. So those who are close to me and my family will know me as Hua. I'm a child of two immigrants who left Vietnam in the 70s. So my dad left as a student and my mom left as a refugee in 75. And so they've had to you know rebuild their lives from scratch. And I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to come back to their homeland and, you know, rediscover what Vietnam is, but also discover a Vietnam for me cuz the Vietnam that I was told in my upbringing, the stories that were brought up were of a different context. And so I'm excited to be a part of this, you know, changing growing Vietnam.

Quang Do

1:58Wonderful. How that grow story. Walk us quickly through some major milestones of your life, Canada and all Vietnam. What was.

Francois Le Nguyen

2:05Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, very Canadian upbringing. I think at home, I had a very tiger Asian parent kind of life. My parents, you know, and it was a bit difficult because my dad was also a dentist and so the bar was set quite high already. And so, you know, grew up with like the context of you have to be a dentist, doctor, engineer, lawyer, you know, the professional practices. Whereas at school, I had really great teachers who made me feel invincible, made me feel like anything was possible. You know, if I want to be an astronaut, go be an astronaut. And so I live with like a very, I guess, polarizing value set and I lived between worlds quite a bit. And so yeah, most of my life was in Montreal and I always knew that I wanted eventually to go abroad. My university had the opportunity to do an exchange and I picked Singapore and US so that I can be as far away from Canada as possible but also at a good school and close enough to Vietnam that I can go back and forth and so that was the start of my Asia journey. I did 6 months there. Came back I mean I could do the whole work thing but did two years of work in Canada right out of school. Then had the opportunity to come back to Singapore in 2016 and from 2016 2020 2020 was in Singapore and had really formative years and of my career and can dig into that.

3:26Then 2020 I had the opportunity to go back to Canada to launch an office for a venture fund I was working for at the time. Spent four years there. But I always knew I wanted to be back in Vietnam. And so very happy to be back now.

Quang Do

3:41Yeah, it's a lot to unpack. Would love to dive deeper, but let's start all the way from the beginning a little bit. Yeah. You know, what was it like growing up in Canada as a young Vietnamese [unclear]?

Francois Le Nguyen

3:51Yeah, like I mentioned, like very different set of values and I think I had to figure out for myself where I belonged. You know, I speak French, English, and Vietnamese. And so there's cultural identities that are tied to each of those groups. But I grew up with the opportunity to like really experiment. I, so I started my first company as a teenager. I built computers for other people, gaming PCs. So I literally buy parts, components, and set them up and sell them to my friends in school. And eventually the high school bought them, and I built like the entire lab. And so my life was really split between like trying new things and trying to figure out my identity and try to be different, but also try to make my parents happy and fulfill all the duties of like an Asian kid and be, you know, have good grades, do sports, be a good person. So it was in between both worlds quite a bit when I was growing up.

Quang Do

4:43Yeah. Yeah. Tell us more about that. Like which direction did your parents push you? And.

Francois Le Nguyen

4:48My parents pushed me to like you know do all the activities, go swimming, do karate, be a scout, play chess, play tennis, do everything and be as you know wide and generalist as possible, get good grades, be a good person, but they never pushed me to maybe be different. So they wanted a safe path for me. They wanted one that created financial security, wanted to, you know, make it so that I had, you know, every opportunity to have a successful life. Because they worked so hard to create the conditions for that and they really worked you know from zero to get me there.

Quang Do

5:23And where do you think the entrepreneurialism.

Francois Le Nguyen

5:27Where I think I think that came from wanting to stand out. I think so my relationship with being Vietnamese is a bit difficult. I think growing up in Canada I to be honest in my teenage years I wanted to run away from it. I wanted to consider myself Canadian and like the like a really core memory for me and now looking back I'm quite embarrassed about is so my mom would make me lunches for high school and I she used to make Vietnamese food and she's like a my grandparents own a restaurant so the food is terrific but I asked for like a super bland sandwich with like lettuce tomatoes and bacon like other kids like other kids you know and cuz I didn't want the food to smell or I didn't want to call attention to me and now looking back it's like what what an idiot you know like you had like gourmet food every single day and you choose like this literal white bread like and so I was trying to be different. I was trying to hang out with non-Viet people. I hung out with more Italian people because I went to a Jesuit Catholic school. And so I think the drive to become an entrepreneur just kind of came out of wanting to be different and not wanting to be put into a box. So that started like with you know selling computers to other people but then very quickly became like a studio agency where like I would go to businesses like restaurants and try to make a website for them but I didn't know how to make a website. So I literally hired people from the Philippines, Romania.

6:44To like build websites and then sell them out of markup. I built a dating website before Tinder occurred. I built a music streaming website before Spotify was around. Some of them had success. I built a web hosting company. You know how like if you have a website and you want to host it like Squarespace, like pre Squarespace, got to like $50,000 in revenue, but I wasn't even an adult at that time. So, I like made like that was why at school while in school. Yeah. Yeah. I literally had like this is going to date me, but I had like a mobile Windows thing that I would like sneak in my class. There was Wi-Fi and like I would answer support messages like while in math class in high school. And so I think I was trying to be different not to make money but just so that I I don't know like would prove to my parents that like I could be successful without following their path you know and the shadow was quite large cuz my dad is a dentist both my parents went to university my mom's an accountant so very upper middle class upbringing and so there was a large gap to fill and a large shadow to fill and so there was a there was a chase but then I it also epically failed so like in the building a businesses. I made a lot of money, but also made a lot of mistakes at a certain point. I haven't talked about this much publicly. But I owed $20,000 at one point as a 17-year-old.

8:04Which is like a [expletive] ton of money. Sorry, I don't know if I can swear. It's a lot of money. And my parents are well enough to like well off enough that doesn't really hurt them, but to my mom and asking for help at that time, like it might as well have been like $10 million. It's like such a such a failure. Like of like how can you do this? Like we worked all the way through this and did all this to give you like the red carpet and how can you do this to us and it was very victim and very traumatic in my life. So like after so like at so like quite rebellious between ages like 12 to 17 but at age 17 I think I had to clean up and I think from then on went a more traditional path kind of stopped building companies. I did still o over the side until age 19. But you know, was going to go and out and be a doctor. Couldn't become a doctor. So, my grades weren't good enough, but I had grades that are high enough for dentistry, but then I worked at my dad's office for a day and hated it. So, I was like, "Hell no, I'm not going to do that."

Quang Do

9:10Was the goal?

Francois Le Nguyen

9:11No, the goal was to like have a thing that my parents would be proud of. Like, that's the honest truth. And also like I tried the other thing and I failed so miserably that I'm like oh like it's traumatic. I'm not going to like I tried I failed like let's move on from it. Right. So doctor dentist I hated dentistry just from like being there for a day. I was like there's no way I'm going to do this rest of my life. I was good at my grades were high enough to get into computer science. So I decided to do computer science at Université de Montréal which is one of the top CS schools in Montreal. I did that for 3 months, hated it, dropped out. Hated it as well. And so like my parents probably loved me at that point. Like no university degree. I actually forgot to officially drop out. So my GPA was actually zero for that particular grade for that semester, which is hilarious. Whereas I'd end up going back to university and like my so I joke that my average then was two because I had a GPA of four and one of zero. So, computer science didn't work out. And then throughout, you know, my high school, experience, I knew I was always energized by business, so I decided to go to business school. And that was where things kind of blossom for me. I loved it. I got involved outside of school. And then I organized.

Quang Do

10:28Was this Canada as well?

Francois Le Nguyen

10:29Canada. Yeah. Yeah. So, I organized case competitions. That's my first glimpse of like managing a budget. I raised $150,000 for a competition like myself and through that one of the sponsors liked the way I interacted with them as stakeholders and they blindly I mean I interviewed but they gave me a job as an associate product manager from that role. I had no idea what product management was like going into the interview was like what does a product manager do like no idea. And so that's what started my career in tech in Canada. So I joined Lightspeed at the time very small 100 people but in the two years I was there grew to like 500 ended up raising $300 million like super hyper scale point of sale software. So whenever you go into a retail shop and you tap your card to check out they do the point of sale for brick and mortar so physical stores in Canada and US to start but then all over the world. So that was my start into product into tech. Yeah.

Quang Do

11:24Before we dive into your career, a bit about being Vietnamese, growing up Vietnamese. Yeah. What was your relationship to Vietnam, Vietnamese people? Yeah. Growing up in Canada, whether other families, did you grow up amongst other kids?

Francois Le Nguyen

11:39Yeah. So the Canadian diaspora is not very large, especially not in Quebec. And so I didn't have much interaction with other Vietnamese people besides my family. But my family was very large. So like my dad had 11 brothers and sisters, my mom had nine. And so we had a very large family. So everything was around family. Yeah. Yeah. And my mom did a good job of really creating the habits of spending time with family. So every weekend we would go to see both Nội and Ngoại. And she made me go to Vietnamese school every single week which I at the time hated. And she was like one of the big volunteers so she was like don't make me look bad. But like every class I was in I was like the bottom of the class and like I just did enough to like pass. I remember like trying to negotiate with teachers of like can I go volunteer? Can I wash dishes? Can I do whatever I needed to do to pass the next class so that I could just but like I was like there were kids that were way better than me. But my identity was really like well the rebellious I told you about but my identity with Vietnamese culture was very much at home only outside in the school outside with friends. I was like by the way I dressed you thought I was like Italian or like by or Canadian or some definitely not Vietnamese, you know. And I was like super like clear to want to have like a not an accent.

12:57It was it was a polarizing experience for me. Even though deep inside I knew there were parts of me that were like uniquely and like very Vietnamese, but they didn't shine until like much later in life or didn't really get exposed until I moved to Singapore until I started seeing like culturally, you know, like okay like I belong to this type of thing like I'm not I'm not just Canadian. I'm not just you know North American. Yeah, so a very polarizing but I think you know led me to become who I am today because I'm able to see both sides of.

Quang Do

13:31And how would you describe your relationship with your parents and how has that evolved?

Francois Le Nguyen

13:36I think I mean they did very well in life and they offered me every single thing I ever wanted or needed. And so it was very much like they gave me everything and I had to be grateful and I had to be thankful but it was out of duty. So like a lot of the things that I did was out of duty. And you know that like I'm pretty big into tennis and at one point I was ranked in Canada and but I realized like I did that to fulfill a dream of my dad because he couldn't be a tennis player or a pro because he didn't have the means or the you know and so a lot of the things I did in life were for my parents and even now subconsciously like still doing for my parents and but they both spoke like very good English and French and so I was able to communicate with them but I think there was a good period of like 10 to 20 where like I was very rebellious and like did not have a great relationship with them and since moving to Asia and then coming back and now realizing like oh that's why they are the way they are or that's why this cultural thing or trauma changed their worldview on this and being able to relate and empathize with it are my relationship since coming back from Asia is fundamentally different and one of the things now I'm trying to do is really understand that relationship more deeply like one of the experiments I did over the last few months is as my parents were retiring from their dental practice. I recorded like a documentary of like dozens of hours of them interacting with their patients, the community to try to get to understand them better cuz I didn't really engage with that and I didn't really you know like look up to them.

15:05I felt like I just everything was just out of duty. But now looking back and seeing what they've gone through and like hearing the stories of adversity and everything that they've had to like push through in order to get to me like to where they are and then hence me where I am today makes me like oh like I was super entitled and ungrateful as a kid. And like my mom my mom like you know we got I got married recently and she jokes about it. But she's and we got married in Vietnam. And so, I think there's very much like a an integration element to what I'm doing now of like stop trying to push away a huge part of who you are and a huge part of what makes you special and try to make it whole and not hide away from it. So my relationship has changed quite a bit with my parents. Even like last year before my dad retired him and I went on the vacation one-on-one for the first time two weeks which is very special.

Quang Do

15:56Where did you go?

Francois Le Nguyen

15:58Cancun Mexico. But I also recorded that you know and I asked them questions that I would have never asked them before. It's like how did you meet mom or like were there other people or like what was your relationship with your parents or your brothers? And like I literally recorded and I have like a whole Notion doc on it. And as you start asking those questions, you start seeing patterns and you start seeing like, oh, that's why he's the way he is. You know, and that like I'll give you like an example like my dad has never drank never drank alcohol ever in his life or if he did like just a sip, never wanted to get drunk. I always thought it was like strange. And then as I unpacked his life story, I found out that the reason he does that is that when he was a kid, he got hit by a drunk driver on a motorbike in Vietnam. And was in a coma for a month. And so, that had repercussions in his memory and his working capacity, but also his attitude towards alcohol is like very negative, right? And so, like, I knew the story, but I didn't know the intricacies of the story. And then I wasn't able to tie it back to why he doesn't want to drink alcohol. I just assumed that like back in the day, his story was always like I lost like 15% of my working capacity in my memory. That's why I was never to be able to become a doctor and I had to become a dentist because I couldn't handle the workload. That that's a narrative that was just put all the time.

17:16And so having the space and opportunity to ask these questions and my dad speaks French and Viet and not English as well. So I spoke primarily to him in Viet and French and that was a really nice bonding experience even if it was like in Mexico. It had nothing had nothing to do with the location just the time.

Quang Do

17:34Yeah. You know, it's actually very common for many of us, and I say us in terms of overseas Vietnamese, to build stronger relationships later in life. And I think it's cultural as well, just because the culture that we have doesn't encourage open communication between ages and generations. And so, we grow up very functionally speaking to our parents actually. It's the same for me. And it's like, you know, how was school? Did you eat very surface level and all of these impact questions? Yeah. What was it like for you dad to grow up and you know how was your relation with your parents' mom some of us don't even ask it ever and I think that that's one of the projects you are embarking on a side project to have better converge you know more of us to have those conversations now right before you never have them.

Francois Le Nguyen

18:22And I really think like one of the like you asked me to prepare like one of the key messages that I wanted to share I think one of the key ones it it'll thread itself throughout but like I really believe that the quality of your life and I think you'll agree with this is that the quality of your life is based on the quality of your relationships. Pretty straightforward. Quality of your relationships are based by the quality of your conversations. And so if your quality of conversation is poor then it's very hard for your you know relationship to be strong. Yeah. And so having conversation even if you have the same language but being able to ask it in the right way in the right space in the right context means everything. Like having like just as a very concrete example like talking to your parents about a deep topic while you're at your family home is very difficult because you're in a dynamic of like I'm a child you're a parent. If all you do is like go out and go for a walk or go to a coffee shop and you change the physical environment, you change the dynamic. They're more open. They don't they don't physically embody like the roles anymore and they're able to speak more openly. And so having those conversations before it's too late I think is like a really important thing. I lost both all my grandparents and already and then I was very fortunate. One of the main reasons for moving back to Canada was spending time with my grandfather before he passed away and I was so thankful to have some time with him. But I my level of Vietnamese is not good enough to have a good conversation with him.

19:38And so I have these voice memos like literally like dozens and dozens of voice memos of me talking asking like the stupidest questions in Vietnamese and then having him respond and me feeling like I don't know how to like continue this conversation, you know? And then we just talk about like the usual topics of the day. And that feeling of like [expletive] like I don't have it. That pain point is like something I wish I was able to solve and I'm trying to solve now through tech, but also just through like leveling up my Vietnamese.

Quang Do

20:08One thing I do is because I live far away and we both live far away from our parents now is just to be very deliberate. Yeah. With the time we travel. Yeah. Because it's very rare now to meet. I meet my parents maybe three or four times a year max and for maybe one or two weeks in a row. And it's so easy to get into a passive state of just being next to each other. Yeah. And just talking and having like day-to-day conversations where I think it just helps to switch on more deliberate mode of asking, right? And saying, "Okay, we're now waiting for food at the restaurants. Let's just push out or try this question, right? And dig a bit deeper into, you know, your life. Yeah. And I feel that requires a switch in mindset, right? Because it's so easy to default to not doing it. Yeah. And then it's at some point too late. We've never found we've built a connection because our parents most often won't do it, you know, because they also default to what it's like between kids and parents, right? So, we are now mature enough, I think, and deliberate enough to acknowledge the shortness of life, right? And actually just talking to them like we do with friends, right? Which feels uncommon because they are our Asian parents, right? And so there's this natural distance. So just a few thoughts.

Francois Le Nguyen

21:25No, I agree. And I think like being deliberate can be as simple as like recording something. I know I know like it's a bit sketch sometimes if you're but you have to ask for permission, but the act of recording know like you know that like oh I'm actively trying to have this conversation with you. And so I think it is a lot about being deliberate and making space for it.

Quang Do

21:45I love where this conversation went. Let's talk about you again career. How sure did you go from Canada to Asia?

Francois Le Nguyen

21:53So exchange Singapore and US did 6 months there fell in love with it. Met my wife at NUS at UTown, the campus.

Quang Do

22:03Why did you fall in love with it?

Francois Le Nguyen

22:05Asia. Okay. Yeah. The pace of change and Canada is slow.

Quang Do

22:10I heard it's slow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean yeah Germany is similar but yeah.

Francois Le Nguyen

22:16Pace of change of course but then I think it was truly like discovering parts of myself that were Asian. Like I had pushed out so much of my Asianness that like I really like finally felt like my ability to thrive came out. Whereas I think in Canada I was trying to like overcompensate and try to be more Canadian or more American cuz I worked quite a quite a bit with American teams. So you're changing yourself which which is important. But if you change yourself to a level where like you don't recognize yourself I don't think I got there but then it feels misaligned. So you want to you know like what like it's so easy to say like work on your weaknesses and change. But I think in life like that's not the point. The point is to work on your strengths and to really double down on the stuff that you're amazing at and what you're meant to do and what feels energizing and flowy to you.

Quang Do

23:05And for context quickly, how old were you at time of Singapore?

Francois Le Nguyen

23:09Singapore was 2012. So I was 22.

Quang Do

23:1222. Yeah. And you spent two years there.

Francois Le Nguyen

23:14I spent No, I spent six months and then I came back in 2016. 20 late 2015. So moved at 25 and then spent late 20s in Singapore and then moved back to Canada afterwards.

Quang Do

23:30Tell us about your time in Singapore back and then you know how did that basically shape.

Francois Le Nguyen

23:36Super formative right? So like I moved over as a product manager in 2016. So 2014 as a product manager in North America is already early. Like I know product management stems from the 1990s but it wasn't really a career path for a while. So 2016 product management is quite early in Singapore. So I got to build not just my career but a community and people around like I ended up teaching at General Assembly to thousands of students.

Quang Do

23:59Okay. What was your main job your main product manager?

Francois Le Nguyen

24:02So I was a product manager at TradeGecko which does inventory management for wholesalers. So if you think of like I don't know a restaurant that needs to order beer from their supplier, the inventory management systems that need to be synced, that's what TradeGecko did.

Quang Do

24:18Okay. Is it an American company?

Francois Le Nguyen

24:20No. Started by Kiwi brothers in Singapore. And so what I liked about it was that it was super diverse. So it was in Singapore, but the team that I was working on had like a Ukrainian, a Russian, Indian, Chinese, Malay, like like Vietnamese, like all super diverse. Super diverse. Yeah. And Singapore is very good for that. If you work for a multinational company that enters, it's very likely that you work with like four, five, six different cultures. And a lot of the and Singapore is not an area where like you know how the states is like they force you to work in an American way. Singapore is not like that. It's kind of like a mosaic where like you can yeah there's a certain way of working but you can bring yourself to it and you adapt and you it's more collective as opposed to like a singular like this is how we work.

Quang Do

25:02And how long did you stay there and what was next?

Francois Le Nguyen

25:04So I did that for about two years and then I switched I had a quarter life crisis I like to call it which is like where I felt like okay I've done like four years in inventory management is this really what I want to do with my life I had read like Simon Sinek's Start with Why and like this my why is not strong right now and going back to my past/trauma of wanting to become a doctor I was like maybe I can work in healthcare and so I went out to find a healthcare company to join and I joined one that helped people manage their diabetes and chronic disease which is very mission-oriented but I think when I went into it I had like rose tinted glasses and didn't do my proper due diligence and just joined a team based on mission as opposed to like holistically everything else so I joined at a bad time they failed to raise money and then I went like 4 months without a paycheck in Singapore you can imagine what that's like half my team was fired and like a super like and funny enough like the team ended up the company survived this is Holmusk the company has now raised over 100 million and is thriving now. So it's not that you know the company failed. It's just I joined as at a terrible time. I didn't do my due diligence. But thankfully that experience led me to Entrepreneur First. They're a VC based out of London and they were building out their Singapore program and they wanted me to join as a talent like a co-founder. No, not as a co-founder for a founder in the cohort.

26:24But as I mentioned, I had four months of no income and like scarcity mindset was creeping in, not the time to build a company. And so I pivoted the conversation to like can I join the team instead like the team that runs the accelerator. And that started probably the best job of my life. Four years at EF where I quickly rose the ranks, became the general manager in Singapore and then eventually the general manager to launch the office in Canada. So I went from product in Canada, product in Singapore, product again but very short stint and then VC so venture in Singapore and I mean founder is after that but that's after yeah.

Quang Do

27:04And this was 5 years you have four years all in four years all in Singapore but you ran the.

Francois Le Nguyen

27:09No so like three years in Singapore and then one year flying back and forth and launching in Canada and then by the time you know four years of anything is a long time but four years in venture you get to see quite a bit and I felt like I was plateauing I wasn't learning very much but then I was also itching to like build my own company because I think the experience of being at EF made me realize that like founders are not so different from regular people just take more risk and they they're addicted to risk and to learning and that's why they do it but they're not any smarter than you or anything or at least I thought.

Quang Do

27:50Can you quickly talk through EF as a accelerator what they do what's the unique positioning amongst accelerators.

Francois Le Nguyen

27:57And so what they and then they changed since then just to be clear but I can talk about the time I was there so what Entrepreneur First did differently is instead of you pitching a VC with an idea and a team already you come into the program and they recruit you to join the program without an idea without a co-founder basically nothing like just your life profile just your life experience and your trajectory in life.

Quang Do

28:19So what I heard is they just put a McKinsey consultant with a PhD technical person.

Francois Le Nguyen

28:25I mean there I mean part of the cohort will definitely fit those criteria but they had personas right so they had like and they don't use this anymore but they used to have like tech person tech edge persona which is someone with a PhD or postdoc in a very specific field that has research that they can commercialize but they don't know how to sell so you need I mean ideally someone that's not McKinsey someone that is from the domain maybe you know if they worked in energy they worked you know as a director or like a very high-flying like early stage career person And then that person has the connections, the resources, the knowhow, the ability to sell. And then you pair them up. And the goal is basically to build companies where only through the two of them meeting could this company be built. It could not be built by either of them alone. And then but you don't know what that is until like you really go deep into each other's backgrounds. And the goal is to kind of like Love Island like the TV show like form break form break form break until you find the right match. And that process was chaotic but I loved it. As someone who is from the sidelines, seeing something get created from nothing and literally creating like billion dollar valuation companies from like someone I sourced is like a really not while I was there but became over time was like a really cool feeling. And honestly the best job I've ever had.

Quang Do

29:40What was what was your role in all of this?

Francois Le Nguyen

29:43So I started as a program manager. So I ran the team that had coaches, talent recruitment. So I ran the program but I wasn't leading all the teams. And then I got promoted to program lead. Then I got promoted to general manager running the entire office. So they had six offices. Now they only have three. So I ran the Singapore and I ran the Toronto office. So a lot of recruitment, a lot of fundraising, a lot of company building. And just like the chaos of running an like an in-person experience. Like you've run events, so you kind of know like it's intense, right? It's not it's not online. Like you're dealing with all the chaos of like people coming together and all the [expletive] shows that can happen through that.

Quang Do

30:22And seeing so many founders both technical nontechnical evaluating them spending time with them helping them you know what things did you notice what stuck with you.

Francois Le Nguyen

30:31Yeah so the first is what I shared like they're not that different they're they just took a risk that you didn't take and they're continuing to take risk right and that not everyone's made for that but if you're a person that like enjoys to like break things or challenge and really get out of your comfort zone all the time. Like that's probably a signal and you're probably wasting your talent in a company where you're just a cog in the wheel, right? Like if you have that inkling, if you're not, like if you're like, I love exactly doing exactly the same thing and like I love adding value and I'm good at it, probably not the good fit for you. So like that's one. Two is the importance of co-founder relationships. Something that I'm very loud about now and how co-founding relationships have a societal impact. Like if you think of like the founders of companies like Stripe, Google, their relationship between each other sets the tone for the culture for the company both in what is good and what is bad and it's kind of like a family where like people mimic parents behavior that happens in companies. So like that's super important. And the third is VC is not for everyone. So counter my first point is that thinking as a VC is very portfolio-minded. You take a 100 bets and then you expect that like a handful return the fund. Meaning they make so much money and so much create so much value that they pay for all of your investments times three. Which means that as a VC you make bets knowing that 95% of companies will fail at the founders's expense not at yours right you just put in money and so that means that like a VC will think in 10-year time frames but don't they don't really care about the day-to-day and that misalignment is crucial for people who are thinking of building companies and you're bootstrapping your company that's probably a reason why not every company should be venture I think most companies should not raise venture capital Yeah, those are the main lessons.

32:14There's a lot of others though.

Quang Do

32:20Just quickly on that first point with risk seeking mindset and proclivity. Do you think based on your people human experience? Is this common amongst say 10 people how many would you see that have that and who would be better doing corporate?

Francois Le Nguyen

32:39I don't have a number but I do think it's a lower number. It's not the majority. But I do think a signal beyond that is like if you're addicted to creating versus consuming. So like it's very easy to just like doom scroll LinkedIn doom scroll and like but if you get addicted to shipping even if it's like side projects or if it's like creating a hobby or whatever but I don't think it's a majority of people like I think people who should be creating companies and not VC but just creating companies is probably like a like a third of the population or less like not majority. Yeah. I think a lot of people are the opposite. You know, like Kim Scott talks about like superstars versus rock stars. There's I think majority of people if they were to reach their ceiling, it's rock stars, which is you do a job, you specialize, you I mean with AI and you might not be able to just spe specialize, but you do a job very well and you're very good at and you're known for it and you continue and you grow a brand around that and you're very successful in life, you probably make more money than 90% of entrepreneurs anyways. Yeah. That I think is a lot more probably a safe and probably the right path for most people. But if you get bored after like six months and you're constantly itching and you're okay with the risk and you're in a life conse context where you can take that risk, I think it's worth doing because if you don't, you're going to regret it. Like you're going to feel one day you'll be like, "Shit, like I should have tried."

Quang Do

33:58One question I have, you know, it's and you don't need to have an answer, but it's something I reflect on. I'm not sure if this is nature or nurture, right? Is this something you can actually build a skill on of seeking out more risk, diving more into uncertain, ambiguity, and I feel just really like you said, majority of people maybe habitually don't do it. Yeah. And therefore think Yeah. They're not having what it takes to ship. Yeah. But because they also don't deliberately try. So I'm not sure. This is something just.

Francois Le Nguyen

34:33I think it's both. I think it's some entrepreneurs you just it's their fire in their eyes and they're just unstoppable. Right. Yeah. There there's some entrepreneurs that come from the middle of nowhere have no one around them that's like this and they will just outperform out work out and they're just born that way. But I don't think that's the majority. I think the majority of people who become entrepreneurs or do it through nurture where they're surrounded by other people who do it. They're like, "Oh, if they can do it, I can do it, too." And if they have a good surrounding of people and people that are in their corner that support them and encourage them, then that becomes a thing. So, like the whole like you're the best of like the five the average of the five peers around you, that I think matters more than nature. But there's definitely people that have like zero nurture and they're just like they're you know like I don't know if you watch the Pixar movie soul like where you know like some souls are just like they just came on this road to like trailblazers and like no one can stop them like has nothing to do with how they were brought up. Their parents were nowhere near this. You can't really explain nurture for that. But I think you can nurture it and you should nurture it for the person that has that proclivity or just wants to right. But then there's also like, you know, families that have like full entrepreneurs and like the kid grows up thinking like, especially next-gen people, they're like, "Oh, I should become a company." They should not. Like they're terrible at it, you know. So, you know, it's not some people shouldn't.

Quang Do

35:48Maybe it's connected to and this is what I heard from a few other podcasts is if you went through struggle, right? Yeah. You know, lack of resources, lack of abundance, you know, and have a bit of this rebel outsider personality. And I think I heard this from a Sequoia partner actually. Yeah. That will often nurture this y, you know, this craziness and this drive to actually outproof people to actually succeed, right? When whereas if you come from a deeply entrepreneur family that has been successful, Yeah. No, why would you?

Francois Le Nguyen

36:27But then but then it's yeah, it's a different like I need to live up to the trauma is and their struggle is more internal into the family and like I need to live up to this standard and whatnot. But I think I mean this is not a good thing but I think a lot of founders become founders because of and I count myself included so I'm not above this is spite. You were told at some point that you were not good enough. You were told by some point no you're not getting that promotion or you're not going to lead this next thing and you're like well [expletive] you. Like I'm going to do it, you know, like sorry for smiling, but like it's a it's this chip on the shoulder. I think in the early stage of your career I mean you kind of need it. But if you rely on that source of motivation for the rest of your life, you're going to live a very challenging life and one where like it's very toxic. And so I'm at that stage where like I don't want to be motivated by that anymore. I don't care that someone rejected me. Like that's okay. Like that's their own world, their opinion. I want to do things for my own purpose, for my own like source of motivation, which is very different.

Quang Do

37:29I relate to this a lot actually because I think as even as younger males, you playing sports, it's just a competitive spirit that we build up and you said you grew up with Italians. I grew up with a lot of German immigrants, which are usually Eastern Europe, which is a different culture than the Asian culture. It's a bit more macho. It's a bit more strong. Yeah, it's a bit more different kind of masculine. Yeah. And it's very high ego as well in some contexts. And so I will admit that I think a lot of what has driven me. Yeah. Comes also from that to just prove.

Francois Le Nguyen

38:06And it served you right. So I think this is the point where like you're not trying to turn that off. I think it's just around changing the Yeah. It's very deeply human. Chimpanzees like alpha chimpanzees are not the strongest. It's the one that socialize the most and are liked by the most people, right?

Quang Do

38:22But often that Yeah, exactly. It changes as we mature and actually perhaps reach a certain level, right? Where also we think more in context and we get kids and we have family and we also slow down with we reflect on life. Yeah. But we shift into a more impact Yeah. Focused impact life and mode of building. Yeah. Yeah.

Francois Le Nguyen

38:43I I've noticed from cuz well I mean I didn't talk about my company yet but like I I've spoken to a lot of people who have who are repeat founders and the ones that are not doing it out of trauma like wanting to like prove their last company was just they're not a one hit wonder or whatever like it's like the same spite machine. The ones who don't subscribe to that are now doing it from like playfulness like a curiosity a flow of like playing a game basically. And it's just to like tap into the energy and to feel like to feel stimulated and that you're growing and changing, but not to prove anyone else, just to prove yourself like or just to do it because it feels good. Like it's that sounds woo-woo, you know, like that sounds like but it is what it is, I think.

Quang Do

39:26But it is what it is. It's when you verbalize it, it doesn't hit you as much as you go through it. Yeah. Yeah. But it's actually deeply profound because I feel that's the ultimate way of actually living life and building a business where being curious you move from you know caring about other people external validation to actually doing it for the sake of love for it right and perhaps some people don't reach that stage but you should be mindful to get there. Yeah. And once you reach that point, I feel I I'm going in the right direction. It's actually super fulfilling because now you're very just focused on the progress that you make, right? And the impact that you can drive. And it that sounds cliche, right?

Francois Le Nguyen

40:05It does. But I think it needs to be I think it also needs to be balanced cuz like to say that like I don't give a [expletive] about what people think is that's actually [expletive] I do care about what people think, but I care about a very selective amount of people. I don't care about the millions of people of LinkedIn that interact with me, even though I post as if I do. I care about a handful of people that I look up to, that I want to emulate, that I want to learn from, that and what they care about and what they give feedback on me on. I'm like, yeah, like I'm listening all ears, you know, cuz like I don't think it should be like my own ego and just expands into like the world without any checks, you know, like you do want to have people that are in your corner that are able to give you that feedback that challenge you, that tell you like you're doing something stupid right now. And like having that check is super important, but you need to be so selective of who because like who you let into that changes the course of your life. So they talk about like personal board of directors, whatever. There's so many buzz buzzwords out there, but like just people who you look up to that you want to become or one part of them that you want to become. Try to find, you know, a group of those.

Quang Do

41:02Yeah, I love that. And I want to dive into your personal founder story.

Francois Le Nguyen

41:07Just quickly to wrap up the VC stuff. So yeah so VC like in a nutshell got promoted a bunch of times invested in 50 companies led the investment in 50 companies those companies are now worth over 700 million the ones I was I was directly like interacting with and then since then also got into angel investing we can talk about that later but after VC 4 years I felt like I wanted to bet on myself again I think I gathered like the confidence to like overcome the trauma of like paying back my mom 20 I paid her back by the way. Even though she still hangs it over my head today. And then I also met my co-founder Jake. And that I think unlocks a lot like meeting the right person you want to build with also unlocks something. And then the third is just regret randomization like knowing that like okay like I don't have a kid yet. I can take certain levels of risks. And I can have though I do have regrets on how I went about it and we could dive into that. But starting a company was yeah, based on like plateauing, meeting the right person and not wanting to. And so I started.

Quang Do

42:15Okay, here's a personal question. Okay. When you saw all of these founders at EF, did you think to yourself, I also have what it takes to be that or did you like.

Francois Le Nguyen

42:25They're like I literally thought like they're literally not smarter than me and like they created like they just raised $50 million. What the [expletive] am I doing? Like and it was also like kind of like this like impostor or not imposter like I was telling people like you should quit your job like that's the most ambitious thing you can do with your life and then I sat back like at my job and then like look in the mirror I'm like aren't I ambitious like wait wait there's a misalignment here you know like and so it was kind of like eventually like coming to terms of like I'm it's an amazing job but still a job you know and I could always go back to it that's That's the element of like de-risking.

Quang Do

43:04Okay. Before we go into founder story, yeah, which or what lessons did you carry from VC into the founder journey?

Francois Le Nguyen

43:13Yeah. VCs love momentum. So like I've seen some deals come together meaning someone get invested in less than 24 hours. It's just because they create the right circumstance for momentum FOMO or just wanting to like feel like inevitable, right? And so understanding that is like super important in terms of the VC mindset is like why now? Why this very moment this inflection point that level of thinking I carried over. Another is around team. So like a lot of decisions that we made at EF and top VCs will tell you is that yeah you can look at the total market size this level of like competition or like tech enabled readiness what whatever you can like create a whole memo but like what fundamentally matters is do you believe in this team? Do you believe in this team to be able to move fast, learn, and just derisk? Because there's a bunch of reasons why this company will fail. Is this the team to overcome that? So team, and a players hiring other A players like that kind of thing. Like it's very much a trope and like but it's true. And then maybe the third is around relationships. So like we at V like in VC world like it could take years before you make the right bet. Meaning you meet someone when they're a student at Stanford. They're a student here and you build a relationship with them and they decide to take your money as opposed to Sequoia or when someone else's money because you've seen them across the four years of their life and they're able to see like oh this person's had my back and like really wrap their sleeves up and like really like had nothing to like I had nothing to offer at the time and they took a bet on me, right?

44:40And so a lot of the relationship building is like very long-term. And so I got that mindset as well and like this is kind of like kind of a spoiler alert, but like the company that acquired my company was a relationship I had built 6 years prior as a VC. So like and I didn't know that like I didn't act like I oh this person might buy my company one day, but like I knew that like this relationship and relationships compound over time. You know all about this and so being able to really give first and build that relationship was something I learned from VC. Yeah. Cuz otherwise why would they take your money? Like it's if you're not willing to put in the effort.

Quang Do

45:17Founder story. Let's talk about it. What what were those early months?

Francois Le Nguyen

45:22So it's very hard actually. So I met the right person Jake. But like you can imagine like so one thing you learn as a VC very quickly is that you have to say no 95 99% of the time. So you're an expert at saying no. You're like no because of this, no because of that. It's like you're ultimate pessimist sometimes even though you believe in certain teams. So you can imagine having seen thousands of pitches, finding one that I want to work on, it's like a very tall order because I have I need to have so much conviction, so much personal like you know wanting and willingness to do. So that was very hard picking something to work on. And then when we did find something to work on, which is protecting people from getting scammed from a cyber security angle, figuring out the whole fundraising process was also very difficult. I think growing up as a Asian kid, external validation seeking, I took rejection very personally. And if you you're doing sales now, anyone who's done sales, I didn't. Product management doesn't really involve sales. VC did. Getting rejected by 95% of the people that you look up to and that you've been building a relationship with over like 6 years, it hurts. And I remember like the first 20 where like I really thought they would write a check who didn't.

46:38Like it sucked and I took it super but my co-founders very good at like reframing but after like a dozen or so rejections you realize like it's all a game and all it is like you want to look for that nugget of information that makes you better like what is it about this rejection that I can learn from and how does that make me better in the next pitch and if you start cycling there then you're golden so we pitched to 200 VCs and got 13 to invest which is like more than most people but like that's a 93.5% failure rate Right? And so if I consider my self worth based on those rejections, I'd be really screwed, you know. So you just like, okay, these are the people who believe in me. Let's go, you know. So the early days were around like getting conviction, building like a community and tribe that believe in your thing. Challenging but, you know, doable.

Quang Do

47:24Yeah. Especially with the right mind right side. Okay. Yeah. And yeah, tell us about you know product development, hiring. Yeah. What was the journey like for you?

Francois Le Nguyen

47:33Yeah. I mean the parts I look back on that like I'm most proud of is like when customers give us their assets to protect. So like people willingly giving things that they deeply care about and use for their livelihood. Second is around like working with the team and like shipping and hitting crazy deadlines and hitting milestones and closing partnerships. Everything to do with team. I was very proud of that. And then third was also like closing our venture round, right? As in getting 13 VCs to invest in you. We had over $3 million in commitments, but we only took 1 million because we didn't need the 3 million and getting that. I mean, very external validation kind of thing. Yeah. So, like the moments I care about most were that.

Quang Do

48:14Was it much more intense than VC and venture?

Francois Le Nguyen

48:17Yes. But keep in mind that like so by the end of EF, I was at a partner level at EF. Partners and VC firms have a very cushy life. So, like I think compared to a partner life, probably much harder. But if you're like an associate or analyst like you're grinding, right? And so like I was already doing like 96 like especially when I was like heading both offices like I was flying back and forth like I would work my morning shift from like 9 to 7 like 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and then from take a break and then 9:00 p.m. to like 1:00 a.m. 2:00 a.m. I would do eastern hours and I did that for like 6 months and that was brutal. Right. So in terms of hours like no but I think the difference is at the end of the day for a job you can close your laptop and like yeah you care about it and yeah you you're part of the mission and this and that but like it's not your baby. So it's like you can close it and it's like oh you can blame you can scapegoat you can whatever someone else but as a founder there's like no one else to like blame but you if things are not going well right and so you take personal liability for every win and every success you will learn very quickly that most are failure or it's like you fail a lot more than you succeed and so if you take that all personally it starts taking a toll. And so developing like resilience rituals, whatever mindfulness practice, exercise, those are like super important.

Quang Do

49:35Yeah. Tell us more how did you handle the grind?

Francois Le Nguyen

49:38Yeah. So like rituals. So like I meditated every day. I got into cycling. I'm a huge proponent of Peloton now. So I'm like that lame SF like person with a bike like 150 weeks in a row now. That sounds like a brag. So, I'm sorry, but like I'm very proud of investing in myself and the and the health aspect of it and then relying on your co-founder if you have one. So, like opening up to them being vulnerable with them. Hopefully, you have a co-founder that a is able to like help you push through those hard times. And yeah, like was already doing hard hours, so that wasn't different. I think it it's more of like a mindset shift and setting up times to deliberately but I'll tell you that like and this is very personal like I often would come home at night and my wife now but girlfriend at the time would be very excited to talk to me and not cuz I wanted to but just cuz like I was empty and that sucked. There were nights where like I would have to get home and then realize I'm not bringing in the right energy that I should and so I'd have to walk around the block until I did. Sometimes it took an hour, which is like pretty like awful, right?

50:58So you go in, you have just enough energy to like really show up, then you're depleted again and then wake up in the morning and you go again, you know, like it's Yeah. It's not easy.

Quang Do

51:07You touched on a few of the challenging Yeah. Founder Yeah. Elements. Yeah. Looking back, what was the hardest moment of your founder journey?

Francois Le Nguyen

51:15Yeah. Yeah. So the hardest one, and I can say this now because it's been a year, is that, as I was building this company, I was becoming a version of myself that I no longer wanted to be. And this is specifically within the context of a cyber security perspective where like a cyber security CEO is usually very guarded, very you know, skeptical. They're most likely Israeli because a lot of cyber security is there. It's not always true. But that's not the person I am. I'm a very open. I'm very vulnerable. I don't hide much. And that's a liability a lot of the times. And you can argue that like if you succeed in like category creation and like you can be vulnerable and you have the guardrails like but that's a very tall tell order. And so like every podcast, every interview I did, I was I was putting on the hat of like a CEO of a cyber security company and said like this is what they should do. And I did my part, probably not as well as I could. And I came off of it and then I was feeling like who the hell is this like who is this that I'm becoming and that wasn't aligned and so and my co-founder was aware of this and so two years into building the company we had the hard conversation of like do you want to take over as CEO instead he was the CTO which is a tough order do we pivot into something else cuz we still had a ton of money in the bank but we eventually decided to sell the company so that hardship I mean like created a necessary conversation for us to be able to exit gracefully and be able to find a new home for the team.

52:44But also find a way to like really find alignment again and make sure that you know the energy is put in the right place and I don't regret spending years building something I don't want to build. And that's hard when you raised over a million dollars and you have all these big names on your cap table who took a bet on you and like you have all this pressure to like just constantly crush it and like be good and so that was difficult. But we turned it around and we sold the company last year. Walked away with you know that's you know low six figures and but more importantly the freedom. So I was able to take a year off which is how we connected quite a bit in during that time. Got to spend time taking care of myself healthwise and most importantly take care of my wife like we like I had no capacity to like think about wedding and then you know we got married and you know and spending time with her and being present with her was like top of my bucket list but as well as my parents and started this whole conversation and once I you know let go of like meeting that trajectory having to go you know my whole life I was like the youngest product manager at the I was the youngest general manager here. I was like the first to like raise here. Like it's always about like being first being on this like curve of life.

54:00Once I took a step off of that for a bit. Which is very scary. Things just kind of fell into place and like I would have never been here had I not took a pause to say like is this really for me? No. And that's a hard thing to do when you're like on paper like soaring, you know.

Quang Do

54:18Yeah. What was the rationale and decision making for selling?

Francois Le Nguyen

54:22Yeah. So, a lot of it was energy, a lot of it was around could we pivot into an area that did feel aligned and we did from a business perspective we found another problem that was a viable business but personally we weren't aligned. It was dealing with banks and financial institutions and I was just like oh like I can't yeah like I again like from an energy perspective I wasn't where I needed to be and then could I see myself doing this for another 3 years? No. So yeah, so I had to call it quits. But I mean the story from a, you know, outsider perspective is really grand like acquired founder, you know. But now I'm trying to reconcile with that because I don't necessarily feel like one. Like I feel like I did something cool. But you know, I don't I don't need that validation. So maybe one day I'll remove that tag, you know.

Quang Do

55:11How did that event change you as a person?

Francois Le Nguyen

55:14So yeah. So one is like thinking through like how I spent energy with my the people that I care about. So that I mean I took three months off, right? And that really helped. Got married, took care of myself. Another part of it was being able to start listening to like where I'm needed as opposed to like chasing a problem and looking for that validation and looking for that like external like pushing push. Like just see where I'm pulled by who's having convers who needs my help where can I be helpful where can I be useful which is like a very like surrendery kind of experience as opposed to a chasing one so that and then I was much more energy-centric and this is again like kind of woo-woo but like I think one of the biggest mistakes I made is that I chose a customer segment that I did not get energy from every time I spent money spent time with them I felt depleted so if you're a founder like it's going to be very hard if the customer base you're serving depletes you cuz that you should be talking to customers every single day. And so being super mindful of like choosing that for the next thing that's yeah something that I I've changed quickly on.

Quang Do

56:22Yeah. I I'm lucky that with OV to just meet you know interesting people that.

Francois Le Nguyen

56:28But that's the hack right the more work you do the more energized you are the more value you create the more opportunities you like is like obviously that's an absolute hack. Highly recommend. Yeah.

Quang Do

56:38Frankie, if you were starting over today, yeah, what would you do differently?

Francois Le Nguyen

56:42So that pick my customer segment based on energy. And that is a very high bar actually like because you need to have a very keen self-awareness of like what energizes you, what you care about, and have the discipline to like say no to things that might sound shiny. Like the opportunities I've had since then are like crazy, but I had to say no to, right? Another is only raise money once you get to a certain level of revenue. We raised money way we raised like pre- idea almost. And so once you.

Quang Do

57:11You were like let's start with raising money.

Francois Le Nguyen

57:13I mean yeah it was a classic I if I'm a high ambitious founder like why do I need an idea? A napkin should be enough. A memo should be like eagle right? But the downside of that is that it pigeons holes you into a category. It's very hard to pivot basically your whole cap table is like navigated towards capturing this particular opportunity. Yeah, you can pivot, but if the if the area you pivot in has nothing to do with the first one, the VC is going to be what the hell, right? And so like navigating that and like it I mean you can do it and tons of people have, but like it's very difficult. So like I would only raise money especially now cuz like you create so much without spending a dollar or spending very little just like on a Lovable and, you know, Claude account. So raise money once I get to a certain level of revenue based on a customer something that like I really enjoy. Yeah and then you know maybe it's just around finding stuff that aligns with my values and tries to become the future version of me and not worry so much about what is the hottest coolest thing to do next. Which could mean that like it's a less ambitious it could be but I think ambitious towards seeking alignment is like worthy of a endeavor.

Quang Do

58:28No, I would love to dive into that a little bit like what how has your definition of values success and success basically? Yeah. Changed.

Francois Le Nguyen

58:36Yeah. So stop chasing external validation and start signaling inside seeing how your energy is and like how you feel. And then I think so throughout the closing of the company I did seek out like coaches in therapy and the one of the therapists asked me like what are like in your darkest deepest moments like what is it that you want to believe? And again this will come off as woo-woo but like really it's just like and I hope it shows like I try to be kind. I try to learn and I try to do my best and as long as I'm doing those three things like genuinely doing those three things then I cannot be unsuccessful right as like that that's all there is really for me to be human and is to do those three things yeah so it's a very different motivation but like very hard to hold to like this is like when I'm properly meditated you know and I'm not checking LinkedIn as much or I just scheduled a post so I didn't actually scroll you know and I'm not influenced by others it's an aspirational one. It's not.

Quang Do

59:37Yeah. This is something I' I've learned as well. Yeah. Someone said this to me, but he said the only two things we can control in life is our attitude and our effort. Yeah. Everything else is you know outcomes you cannot tie. Exactly. Yeah. So just focus on having a good attitude toward things and you know just putting in the work that you required to do. And if you just focus on that you know then you've done your work.

Francois Le Nguyen

59:59It's like the locus of control.

Quang Do

1:00:00Exactly. It's very stoic stoicism actually. Yeah. Let's go a bit deeper. Philosophy, personal philosophy, you know, which personal values guide the way you work and live today compared to.

Francois Le Nguyen

1:00:11So those three but interestingly for our wedding, we also had we had a Laura, my wife and I had a deep discussion about what values we want to embody for our family and then we wrote them on ribbons that we tied to each other's hands, not as like a you know, but more as like aspirationally. So the first one's a Vietnam and this comes from my grandfather. It's thành người. So become a whole person. So like becoming a whole person is not just around you know getting success but also around integrity and showing up and building a community and serving and putting the ladder down for others like being a whole human is not around you. It's around you and your role in the community. So very important. Deep roots is around having the quality of conversations and the relationships that I I'm proud to have. So that's with my so thành người, deep roots. Be kind and the wedding version was forever becoming or forever learning. So you're constant like a constant work in progress and so it's more about like the small steps that you take as opposed to the huge ones over time. There's a few others but those are more like for our family not me personally.

Quang Do

1:01:19Is there a belief that you hold that you think is surprising to some people or even contrarian?

Francois Le Nguyen

1:01:25Contrarian. Yeah. I mean yeah like the Peter Thiel thing, right? Like my answer for that I think it's less contrarian over time especially with some books that came out is I think we should think about death more often. And this if you're a Buddhist or if you read Four Thousand Weeks is not a surprise but I think a lot of people realize too late how short life is. And I think a lot of people realize that like yes there's always an opportunity cost of like I need to say no to things, right? But I think the part that people don't realize is that in order to live a truly like exceptional life, you need to say no to the things you actually want to do. Like I want to become a like a tennis pro. I want to, you know, ride motorcycles. I want to do all these things in life. It's like but in order to say like hell yes to like the things that like truly meant for you need to say no to like so many things you actually want to do, right? And so like that and I think that awareness only comes from understanding the shortness of life. One way of understanding the shortness of life is that everyone is dying. And you and I have a limited time on this earth. So, let's make the not just the most of it, but like let's try to like live a really great life, you know, and do the best we can.

Quang Do

1:02:36Reminds me of something also I've read in the stoicist world. Yeah. Yeah.

Francois Le Nguyen

1:02:40Stoicism has like a coin that they use to remind them. Yeah. Yeah.

Quang Do

1:02:44And you know, you can just wake up every day and just very quickly Yeah. Be reminded. Imagine to actually die, right? Yeah. This sounds very grim. Yeah. But it actually reshifts your focus on what actually matters, right? And then you do make that call to your loved one or you do work on that thing that you, you know, wanted to work on. And so this quick mental envisioning reframe actually helps to.

Francois Le Nguyen

1:03:13I mean some people walk through cemeteries as well. So that's another tactic to use and going but I mean it works. Okay. And I think the part that works best for me and like okay this is like super woo-woo but like like I did a right after selling the company I did a silent meditation retreat of Vipassana and part of it is experiencing both being alive and dead at the same time from a very experiential physical perspective. And once you're able to do that then that's like once you know it internally it's not like a brain thing. It's like I feel it. And if you feel it then, everything changes from there. But it also means you need to meditate two hours a day, which I haven't kept up unfortunately, but that would be another way to get there.

Quang Do

1:03:54After the exit, yeah, looking forward a little bit. How have you been spending your time now?

Francois Le Nguyen

1:04:01Yeah. Yeah. So, it's been a year, right? It's been, yeah, it's been a year. So, got married. Spent time with people that matter to me. I started working part-time with founders just to help out with their companies because I mean there's still an element of like I want to maintain relevancy. Again, this is like external seeking, but I think it's important to have not to be on your island and to be connected to people. So I'm working with three founders part-time. And then starting to build my next thing. Which I don't know what it is and I'm very glad to admit that I don't have everything figured out. But I know that in doing it with the values, with my mindset of energy, with choosing the customer segment and being super deliberate about that, it's going to be something special.

Quang Do

1:04:46Share about that. You you're sitting here now. It's been just a few days or weeks even since you landed, right?

Francois Le Nguyen

1:04:51Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was here 3 months for the wedding, but I was wedding planning, so it was a different type of 3 months.

Quang Do

1:04:57Tell us about that journey of wanting to come back to Vietnam and how have you built up that plan and now you know executed.

Francois Le Nguyen

1:05:05I mean this is going to kind of sound like a plug for OV but like you reaching out started a conversation with not just you but like 20 OVs. And then once I saw people that were like kind of like me but like different but like and starting like oh it's possible and like this could happen this could happen this and like all these different conversations that are happening. And for me it's different now because I come as a family with my wife, right? So it's not it's not just about me moving here. That would have been super simple. But moving with someone who is not Vietnamese who has their own career and their community and being able to integrate that and meeting people that have diverse like family backgrounds. That has helped enormously as well. But I think Vietnam is just a really special place in the world right now where a lot of like if you if you just jump into like a random conversation in a Uber or taxi in the US or in Europe, eventually it'll turn in and you don't prompt it, eventually the conversation will turn slightly negative and talk about either the cost of living, healthare, or real estate like just like not being able to afford stuff. One, I don't understand what Grab drivers are saying here, but I'm pretty sure they're but that's not that's not it, right? I.

Quang Do

1:06:16Yeah, you made a joke out on LinkedIn.

Francois Le Nguyen

1:06:19It's like, yeah, just not but most conversations here are around growth. But at the same time, I need to acknowledge that, you know, my parents had a very different version of Vietnam, and that's a part of me. And so my goal in being here is less about, you know, becoming local like cuz I'm not I'm different and but I want to learn and I want to be a part of the story. I'm not here to like tell people how to do things. I'm here to listen and I'm here to contribute and support wherever I can. And there are parts of Vietnam that don't need my help. Probably the majority of Vietnam does not need any of my help on any of these things, but there are parts where they definitely do. And to like seek those people, seek those communities, and be able to just be open and learn is like a very exciting, very open-ended who knows what's going to happen in the next year. Like we have so many things that we can try out. And I if we were to redo this, I think it'll be a very different conversation cuz I'm a week in, you know.

Quang Do

1:07:16Yes. And when and how did that desire, curiosity for Vietnam? From Vietnam stuff.

Francois Le Nguyen

1:07:22Oh, so before we even met, I mean my my parents were both born in Saigon. My grandparents were all born in the north and they all have stories and I've heard stories throughout. But it started in 2012 when in my exchange at NUS I came to Vietnam and I landed and I'm like this is not at all what they talked about like what is what like this is this is like completely different from what the story is, right? And I met family members, I met strangers, I just and the more I accumulated of like, okay, no, there's a curiosity like this is not I need to find out for myself. But my version of Vietnam in 2012 as like a backpacker or student was very different from like the real Vietnam, too. So, I'm aware of that, right? But I'm out here to discover it for myself and be a, you know, just learn and see where I can be of help and value. But it started back in 2012. And I have a super distinct core memory of like standing in District 1 and being like super absorbed by everything and the chaos and feeling like, oh, like this feels comfortable, like this feels right. Which feels very strange, you know, like the comfort in chaos.

Quang Do

1:08:29I think many feel that. Yeah. It's Yeah, I ride I ride a motorbike here. So, it's there are people all around you, mostly young. The average age is very young. So, it's this spirit and this sense of.

Francois Le Nguyen

1:08:39Yeah. Yeah. A sense of you're a part of something and you want to you want to move forward and yeah there's a very harsh past but we can learn from it not forget it but learn from it and move forward.

Quang Do

1:08:51So you don't know what's next but when you think a bit longterm you know what kind of impact or life would you want to have lived and have built?

Francois Le Nguyen

1:09:00Yeah. So I want to build bridges similar to you. Bridges between North America and Asia, between founders and investors, between co-founders and this generations, cultures, lots of bridges everywhere. I want to focus on you know meaningful conversations. And I want to be known for like not not caring so much about what people think and you know seeking personal I mean like at the same time like this whole legacy question is kind of like I mean 100 years from no one's going to know who I am or maybe okay like max like 200 years you know so like might as well make people feel good make remind people that I'm kind loving I'm trying my best and that's good enough you know but impact wise yeah like definitely want to help people have conversations build bridges invest and really you know be a part of those solution for things especially in climate so like that's I mean we didn't talk about that at all but.

Quang Do

1:10:00Yeah I love it and we've talked about your whole life early years Montreal Singapore if you know reflect back on younger Frankie what would you tell 5-year-old or 10year-old Frankie now.

Francois Le Nguyen

1:10:15I think five or 10 year old Frankie looking me at me now like would both be like, "Oh [expletive] you do did some cool stuff, but like what are you talking about? So woo-woo." Like, and it's you know, hindsight is 2020 kind of thing. But I think if I were to go back, I'd want to tell my younger self to like just try stuff and like and hopefully do it because you want to try and try for yourself, not try for your mom and dad. Not try because you need to prove anything. But then also like if you need to care about what people think, pick and choose who you care from. And pick carefully. If you pick the right people, then you will build the life that you want to build. If you pick wrongly, then you're going to I mean, everyone hangs out with different crowds until they find the group the good groups, right? So just that, but like knowing what I know now, yeah, I would do things differently, but knowing what I knew then, I would probably do the exact same thing. Like it's just eventually you arrive anyways. Yeah. As in like it's very foolish of me to think that I could have known better at the time like I did with the best of what I had.

Quang Do

1:11:19Wonderful. Great way to wrap up. How can people connect with you, stay connected with you and kind of what's next for you?

Francois Le Nguyen

1:11:26Yeah, I'm mostly on LinkedIn. I don't post as often as you, but I try. And we're launching something new called OV Ventures soon. So look that up. And that's not so much a plug as much as it is around I think there's an opportunity for us to as OVs to support each other. And I think you know money flowing back to Vietnam is part of the reason why things have been the way they are now. And that's not to say that it relied on it but it was a part of it. I think there should be a new money flow of OV's investing in other OVs because I think that can create something really special around the world.

Quang Do

1:12:03Let's do it. Yeah. Frankie, thank you. Thanks for your time.