From Cambridge to Saigon: building Vietnam’s Uber for trucks.

Linh Pham

0:00My family business when you hear it would sound really boring. So for anyone who actually studied abroad they don't want to come back and work for a factory manufacturing pesticides and chemical. Nobody wanted to join a very traditional something that your parents spend their whole life building up but it doesn't feel right for you. I think people when they think of entrepreneurship they think it's like kind of glamour or like earning a lot of money this kind of things. 10 years ago, I thought of entrepreneurship like that. But actually, after being in entrepreneurship, it is a lot tougher than it looks. For me, success is now about not giving up. It's about continue building on what we have, being resilient, consistent every day.

Quang Do

0:40Linh, for those who don't know you, how do you usually introduce yourself?

Linh Pham

0:46So hi, great to be here and thank you for inviting me. And my name is Linh. People often know me as the founder of Logivan. It's like Uber for trucks in Vietnam. And we raised $8 million in venture capital. And now on our network, we have over 20,000 trucking companies and truck drivers on the platform. And we serve B2B enterprises such as Ajinomoto, Wilmar, Olam, PepsiCo, TH True Milk, and so on. So we are active participants in the logistics space and technology space in Vietnam. And now I'm actually excited to launch a new venture in AI in logistics called FreightPilot.AI, AI agents that help you with your logistics needs.

Quang Do

1:38Wonderful. And I would love to dive deeper into your businesses in that journey. But let's go all the way back. You know, where did you grow up and what was it like?

Linh Pham

1:48So, I grew up in a very, small town, Lạng Sơn city, in the north of Vietnam, near the border with China. I guess this is where I get a lot of like logistics contacts from is because near the border with China, there are a lot of like logistics companies based there to transport agricultural products from the south of Vietnam to the north of Vietnam. And even my uncle worked for the road customs authority and so it opened up a lot of perspective for me when I started Logivan later on. But yeah, I grew up in Lạng Sơn and I studied in Hanoi when I was five and then I moved to the UK when I was 15. After getting a scholarship to study A levels there and then after that I studied at University of Cambridge studying natural sciences. After that I worked as a technology analyst at Goldman Sachs London and then I moved back home because I wanted to find a deeper meaning in my work. So at the time that I was in London I was.

Quang Do

2:58You didn't find that at Goldman, the deeper meaning?

Linh Pham

3:02I was working for compliance team technology and so that team was super small like 20 people or something and we would develop tools for that team and so the impact I felt was not big enough for me to stay for the long term and I didn't feel that the corporate world suited me like my personality And so I decided to go back home because the growth of Southeast Asia was impressive and it's going to continue to grow at a pace much faster than Europe or elsewhere. And also my family is still in Vietnam. So that was the calling for me and I wanted to go back home explore any opportunities. My families are also entrepreneurs. So we have couple of businesses and I could use the chance to join the family business and see what is working and what's not so that I could find an industry or an angle a niche that I could use my technology background to solve and that would be my unfair advantage.

Quang Do

4:10The immediate question there is so the family had a business or has a business and you had the option to join but you still wanted to do your own. So was this the initial plan always or was joining and building the family business and scaling that up also an option for you?

Linh Pham

4:27Actually my family business when you hear it would sound really boring. So for anyone who actually studied abroad and you know they don't want to come back and work for a factory manufacturing pesticides and chemical. Yes and cashews but that is a separate one. But anyway, nobody wanted to join a very traditional something that your parents spend their whole life building up but it doesn't feel right for you. So I had the opportunity to join but I decided to join for only a brief time to see okay what is the big pain points of these traditional industries manufacturing logistics supply chain to see what like opportunity that I could build with my own insights and my technology background.

Quang Do

5:15Okay before we go into the business building just quickly on moving back to Vietnam can you walk us more through that decision- making process in London back then when you strategize and planned your way back.

Linh Pham

5:31It wasn't I think I'm more of the impulsive kind of person where I feel like I need to pursue something then I will do that so it was an kind of more gradual process test. So at the start I would go back for like you know one month doing kind of you know just like doing you know how to say going like sabbatical I would say. Yeah it was a gradual process. So at the start I would spend you know one month or two in Vietnam first and then after half a year I moved back completely. Yeah.

Quang Do

6:09Did you quit your job and went back? All right. That's Yeah. Yeah. Did you also felt you grew out of UK and that system and missed Vietnam or was this more opportunity driven and you felt it was more opportunity driven? You did enjoy UK and life there.

Linh Pham

6:32The UK life was great to be honest. All of my friends, most of my friends were there. And David, my you know partner and at the time boyfriend was also working in the UK as a medical doctor and so moving away from that I would definitely miss the UK but at the same time you're coming back to Vietnam and there's your also your parents and family there so it's a you know it's a balance to strike.

Quang Do

7:03How did that feel to you? Like how scary was it?

Linh Pham

7:07More like extremely scary. I know that on one side I would find some opportunity. Yeah. That maybe after one year or two years looking back this would feel like like oh why did I even have to think about that at the time but at the time right it was definitely scary because you're giving up something to like it's like you're moving back two step in order to go up to go forward five steps so always as a start you have to take the leap of faith and yes lose something Of course.

Quang Do

7:44Yeah. So, how was it like the first days and the first time in Vietnam settling back doing your research, doing your reflection, building up conviction in some market gap and how was that process?

Linh Pham

7:54Definitely culture shock, reverse culture shock. So even though I grew up in Vietnam, but then I spent most of my early adulthood in the UK and so I was more familiar with the way like the western cultures work and how to do business in that context. So coming back to Vietnam, the business context is totally different. I actually didn't know anyone in Vietnam at the time. So I had to go to a lot of the hackathons or business competitions in order to build up the network a little bit more and so to build like to find my co-founders or to find my early hires. So that's that was yeah.

Quang Do

8:39Did you convince your partner to come with you? How did you do that?

Linh Pham

8:41I did.

Quang Do

8:42He's British, right?

Linh Pham

8:44Yeah, I did convince him. He was a medical doctor in the UK but we actually share the same interest in entrepreneurship and he also started his business education business in the UK when we were undergraduates. So that business is now kind of doing well and he exited in 2023 already but at the time he was you know into kind of business as a doctor. So he said, "Okay, maybe in Vietnam we can find some big opportunities to work on."

Quang Do

9:16So he suggested this. He suggested that he would come with you to Vietnam and build here. Yes. Oh yeah. What was the process like? Did he move with you or did you.

Linh Pham

9:26I moved first. Yeah. So we actually had 6 months to a year of like long distance relationship. I moved first and he moved later. Yes. Yeah. But we I think what really unites us is our love for our passion for entrepreneurship. It's something that is our long-term vision together. Yep.

Quang Do

9:48Why do you think you have that passion? Is it family originates from your family because they are entrepreneur or did you know just get tired of corporate when you had a taste of building London?

Linh Pham

10:02Actually, it's different because I actually thought I would become a physics professor or something when I'm 30ish. I that's my goal becoming a professor quite young but that was my 15 year old and then when I was 18 when I came to Cambridge I actually had the chance to join the Cambridge Entrepreneur Society and participated in their hackathons and events and I felt really compelled. I felt like, oh, this is really cool. I could create new products. So, this is like kind of an intellectual challenge kind of thing for me and also find the distribution for it. So, building products, figuring out distribution, like building a business plans, running numbers, this kind of things that I actually enjoy. It felt like an intellectual challenge rather than, you know, about making money. So, it's really cool and I really loved it. And after that I changed from a total academic kind of person because getting into Cambridge is all about being in academia afterwards. It's very diff different for Cambridge universities and Oxford for people to become entrepreneurs like the American Ivy Leagues universities because in the UK people are much more focused on academics.

11:19So having exposure to that network of entrepreneurs to that kind of student competitions really helped unlock my deeper passion.

Quang Do

11:32And when did you know you wanted to become a full-time entrepreneur?

Linh Pham

11:37Right after college. Yeah. Yeah.

Quang Do

11:39Okay. But you still joined Goldman just for having a.

Linh Pham

11:43Yeah. First job. A bit of Yeah. A bit of a credential that is okay. Kind of brand and stuff like if you come back straight after college and you don't have like work experience it's still you're unproven kind of a little bit.

Quang Do

11:59Yeah I heard this many times from other other successful entrepreneurs as well is this something you would actually advise other Vietnamese other overseas Vietnamese to do to in their early career to build up a bit of a bit of credibility bit of maybe the foundational skills in corporate professionalism perhaps right before jumping into entrepreneurship or would you say.

Linh Pham

12:21Totally but again I see so many tech genius nowadays like 18 year old 19year-old building businesses everything it changes everything and maybe a few years ago I would have believed this but now I believe that just go in business go in entrepreneurship as early as possible because it takes time to compound your skill your network yeah as you say social capital and other kind of capital it takes time to compound and so the earlier you start the better it is.

Quang Do

12:51I think a good approach is actually getting into this habit of just working on projects and side projects and building stuff and bringing things into reality very fast even though you pursue a more you know traditional education as well or more traditional career but then you maximize optionality and then you get into this building mindset.

Linh Pham

13:12Yeah, that's a great way of putting it into words.

Quang Do

13:15I just had a newborn so a son and I'm actually already thinking about you know education and how to bring him up. Because we're here in Vietnam you know there's you know the international schools and the school system and they're not cheap right and I had this conversation with my wife my wife also went in went to Hanoi and in the specialized schools. Okay. And the perception is actually the public specialized schools are actually harder than the international schools.

Linh Pham

13:42Totally. Yes. Oh, it's a lot harder.

Quang Do

13:44[unclear] was actually quite chill, right? Yeah. But they're so pricey. Yeah. So the question then becomes is the life outcome better if you send your kids just to better schools, right? It doesn't seem like it, right? And I see anecdotally across friends of mine that you have good life outcomes no matter what kind of education you actually have in your early years, especially from the num, right? So there's not a direct correlation, right? Of course, international school kids have different kinds of foundations in terms of family more confidence and I and probably also from families with more resources as well. So that helps with you know tutoring and all of these things. But that's an interesting conversation I will have and I think now 2025 my kids was just born I think the world they will grow up in is very different in terms of the education. Compounding is one. The earlier you start, the more you get into this habit because so many ideas will fail, right? You should just get comfortable with that. Some people will some ideas will work out, will compound, right? But the barrier to start something has never been lower, right? So low. So low. Yeah. You can basically just open your laptop and get started, right? And there there's like literally zero cost to get a Stripe account on and and get things going, right? Yeah. And start posting and everything. Yes. So yeah, I just wanted to get that out.

15:01But let's go back to your time. When you started Logivan can you walk us through the ideation finding idea finding process and how the fun parts. The fun part. Yeah. Was it fun?

Linh Pham

15:13It was really fun like just the whiteboarding everything and talking to you know people around me about the idea whether it works or not researching.

Quang Do

15:24And I was there an inkling that it would be logistics already or were you very open-minded for anything?

Linh Pham

15:30I was very open-minded for everything. I actually participated in an accelerator and they said that you have to come up with at least three ideas and the other my one idea is logistics and the other two idea was like mental kind of mental health kind of app and another one is about education or something but in the end I chose logistics and it was a very big decision of my life.

Quang Do

15:54Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Talk us through it. How did you decide? How did you.

Linh Pham

15:58I decided on it because logistics is such a big market in Vietnam. It's a backbone industry but is often overlooked is logistics account for 21% at the time. Now it's reduced a little bit because it's getting more efficient but at the time it accounts for 21% of the Vietnam GDP. So everything every little thing that you touch has to be transported. Yeah. Transported by a truck or by other modes of transportation. So it actually accounts for that big of a market but it's very fragmented. The trucks that we see on the streets on the road are mostly running empty. Yeah. Because nobody is talking to there's a centralized system to for people to you know organize their cargo. Everybody just know their own cargo or their own trucks. And the average size of each trucking company is less than five trucks. Even my family business which is a factory has like 10 trucks. And so we just run by empty most of the time. So this I think my whole value and core my core values are in efficiency and productivity. So I hate it when I see things that are so wasteful. So I really hate that. And again this market is huge and I decided to go all in on this idea.

Quang Do

17:21We have a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs in the OV community. Can you share more about how to come up with an idea? What was your process like and how long did it take and how did you move forward effectively to arrive at a few options that you would want to pursue?

Linh Pham

17:38I wish there would be a way to like kind of formalize this process but.

Quang Do

17:43How did you do it?

Linh Pham

17:44I think got to try to observe things around me. Like any things that are inefficient, wasteful, things that could be improved or maybe even look for other markets like that are 10, 20 years ahead. At the time I was looking to China or the US, even India for ideas and I found that there are like really big companies with this trucking marketplace model and that was very intriguing. And so I reached out to the founders of those companies like Uber Freight, Huochebang, Full Truck Alliance in China which is like a now listed is in NASDAQ. And in India there's BlackBuck. So I reached out to the co-founders or directors of those companies and after the first few conversations with them I decided this is a really you know big market and interesting market so let's go in.

Quang Do

18:39Yeah. Yeah. How did you get started day one and you know the next weeks to build Logivan from.

Linh Pham

18:45Yeah I think now because people are building in public so there's a lot of day one day zero post but for me it wasn't like kind of a clearcut it was just like one or two months that I continue to talk to anyone that I know that were in logistics space and so the more I talk to them the more I feel this space needs some dedicated solutions to be able to solve it. Yeah. Yeah. And after kind of borrowing some idea from overseas like China, US, India then I formed my own thesis and like just started pitching to some accelerator to join and by through the accelerators I were able to meet with other builders as well who would then later join my company as early engineers and also met our first early investor for these accelerators.

Quang Do

19:38Yeah, I think it's an very interesting approach for the Vietnam context to study established markets, established businesses from other places and finding ways to adjusting it to the specific Vietnam context. Yeah. What was that process like for you? Like what is specific to Vietnam in terms of logistics that you felt you can solve for Vietnam?

Linh Pham

20:00So at the time Vietnam had a few other trucking marketplaces around built by logistics companies like big logistics company in Vietnam but they all kind of flopped. So those early competitors I call them early competitors didn't really work it out and they and when we talked to them they all seem to like oh it's not going very well so we're going to like you know shut it down or something or we're just maintaining it or something like that. So these early conversations in our first year actually formed how different we go about it. This trucking marketplace early on they allow truck drivers and shippers to both input orders into the system and try to make a match. But nobody had time to do that. If you are a truck driver that's so busy with like running your own order or if you're a trucking company with a 100 order per day, you don't have time to put on the system, you know, when your truck's going to go by empty to find a match and then coordinate with the shipper that also posted on the market marketplace to find a match. And another thing is who is ready to vet the cargo policy and the accuracy of the information provided into the system. So the marketplace cannot be just a free marketplace like that. It needs to be a actively managed marketplace.

21:21So that was insight number one is that we have to build this marketplace in a very heavily managed way. But that will add extra cost like quality control QC people to verify each load right if it's correct or not. Or customer service to ver to sign contract with a shipper and verify their large information. So it adds on a lot of cost to the business model. Yeah.

Quang Do

21:50From those early days of building your business in Vietnam, what did you learn about entrepreneurship in Vietnam? What were some of the things you were challenged with?

Linh Pham

21:59The system in Vietnam is still quite opaque. I would say it's not as clearcut as like as in Europe or the US. So as entrepreneurs you have to navigate this gray area or these systems with your own network. So that is tougher because why in the UK you can invoice a company if you provided the service for them and you expect them to pay you. Yes. On time, right? Okay. But in Vietnam, that's not the case. You can have you can sign a million-dollar contract transporting for this enterprise for the whole year after rigorous bidding process, but the client can choose to delay your payments or not pay you at all. That's the worst case scenario. And we've seen that. We've experienced that. And we've lost money because we didn't vet our clients enough. And so they basically set up like some people are like scams as well. So they can set up entities. Yeah. To book trucks on your platform and then not pay it and run away. So that is also happen in this kind of gray market where the legal system is not enforcable. Yeah, the only way to collect money is you sending people to their office like to collect money, not by a system of trust or ensuring, oh, let's go to court and the court will resolve it.

23:27The court has no time to res to resolve a $5,000 case or $100,000 case, right? So and the court, who knows how it will rule the final result. So the best thing to collect money here in Vietnam is to actually have a rigorous system and vet your clients first.

Quang Do

23:51How do you vet them? Is it also trust based or is it just [unclear]?

Linh Pham

23:56Right now we only work with the top tiers brands in their vertical like the kind of the less well-known brands. We don't choose to work with them because we don't have established relationship with them. But I know a lot of trucking companies do and they can totally do it this way. But they often have personal relationships with the directors with the owners. So they can maybe collect their payment on time by leveraging their relationship.

Quang Do

24:25What I'm asking myself is as a as a overseas Vietnamese or a foreigner like do the people that don't are not trustworthy, not reliable, do they not get consequences in terms of their reputation at least and is it can they still do business with other partners even though they're known to not pay and not be reliable. So how is it in the.

Linh Pham

24:49There's no such a thing that is widespread like kind of a credit system for you to know whether this company is a trustworthy company or not and I think some company like Trusting Social was solving it but then they got acquired by [unclear] or something so that solution is off the market for SMEs right now and so it is still extremely tough you don't know unless you have the network you have insider information You're belong to a network and that network is going to tell you, "Oh, don't work with this guy. They're going to pay you late."

Quang Do

25:24Yeah. Okay. Do you see this is getting better or is this the same since the day you came back?

Linh Pham

25:29Maybe it's getting better. I don't know because right now we only work with the big brands so they pay us on time or occasionally when they can't due to some cash flow problem then we can allow them to pay one week or two weeks later. But most of the time our cash flow is kind of you know healthy now.

Quang Do

25:50Okay. It's very interesting. Is it was there any other challenge if you think back maybe also on the more personal side of things like how did you adjust back? What did you need to overcome when you came back?

Linh Pham

26:02I think I was too used to the western way of doing business that I wasn't really focused on that relationship aspects with the trucking companies or with the factories and often delegated it to my management team. And so at the time it felt you know good for scalability, right? But in the during the long run that's actually not very good because when those managers leave the company which is natural they will take away the relationships they only know how and the expertise of dealing with that clients with them and you know the all the CRM it exists but it cannot record everything right all the dinner conversations or lunch or these kind of things it will a CRM will not capture Yeah. So you are left with like a hole when like a senior manager leave or something or establish their own company. We we've had that situation where they leave, they establish their own company, take the clients with them and the client doesn't even know that they are now doing this with a different company. Yeah. So sometimes they even call back to our customer support team to resolve a problem with the order but actually they are now signing with another company that's not our that's not our company.

27:23So these kind of dodgy practices all it happens a lot in Vietnam and especially with a traditional business area like logistic it happens a lot.

Quang Do

27:35What would you do then if you were an overseas Vietnamese building something in Vietnam? Would you take on plan relationships yourself and you know get comfortable in Vietnamese to deal with those things yourself?

Linh Pham

27:49That is a very tough question depending on what kind of clients you're going after or if you're targeting B2B. I think Vietnamese is the is a good valuable skill to master because the big B2B buyers will always be Vietnamese.

Quang Do

28:07Especially traditional industries, right?

Linh Pham

28:09Yes. Yes. And you have to be able to go drinking with them, basically be their friends.

Quang Do

28:13Yeah. Do you do that? Okay. Can you give us a bit insight into that process? Like how does it look like to go drink with them to end up with them? And you know, how do you actually get a deal over the finish line when you focus on drinking? Like how does it look like for people who is not who are not in that? And I've never done it actually. So I'm curious myself actually.

Linh Pham

28:37Yes. So it all comes back to competency. First of all, they have to feel that your company is competent first. They don't just go drinking with everyone that pitch to them that logistics service. There are a ton of logistics companies out there and having a brand you know venturebacked having kind of a team that is capable and having you know an actual platform that is capable of optimizing their freight is the first step is that establishing credibility and competency and the second step is to be able to understand what is this what does this person needs to look good. In front of their boss or their company. So because they would take a risk when on boarding a new vendor, right? So the risk is on them and so how to make it as risk-free as possible in front of everybody in the company and be able to deliver that yes and some people they might like to just have a coffee not drinking. Some people don't like drinking and some people like to some people like to do karaoke. So again more involved.

Quang Do

29:54And then during those social gatherings do you talk business as well or is it purely only 10% 40% is more the friendship building more getting you know one with each other.

Linh Pham

30:08Yes. Because once they trust you as a as a friend or as their kind of a close acquaintance, then they would be able to trust to you to handle their freight or when they have an issue, they trust that you're going to pick up the phone and listen to them. Okay. So, this is very involved. I think B2B Vietnam traditional industries are very a very kind of heavily involved process. But once you have the contracts, it's like you don't have to work hard for like maybe a year. Yeah. You can, you know, do travel or something and your contract is still there and do you hang out with them, you know, once a month or something. So that's the social aspect is very good. Yeah. But at the start it's difficult.

Quang Do

30:52How did your family and peers react when you told them that you wanted to build in trucking and you wanted to build Logivan?

Linh Pham

30:59They said that trucking is very difficult business. State is so difficult. Do not get in there. But my family are entrepreneurs so they understand my age and they understand that I need to take risks to do something of my own and to fail on my own to be able to have valuable lessons because I'm the type of person that would not listen. If you tell me to do something then I would unless I done it myself and failed then I would trust you. But if I had not experienced that then I would not listen. Yeah. So they were supportive for sure. But again they warned me that this is a so difficult market to get into and it was truly difficult. It took us like three years to you know learning the in and out tested a lot of different things. You know.

Quang Do

31:50Yeah quickly on the on the parents thing I think it's interesting when they sent you to the UK or when you decided to go to UK did they have intention for you? What kind of career you would have and you know whether you would stay in the UK outside of Vietnam or did they want you to come back and support like what was their thinking when you know about your career at their heart.

Linh Pham

32:15Yeah at the time they didn't share with me any preferences they just let me sort of decide my own path but I think definitely they want me to go back to stay with them because parents they can't you know they don't want to be lonely when they get old just right so definitely they want me to come back but whatever I do I think they do not force me to come and you know run the family business.

Quang Do

32:39What do you think is unique and difficult about building in Vietnam compared to other ecosystems like more from a purely entrepreneurial business building perspective.

Linh Pham

32:51Compared to other ecosystem but first of all the ecosystem here is not as developed like if you go to San Francisco right now where a lot of my friends are going. I see them on LinkedIn or Instagram and they are building in hacker houses and getting you know meeting investors for breakfast or lunch or dinner. Obviously that feels you is it's more developed and you get more support in those developed ecosystem. Yeah.

Quang Do

33:18And you get everything more talent fund.

Linh Pham

33:21Exactly. Talent density funding client base they're all there. So it is challenging more challenging to be building in Vietnam but it has its own it has its own challenges but it has its own kind of benefits as well because less people do it here means that there's more opportunity for you like bigger opportunity so less competition here for sure.

Quang Do

33:51What do you think? What was your biggest Vietnam lesson? Thing you learned by being here on the ground.

Linh Pham

33:56Aside from the relationships side of things is that I think in order to manage Vietnamese staff, you had to have a different kind of mindset compared to the you know managing people overseas is that sometimes they need a lot of micromanagements. And a lot of I think a lot of Vietnamese owners complain about this is that they have to micromanage so much they would rather just do the work themselves. Yes.

Quang Do

34:28Why do you think that is?

Linh Pham

34:31I think it's 50/50. I don't want to use a word like lazy but if you don't push them they can be unmotivated. So they just do like 80% of the task for example. So I think that is the problem with the traditional industry in Vietnam. I'm not talking about like the tech kind of the tech sort of sphere. Yeah. But the more traditional like people go to work for a job, right? Okay. So those kind of execute on whatever task and you have to be very specific. Okay. Yeah. You're not specific enough and they can just miss it and they be oh but I assume my thoughts.

Quang Do

35:17Yeah, I think totally fair. I would actually think just that's just true because you're not the first and the only to say this. I think it's cultural like I don't think it's I don't think it's actually like inherent laziness or anything. It's more the culture of very hierarchical Vietnam. This is not my real time analysis, right? Hierarchical and so junior folks will be used to taking orders. Yeah. And this is what we are being taught even from our parents that we should not be talking back to parents. Whatever order is given to us without questioning we should be doing it right whereas in the west and this is where I grew up right it's the reverse where you are encouraged to critically think challenge also authority sometimes right which is forbidden you more or less right which trains your brain much more to always own the task much more because you should be questioning ownership yeah and I think that's kind of the root of this which which I actually observe as well I think it's changing already.

Linh Pham

36:18No changing totally with Gen Z. Yeah, Gen Z people go overseas as well.

Quang Do

36:22It's a very common actually perception and thing that people try to improve already and even the school system I think try to catch up on that. But it's very true and this is something I even see in day-to-day situations, right? It's even in coffee shops where when I make an order that is slightly different from the normal order, right? Okay. Other days people struggle extremely to be able to true if it gets away from the standard protocol, right? If it's, you know, just not the size a specific order and I say a little bit less sugar, a little bit less this, that is very challenging for.

Linh Pham

37:01And it's not just unique to Vietnam is also I think in Japan or Korea Asian cultures where it's hierarchical and has a high power distance index. Yeah. So in those culture people struggle to challenge authority their boss.

Quang Do

37:18Yeah. I think that that's one of the main things and it's actually quite known. It's people will go as hard to say they lack critical thinking. You know they think that's a harsh way to phrase it. I think they just don't apply it so much. Everyone can critically think. You know it's just that the culture didn't encourage it so much.

Linh Pham

37:37Yeah. We did you know internally criticizing but we're not allowed to let it out very.

Quang Do

37:42Absolutely. So you just sit there and over time it just becomes more silent. Whereas I remember this example of going to the doctor you know whereas in the east if you go to a doctor with your parents the parent will tell you just listen to the doctor right and whatever doctor says you should be following a truck stop right and west is more like we go to the doctor and if you feel something is off if you feel you have some pain or something you always need to speak up and you always need to tell the doctor and if the doctor you know diagnose you somehow and you feel it's the different Okay, please speak up. Right. So, you're very early encouraged to even question authority like a doctor. So it's a huge cultural difference in how kids are brought up. And I think that then leads to us or Vietnamese going into the workforce sometimes working for Western companies or American companies and feel that gap between the American or Western peers which is very comfortable to talk to speak up to tell their own story to challenge authority. Whereas you have in Vietnam people that are more Confucian, more Asian.

Linh Pham

38:49Yes. And if you don't have something to say, you better be quiet, right?

Quang Do

38:53You really afraid of conflict.

Linh Pham

38:55Afraid of conflict, confrontation. Yeah. And also afraid that you what you what you contribute is not adding value to it.

Quang Do

39:01Yeah. That's something I see as well. Sometimes in the west, you know, even if you don't have much to say, you will still speak up, right? It's your like all the perils of the west. Everyone has an opinion.

Linh Pham

39:12Everyone has an opinion. Like the room is so loud and Yeah. Yeah.

Quang Do

39:15Even if it's not even your own, right? You borrow that opinion from somewhere, you still are able to tell it.

Linh Pham

39:22Polar opposite problem. So it's very polar opposite.

Quang Do

39:25Yeah. So what do you think you know on the flip side, what is the strength of Vietnamese workers and building it up?

Linh Pham

39:34Vietnamese workers are very like you know, hardworking. Yeah. And I think what they have is resilience and resilience is such an underrated aspect of the culture of the business here. People can work like really hard and like 996 or this is not the culture that we have right now. You know, I work 996 because we are launching the AI startup, but I think right now I would say Vietnamese people are resilient and I love it. And this is a number one skill not skill but trait that I screen for people is that are they resilient enough to you know work on this problem for the next you know three or five years at least or this is just like a hot topic a hot trend buzz word that draw them that drew them to my business.

Quang Do

40:36You know what do you think foreigners or overseas Vietnamese often misunderstand about building even up maybe from your like overseas peers who want to build something even what do you think some are some myths are like you think it's too easy too hard.

Linh Pham

40:52I think they often think it's too hard to break in but as long as you have the right connectors like you meet the right people and you actively provide value to your at work, then it is not difficult because Vietnamese people are so friendly. Yes. They're not closed up. They're like always open to discuss, open to meet new people. And so you get that benefit of you truly want to build your base here and want to stick around for the long term. People is going to feel it. And then they're going to help you out.

Quang Do

41:32Thinking back of you know Logivan and the founder journey you know what was there a particular low point or very challenging point in time that.

Linh Pham

41:42Indeed during COVID it was really tough for our startup because it's physical logistic you the transportation everywhere is being locked down and the trucks even needed to register for a QR code the green lane to be able to run on the road so a lot of truck drivers stay home partly because they're afraid of dying or they are they don't have the the green lane registration to go on the to go on the road any and there's a lot of worker shortage even if you have a truck you have the cargo but you need the worker to load the cargo into the truck and there's a lot of factories that outsource this part as for contractors so they're not committed to do this during COVID time. So there's a lot of worker shortage as well. So a lot of shipment delays, a lot of shortage of drivers and workers. And so the business was heavily impacted and so we had to you know make a very tough call is to lay off some people and at the time it felt really painful because people like holy the company's going down and they're laying off people. Is this going to go bankrupt or something?

Quang Do

43:00So that was that a risk?

Linh Pham

43:02That was definitely a risk. If we don't manage the cash flow carefully, it can. And the best people often like you know when they sense that there's some instability, they can also be the one that choose to leave. It's not that you lay them out. It's like them choosing to leave. Yeah. And so I guess that was all the that fault was on me that I didn't create a safe enough sort of or a bright enough future or image for them to stick around. And so that we had some good people who left as well. So that was a very low point for me because as a founder that mean I failed to retain the good ones.

Quang Do

43:43To be fair, COVID was very uncertain. So you couldn't also know what would happen.

Linh Pham

43:49So it was very hard [unclear], but if I had done better I think then maybe they would have stayed and maybe we would be even stronger now. So yeah that was a particular low point for me.

Quang Do

44:04How did you recover from that?

Linh Pham

44:05Right now to say that I've recovered from that is still what it's still it left an emotional mark how to say in my journey and that changed how I lead people and how I hire for people now and I guess I just recovered slowly through exercise through you know meeting with more people expanding the business so that's how I recover but still it is a dent in my chapter in my own journey.

Quang Do

44:40What do you do different now in leading and hiring?

Linh Pham

44:43So right now as I mentioned I hire for resilience people in it for the long term not for the short term because I felt like at the start because we are hot startup right so a lot of people who like were opportunists who were joined just for the sake of oh I joined this cool startup they are very good people like internet competent people right y but because of the commitment and resilience aspect that was not screened properly and so they were the first to leave when there's a sense of instability and I guess this happened for other startups during covid as well but again now I think it's very important that we hire slowly.

Quang Do

45:26If you were to start Logivan again today you know would you do anything differently to accelerate growth do it better you know just looking back now everything that you've learned and roll now right.

Linh Pham

45:39I would say that I would focus on B2B at the very start I think because at the start I was focusing on B2C first and then opportunities for B2B came. So I also like try to do both which is the worst because that means your resources are not focused and half of the team is running on the tech and the marketing side for the B2C whereas half the team is running the sales and operation for the B2B and so that totally divided the focus and we needed to hire double right in terms of the human resource and that costed us a lot of you know money in terms of marketing in terms of headcount as well. And if I were to do it differently, I would be more decisive up front rather than being in the space of like no decision for like two years. And then at the end of it, I had to make a brutal decision to focus on B2B because actually 90% of all freight transportation in Vietnam is through B2B and only 10% is B2C ad hoc. So if I focus on the B2C, sure there's like successful model in China that I learned from on the early days. I focus on B2C and worked. Yeah.

46:57But because China is 20 times the size. Yeah. And so you can still have a decent big company if you focus on that 10% of the market. But in Vietnam, the market is way smaller than China. So you have to focus on the big whales of Vietnam, which is the B2B transportation.

Quang Do

47:14Let's move on. You are building something new quickly for context what is happening to Logivan what's the current state there and how did you decide to now do what you do give us the quick.

Linh Pham

47:26Sure yeah so last year we were building AI agents for Logivan so you know like with transportation you have to send the orders and collect the paper document the proof of delivery for the customer so those are the two steps that are still very manual in the industry indry or even within our company the create order step and the collect documents the approve delivery step and so we built the AI agents to automate this step so now clients don't have to go on the app and put on orders or set they just need to send emails like they normally do with other vendors or they send it through Zalo that is the typical way right and so this step doesn't have to be like having a person to manually enter data into the TMS system anymore. The AI agent will just pick up the information and input into the TMS. And likewise, when the shipment is finished, you have the proof of delivery, which is still an actual paper in Vietnam. Instead of people have to manually upload this document into the TMS to the right shipment. There's thousand of shipments. The AI agent will do that automatically from Zalo when the driver take a screenshot of the POD. So these are the two kind of traditional still heavily manual step in the process of booking orders to completing the shipment and getting paid.

48:51We automated with AI agents and then we started thinking okay now they're you know looking at the bigger logistics picture logistics is so big trucking is only one part of logistics outside of logist outside of trucking there's customs compliance there's freight forwarding international transportation there's housing so in those also these big areas what can the AI agents do effectively. And so we had to find the most useful use cases in those areas to tackle. And that came the idea of FreightPilot.AI where the AI agents can help you spot errors in your import export documentation set and also form the custom declarations for you automatically. So for people that are outside of logistics, they probably think what are these and why do you even need to do this? But this step is a very important step in international logistics without the document checking without the HS code custom compliance your shipment will get stuck at customs and then there will be delays to your production your supply chain and that could cost millions of dollars if all of the factory doesn't have raw materials to process or to make the product because they lack they lack materials.

Quang Do

50:24So how long have you been building this now?

Linh Pham

50:27So we've been building this full-time for the last six seven months and we actually we are in pilot with the big logistics companies to roll this out but obviously there's a lot of technical challenges coming along the way as well with the AI models constantly changing every month. So you need fine-tuning engineers to fine-tune the model and to break down the problem small enough for the micro agent to be able to solve it effectively without hallucinations.

Quang Do

51:00No, super exciting. I think it would be interesting to follow up with another episode in the future once you know you purpose for a while. Would love to move a little bit into your personal lessons of you building and my question is you know what has building now two companies in Vietnam taught you about yourself as a entrepreneur as a leader as a person as a you know female leader any personal lessons you had.

Linh Pham

51:25The lessons in Vietnam as we mentioned earlier is Vietnam is very hierarchical so being I think age I think gender is not so much of an issue in Vietnam because actually Vietnam is quite a rare egg situation where there's a lot of businesses run by women. Yep. A lot of Vietnamese entrepreneurs. So, people are used to it. It's not as like in other country where the majority is still is men do male-dominated. But age is a problem in Vietnam. So, when I started I was 23 and at the time hiring people who were 33 or 40 were like a big challenge. They feel like they have more experience than me, which is true. And they've always done it like this, which is true. But when you build a tech company, you need to do it differently. Is when our opinion clash and the older hires were, you know, very confident about the way that they would want to build, but ultimately they don't have skin in the game as I do. It's my business. And so I had.

Quang Do

52:35You're the boss in the end.

Linh Pham

52:37No, at the time it's is it's tough to establish authority with people who are like 20 years older than you and has infinitely more experience than you in traditional logistics space. But now it's getting better because after like eight or nine years, right now hiring people who are 10 years older than me is not a problem because I already have almost 10 years of experience in this space. So it's more of an equal kind of relationship now. And yeah I think that is the big part in like being a leader in Vietnam you have to establish authority and it's by in order to do that you need to have the relevant experience. So I think I've acquired that over the last by nearly 10 years and now it has enough time to compound as in my experience and the brand name.

Quang Do

53:34I think one interesting element there and for our listeners who don't speak Vietnamese it's very embedded in the language as well. There's this implicit hierarchy and how we speak to each other. Exactly. So if you're 23 and you deal with a 30 plus year old person Yeah. Your pronouns and how you refer to yourself will always make you smaller and younger than you versus you say em. Right. Yeah. And so that actually makes it probably harder implicitly very subconsciously to be the boss or exactly right. For people who are used to being addressed as the older form, right? Yes. So it's very embedded also in language and that of course with downstream into how you think about hier hierarchies and you you're supposed to be much more polite. M to older people which makes it harder to then actually phrase a order or phrase a you know how they should be doing things giving a task or even you know giving you know the vision right so I think that's something I just realized that.

Linh Pham

54:39Yeah and subconsciously now when people join my company now even though they are older than me slightly older like maybe I'm 33 32 now they are 38 for example they don't refer to themselves as em to me anymore like 10 years ago they would okay now they refer to me as the boss, the sếp, right and then they say like their name or mình instead of em but 10 years ago it's a different story yes I like they would refer to me as em or, you know, I would call them anh chị or something but now I just call them by like name yeah.

Quang Do

55:18Okay I think that helps actually.

Linh Pham

55:19And it's a small difference, but it I think it makes a big difference because I don't know what changed though. Maybe it's my experience, my age, but they also changed the way that I didn't initiate it though, but they changed the way they address themselves and address me than 10 years ago. Maybe because I look bit.

Quang Do

55:36I would think that might be the case because at 20 something Yeah. Especially Asian genes, you know, we do look very young. So you might seem like very young, right? It's hard to switch to addressing you know no more neutrally. Yeah. Whereas now you have more of a maturity you know come across very strong expertise. So that helps progress.

Linh Pham

55:59Right. And maybe the gap between 30 and 40 is not as big as 20. Right. Exactly. Yeah. When I look at the you know people in their 20s right now I still think like that like so that reversed like I shouldn't have this stereotype but I felt like oh these kids are like way too young to build business.

Quang Do

56:16Yeah. How did you know everything that happened in your life, experiences, academics, college, building business, how has that shaped your thinking about success and ambition, you know, like you touched on it that you know you wanted to become professor that was for you maybe the peak success. Now you're in the entrepreneurial world. Peak success here looks of course different you know. So how has that changed for you that that notion of success?

Linh Pham

56:42I think people when they think of entrepreneurship they think it's like kind of glamour or like you know earning a lot of money this kind of things and I thought of that I like 10 years ago I thought of entrepreneurship like that but actually after being in entrepreneurship it is a lot tougher than it looks and so for me success is now about not giving up it's about continue building on what we have being resilient consistent every Okay. Rather than having like an overnight success or like having a big fundraising round that was that used to be like what the you know when I was young I used to chase those kind of things but now I chase sustainability. I chase resilience. I chase like consistency. So I chase you know contracts that are for the long term and profitable rather than okay shortterm let's get this contract but it's not making much money but it looks kind of good right it increase the numbers so these kind of things has changed so definitely focus on the long-term I have focused more on the long term now I guess that's coming with maturity as well.

Quang Do

57:54It's very similar to me actually and a lot of people that I we get into our 30s, you know, that notion of success just changes drastically. Exactly. As we get wiser, you know, and we have chased what has been considered successful in the past, right? And when you're young, you just want to prove yourself, right? Right. And you're just trying to chase the traditional markers of success and I just had the stage with seeing as well where, you know, once you maybe also get to a level but also to a certain age, right? Then you go one level deeper and get more to the subsets of it, right? And you see a lot of the traditional markers of success don't matter that much anymore, right? And for those that actually have accomplished them, we actually now chase for the more substantive core orbit.

Linh Pham

58:46Yes. Right. And I'm actually like really happy to like join any kind of logistics industry or conferences where you know people would know me. And I think just being known in that circle of logistics professionals is really rewarding for me because it because the brand has been around and it has time to compound and now people recognize you because of what you do. I think that I'm happy about it rather than oh I'm known for the girl that fundraised this amount. Like I don't think it's as rewarding as say oh this is the girl that you know you know run logistics and like help truckers to get you know load on the way back. It's way more rewarding for me.

Quang Do

59:30On the topic of success, you know, if you look 10, 15, 20 years ahead, you know, what kind of impact didn't you want to have achieved with maybe you as a person, but also with your business? 10, 20 years.

Linh Pham

59:48Yeah, that's a little reflection. But I would be I would want to be, you know, one of the builders that can help export Vietnam's you know, software to the world to global. And I really admire FPT because even though their business is outsourcing but still they managed to go global and you know provided Vietnam with that kind of special export that Vietnam is known for you know physical goods export but what if we could become more like Taiwan where we can export more high value goods and also software that would mean so much to me if I were the early participants the you know one of the you know key players in that space that would be so rewarding for me and I think in the next 10 to 20 years is a good time to do it.

Quang Do

1:00:48Yeah. Yeah. And then 10 to 20 years. I think I know the answer to this. But let me ask you still. You think you go much deeper into logistics than and freight or is your mind also open to other directions potentially?

Linh Pham

1:01:04I'm also open for other opportunities as well. But right now I'm just so deep in freight and I can't just imagine doing you know other things. Maybe I can open a matcha bar. Who knows? I like matcha and also like hanging out with people. So that could be some side thing that I do. But the thing that I'm really focused on right now is how to solve the inefficiencies of the logistics and freight you know global because it's a lot of inefficiencies right now. With actually almost 60% of people's time is just checking documents and solving customs problems. When the shipment gets stuck at the borders.

Quang Do

1:01:50And I think you already kind of pursue a new direction by marrying logistics and right with the current contemporary AI trend already right so you bring it together so this is actually a new learning for you anyway.

Linh Pham

1:02:05And actually AI agents the best the applications for it I'm not sure if it's like designing art or making poetry or doing the things that people actually like doing. I think AI should be automating the things that people hate doing like the all the manual documentation, all the manual classifications of products and forming the custom declarations to comply with the laws. I think those are the thing that we should use AI to remove or to enable us to you know enjoy more out of life and I think that's a perfect use case of AI because now AI is just doing all the fancy things like building [unclear] videos or you know Tik Tok reels this kind of things which is also useful in a way for content creators and marketing teams but I think That's the fun part of life, right? The arts and the poetry and the, you know, relationships. Why use AI to do it? We should use AI to do the boring part like logistics.

Quang Do

1:03:18Yeah. Yeah. How do you incorporate AI personally in your personal workflow and productivity?

Linh Pham

1:03:25That's a great question. I still reply to my emails manually. Yeah, actually email AI agent for email is the hardest thing to crack right now. I believe even customer service that is why there's still so much money venture capital money into building customer service AI agent is because it's such a tough problem to crack with so many edge cases. But the problem that we are solving is also kind of tough but it's kind of manual is repetitive it's predictable. So these kind of thing we are using AI to build. It's not as difficult as the human side that the AI is trying to solve. So I feel like we are building in a much better space and much more meaningful if the AI were to you know be adopted widely.

Quang Do

1:04:16What are some of your productivity philosophies? You know how do you spend the day? How you stay efficient? How do you be efficient? How do you work?

Linh Pham

1:04:24I don't think I'm very productive and efficient even though I'm always driven by these things but recently as you said when we turn 30 priorities shift maybe being efficient is not the most important thing in life. So I just you know I don't think I'm even productive now every day I manage I have to do exercise that's a must like yoga and then running or swimming in the afternoon. And then I really focus for a few hours per day on building like or figuring out like marketing things for the products. And because our team is right now quite global. So our tech team is in London and also in France as well. And so the time scale but I have to work is like towards you know late evenings as well. And so yeah, I don't think I'm the most efficient or productive person right now. But I think, you know, getting things done and feeling good about it, making progress every day is what I care about.

Quang Do

1:05:34How do you get things done? How do you manage your task? You know, how do you prioritize?

Linh Pham

1:05:39How do I manage the task? So because right now FreightPilot.AI is still super early stage venture. Logivan is more established and is run by a capable team. So I don't have you know a lot of like you know priorities or tasks coming from Logivan right now. But for FreightPilot.AI is a lot a lot about it is still doing outreach to people. So for that I do use a bit of help from AI terms of right now we are experimenting with Reddit and LinkedIn and so yeah but the market for but the community on LinkedIn and on Reddit is quite condensed. So being active in that community is very good for FreightPilot.AI.

Quang Do

1:06:28Do you have a system to structure your tasks? Do you know pen and paper?

Linh Pham

1:06:33Pen and paper.

Quang Do

1:06:34Very great. Okay. Yes. Sorry, I didn't know that. What you wanted to.

Linh Pham

1:06:38Yeah, I'm often pen and paper for me. I tried some cool AI thing recently, but it's just assigning me more tasks which I don't need. I just need a pen and paper like the top three or five things to do each day and after that I just after I accomplish this task, I would just go for a run or swim.

Quang Do

1:06:59Yeah. Yeah. I'm very similar actually. Yeah. Tried many things, notion and stuff, you know. Yeah. But in the end, going back to the basics that it helped the memory as well and it's right in front of your face. Yeah. And it forces you to prioritize because you have to physically write it out. So you're more mindful to write something that you know you it stays there forever, right? You actually have to do it and it stashs at you. So yeah. Cool. Maybe a final question, you know, if you could go back to your younger self, say 18 year old, maybe right before Cambridge, you know, what would you tell her or you done everything right and just say yeah?

Linh Pham

1:07:35No, I've not got everything right. But I just don't feel like I want to change things because now you think back there's a lot of weird things that we did, but that brought us to the right direction, but we didn't know it was right. Right. We just did it, but it felt chaotic. But then now you think oh that makes sense because I joined this and did this then that brought me to know this person and brought me to this idea. Yeah it's about if I change any part of it maybe I would have not have met my co-founder maybe I would not have met my investor or you know my 10x engineer so I don't think I can change it.

Quang Do

1:08:15Yeah, less in terms of changing but more in terms of just what would you tell her? Maybe if it's not changing, is there something you would encourage to persevere through? Is it is there something you know where you were overconfident and you say, "Hey, be careful there."

Linh Pham

1:08:35True. Yes, totally. I would say be kind of more be kind of less overconfident about your ability to execute in Vietnam because in Vietnam there's all sorts of different challenges that we mentioned in the podcast and had we just be more careful and be slower, try to move slower so that we can move further rather than going really fast now and it can break you. Right. So if we had gone slower and just figure out kind of it takes time at the start to figure out who might be your target customer your how the product should be like look like or so those things we would not rush because the rush like hustle mentality was too much at the beginning though we made a bunch of mistakes that costed us the money and so if we were to wind back I would say go slower figure things step by step first and then scale from there rather than try to scale at the very start.

Quang Do

1:09:41I love that very make deliberate moves and be you know mindful of each much more.

Linh Pham

1:09:47And be careful of the hype as well. There's a lot of hype so try to not spread yourself too thin because there's just a lot of like the hype. Now it's AI hype but before it was like I don't know what hype was like the internet hype tech hype maybe so everything is a little bit hyped up and so you have to see through it to find the actual value that what are you actually providing the value to your client or this just sounds cool but does it actually provide value to client and people are willing to pay premium amount for it.

Quang Do

1:10:22Yeah. Very final question how can members and people follow your work connect with you where do they find you?

Linh Pham

1:10:29LinkedIn or emails. Yeah.

Quang Do

1:10:32Okay. Thank you so much a lot of insights. Love to hear your story and I hope we do it another time when you have built you know the new business upturn level, right? Thank you so much.