Leaving big tech for belonging: creating Podium.

Mai Vo

0:00I will say that entrepreneurship is also glorified. It's really not all that. It seems to go all in, and so if you have a good job, like don't quit right away. There are many things to consider as you know, right before you jump into full-time entrepreneurship. I realized there was no place where I could go to not just work on my professional development in isolation. Not just make friends for a social setting in isolation, but find those peer groups that could almost do both.

Quang Do

0:31Mai, who are you, where are you from, and what is your current mission?

Mai Vo

0:37Well, thank you firstly for having me. I am a German-born Vietnamese, but not your typical German-born Vietnamese because I really see myself as someone who's consistently had to be in between a lot of cultures at the different stages of my life. So when I was seven, I actually left Germany. I moved to Egypt out of all places. Spent five years there, moved to Vietnam for another five years, and so have very strong roots there too. But then moved abroad again for university and work. And now I'm between Ho Chi Minh City and Singapore to places that I think are so rich in both my personal heritage and reconnecting with that. But also Singapore being like a global hub to do big things. And on the professional side, I spent most of my career in big tech. As you know, we were both at Google. We had some overlap there. I mostly spent my big tech career in London first. And then moved to Singapore. And upon moving there, realized that big tech wasn't quite for me anymore. And so joined the startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia, and now I'm building my own startup, bootstrapping it. Year two. So that's me.

Quang Do

1:48Give us the quick overview of your business.

Mai Vo

1:52So I'm building Podium. Which is a connection platform for modern women to find peer groups for navigating career transitions and life transitions. We really focus on women in their late twenties to forties, at which point so many different changes hit your life, whether you like it or not. You've been maybe working for a decade plus and you're thinking about building a family. You're thinking about having kids, even if you're not thinking about having kids, you have a declining egg count. What do you do with your fertility? And so many questions and decisions need to be made. And so we really build space for women to come together in person and find the peer groups to really motivate them, support them, and guide them through being the modern woman that they want. And currently we're based in Singapore. And I really see us in the human connection space, not just in like the women empowerment space. And we use a lot of, we try to use a lot of scalable systems and tech to facilitate in-person human connection and soon hopefully outside of Singapore as well.

Quang Do

2:55I love the clarity, the conviction, but I guess it hasn't been this much of a straight line until now. Let's go a little bit back. You've been to many places. Can you explain Germany, Egypt, Vietnam. Why did you move so much, so often?

Mai Vo

3:11So my family was following my father around for his work. And after being born in Germany and spending my initial years there as a German Vietnamese, he had to move to Egypt for his work. And so that's where I learned English. And I was seven at that point. So I would say my earliest childhood years were in Germany. And I still feel very familiar with German culture. I still have some understanding of it and I still understand the language, but I'm definitely not German because yeah. Age seven I started speaking more in English. Then age 12 moved to Vietnam, but I went to international school, so I think my connection and relationship to my Vietnamese identity has always been very interesting. I've always felt like I wasn't Vietnamese enough, but then yet I am Vietnamese because my mom made sure that we spoke it at home. She made us take lessons in the summer, which I hated her for, but I'm so proud of it now. I think for a few, I speak pretty good Vietnamese. So, yeah. All those places really shaped who I was in my early years. But also made me feel like I didn't fit in anywhere. And so that was interesting.

Quang Do

4:20And that's interesting because I think it kind of slowly led into what you're doing today as well, right? Tell us about your Google time a little bit in London, and then the move to Asia.

Mai Vo

4:30So I think wanting to work for a place like Google probably really came from wanting to impress my family and my dad, who was in corporates a lot. And of course when I first joined, first Samsung, when I started my career in 2014, and then Google in 2017, I think big tech was really in its glory days. It's still a very good place now, but back then, we had all the perks that you wanted. I was going on so many amazing personal development, leadership development trips and stuff with Google that the time in corporate set me up very well for whatever else I'm doing now. Wanting that big name on my CV and honestly going to first a Korean company where the culture was very hierarchical, very Korean, wanting that American big tech culture experience. Google was the perfect place. For the first few years, and I was always on the business side though. In marketing partnerships, doing work that on paper, I thought was very meaningful. And yes, it was very meaningful. But I think after five years at Google, I realized some of the systems and bureaucracy and politics and those were some of the things that I felt weren't as aligned with how I wanted to progress in my career.

5:49And that's why I ended up doing more of an entrepreneurship route.

Quang Do

5:55Big Tech, as you know, is an awesome place to work, especially in the early stages of your career. I think it's a very similar story to mine, actually. And that's why I'm just very curious. When did you think it started to come up from within where you thought, okay, there's more, and what was the turning point where you decided, okay, this is going to be it. I will be pursuing something else?

Mai Vo

6:17So, for me, it really started during COVID. And I think for many of us, COVID was a time where when you're stuck at home, you have many thoughts in your heads and you're left alone with them. You're really questioning what you want out of your life. And Google, yes, was an exceptional big company to work for. But I also, when the perks and some of the travels and the food were stripped away, I realized at the end of the day it is a big company, which, nothing wrong with working at a big company, but it comes with certain things that you need to deal with. Such as if I wanted to get things done, there's so many hoops to jump around. And so many approvals, and I felt like whatever I wanted to do just took so much time. So that was one reason why I had the push to leave. The other thing was, there was always a pull, and maybe this is the Vietnamese in me, but I always coming back to Vietnam, seeing my friends who I went to school with here as a teen. Start their own businesses, do their own things, hustle and I felt like I wanted to give that a try too. And so it was both a push and a pull. So the push of feeling like who I was and the way I wanted to work wasn't aligned with corporate world anymore. And the pull of wanting to try and do something and create something of my own that maybe solve one of my problems.

7:37That others could benefit from as well. And perhaps there was a little rebellion point as well where my dad was like corporate man and he did a lot of things and he started a lot of things, but always in a corporate context and I was, maybe I wanna do something a bit different. So those were some of the factors.

Quang Do

7:55For someone who is maybe now in corporate. Yeah. Kind of in between dreaming of this entrepreneurial life, but undecided, indecisive. What would you advise them and how did you make the decision for you?

Mai Vo

8:08So first of all, I will say that entrepreneurship is also glorified. It's really not all that. It seems to go all in. And so if you have a good job, don't quit right away. There are many things to consider right before you jump into full-time entrepreneurship. But I think some of the things are just looking at your career trajectory and looking at your bosses, do you wanna be them? And if not, maybe in some time you should think about other paths for you and for me as well, I just felt my learning curve in, especially at Google, in the first few years was really steep. And that was great, but at some point it started to plateau. And I think in a lot of the big companies these days, it's a lot flatter than it used to be. And so it can be harder for you to continue to get that speed of learning and speed of just exposing yourself to really different things, if you are staying in that role, in that environment. And so, I think ask yourself, are you learning the things you wanna learn? Are you headed in the direction that you want to with your career? And looking five years ahead, do you wanna be there? If not, don't quit right now unless you know it's really that bad, but just think about the steps you can take to get closer to entrepreneurship, starting a side thing or exposing yourself to more entrepreneurs and hearing how they did it.

Quang Do

9:36Are there things that you learned from your time at Google that you now can use and are beneficial?

Mai Vo

9:42Absolutely. So what I think Google helped me really excel at was Stakeholder management. At Google, whenever you work with, in any project, there's so many different teams you have to involve, right? And navigating building relationships with all of your different stakeholders who maybe want slightly different things and managing their expectations and managing your relationship with internal and external partners. I think that was really key to how I think about building my business as well. So that's one. The other thing is learning. What systems and structures look like at scale. I think if I was a fresh grad and I had jumped straight into entrepreneurship, then you might know what the next two steps are, but you won't be able to imagine what it's gonna be like when whatever you do takes off to a much bigger scale. And so I think seeing it at that scale and learning the rigor, the processes, the systems, and what it could look like, even though at the end of the day I felt limited by them. It's amazing to see, right. That helps so much in you, even at the early stages, being able to imagine how you could eventually get to that, not the Google scale, 'cause that's very, very big, but a bigger scale. So I think those are two of the main things that I really treasure from my time at Google and managing your brand because as with being at any big company, there is a lot of politics, there is a lot of dynamics at play and you just doing your work is not enough.

11:08You need to really build your personal brand because there's so many people. And that obviously helps if you're doing your own thing or even if you're just, even if you're working at a startup. So those are some of the things.

Quang Do

11:19That's so true. I heard from someone, a colleague at Google, he said, it's important what you do, but it's also important what people think you do. So it's always that game, whereas in a startup it's much more direct. It's really important what you do and outcome. Maybe inverse question on that, what are things that you had to unlearn from Google now running your own thing?

Mai Vo

11:38Things I had to unlearn. The first thing that comes to mind is interesting because at Google they tell you that you're operating in this context, but I now realize it's not quite. So one of the things, if you remember, from your time at Google, is they really want you to thrive in ambiguity. And now that I'm building my own thing, my definition of ambiguity is so different to what it was when I was at Google. Because when things are ambiguous at Google, you still have money to run research. You still have. Teams to support you and all of this. Whereas now thriving in ambiguity I know means honestly, just trusting your gut sometimes and leaning into that is something I really had to learn. Because I think being in a big corporate, it's not enough just for you to use your gut and say you wanna do something, you need to make a slide deck of all the different data points and things to validate why you think you wanna go in a certain direction, right? And I think carving your own path requires a little bit of conviction on the trust that you have in your own instinct. And that actually does come with a lot of data. 'cause it comes with your lived experience. Just maybe you don't have it on a spreadsheet or a Google slide. Right? So that's one of the things I had to learn. And unlearn always having a million data points to back what I wanted to do because if that was the case, I would be nowhere with my startup.

Quang Do

13:02I call this actionable information. You sometimes just need 75-80%. It's good enough that the chance that this decision is good is good enough. And you have to move because if you are in a style, overthink, over-analyze, analysis paralysis. Then you don't get anywhere.

Mai Vo

13:20Actually, totally. Pace really matters.

Quang Do

13:23Walk us through the ideation of Podium. When did it start while you were at Google and when did you feel this is really needed?

Mai Vo

13:32So while I was at Google, I knew I wanted to do something of my own for women in Southeast Asia, but I didn't know it was Podium. At the time I thought maybe it would be something in the women's health space or hormonal health. But it wasn't until I left Google and joined a startup for 12 months. They were a seed stage startup in a really proper zero to one phase. And I saw them find product market fit. And I think that built more conviction on me wanting to go on that journey. But it really started because I had left corporate as a woman in my thirties changing my career and realizing that my friends were all still in corporate. So where are the people that I could look towards to really motivate me and also just walk alongside me for paths like entrepreneurship. And not only that, but at that point in my life, I was getting married and entering a new life stage. And I realized as a woman and a man, of course, we all go through so many different things in our lives, and maybe our existing professional networks or social circles are not as relevant for some of those things. And so I myself was seeking that new community, and that's how Podium was born because I realized there was no place where I could go to not just work on my professional development in isolation.

14:55And not just make friends for a social setting in isolation, but find those peer groups that could almost do both. Depending on the day, they could understand me at an entrepreneurial level. But also at a life stage level as well. And so that's also how when I met my co-founder through the network of the startup that I worked at, we decided to just try and start some events and get some women together to talk about these topics that were really front of mind for us, but we didn't have space to navigate with our existing circles. And that's eventually how Podium was born.

Quang Do

15:36What was the hardest part about going from idea and zero to, what it is now, to one?

Mai Vo

15:42The hardest part. There's so many hard parts, but one of the hardest parts was managing the expectations of my family. And maybe this goes back to being in a traditional Vietnamese family, even though my parents spend a lot of time abroad. Of course you wanna make your parents proud and you're obligated to repay them in some way for all the things they've invested in your education, right? And it did feel a little bit scary to give up big names and a lot of money to try and build something that, who knows if it's gonna work or not. So that was one hard thing on a personal level.

Quang Do

16:18How did they react?

Mai Vo

16:19So, better than I thought. Which maybe is another thing. Even though our parents don't talk about some of these things to us, if we open the conversations, sometimes we can be surprised at how supportive they are of us at this stage in our life. So I managed to tackle it eventually, but even that, internal fear before talking to them, before telling them. I did spend some energy on, so that was hard. I'll be honest. And the second thing I would say was building the community to shortcut some of the learnings, because all my friends for a long time were Googlers. They were corporate people. Nothing wrong with that. I still love them. I still see them to this day. But I had to rebuild that community for myself. And it did help that my business also helped me rebuild that community for myself, but it took some time. Because I think people tend to stick to groups that they come across through work or you just hang out with people who are like you a lot of the time. And so I had to really go out there and cold outreach, do DMs on LinkedIn, like you. To find people who could guide me and support me and I could support them in return to build something of my own.

17:35Those are two things that come to mind. How was it for you?

Quang Do

17:41Similar. I think they're similar, two points, but probably on a lower scale because, I manage my parents quite well. And I don't fill them in on everything. I give them very selective insight into my life. And then in a very positive and selective way. So they don't get to see a lot of the stuff that I go through actually. And I don't share with them too much about the things that are maybe more downwards. So they always think my life is sunshine and shiny, and I'm always in control of my life. And so I actually revealed this quite. Late when I was a few months into the journey. It was also the time when I got married as well. And so I brought in my family a very trustworthy, competent wife, who is Vietnamese, which my parents loved. She is also very good in being very polite and handling the, you know, how to manage Vietnamese parents. And so the level of trust at the baseline was very high. And so I feel now also in my thirties, I can do almost whatever I want. But it was a bit of a journey. It took the Google stint as well. Me being in Singapore versus now in Vietnam.

18:57To build that trust. I think If I would've gone from Germany straight to Vietnam entrepreneurship, they would've been very anti. But I had the Singapore Google, and now I did the move and it felt very deliberate from my end at least. And so now they're very trusting and I do fill them in now on how it's growing and traction. So I would say I'm good in managing that. But I do hear from a lot of other Vietnamese similar issues with pursuing your dreams, pursuing your entrepreneurial dreams. And their parents of course, then will object to that. So we gotta manage it. Gotta manage it.

Mai Vo

19:36But actually you raised a good point. I think I also brought it up at a time when I was getting married. And so that helped a lot. That part of life at least. If I wasn't getting married, especially as a daughter, my parents would've been freaking out. But because they knew. I would have a plan B to support me financially or whatever it is, and that at least one area of my life was sorted. I think that helped a lot. So it's a good point you raised as well of that does matter actually.

Quang Do

20:05And you managed it very well. You timed it in that way.

Mai Vo

20:08I just did it, and it luckily was also at a time when both things work.

Quang Do

20:13How do they feel about this now? Entrepreneurship?

Mai Vo

20:16They're very proud, I think. But, between us I don't think as proud as when I worked at Google because they don't really understand what my business does. 'Cause it's so new. Like the human connection space, the community space. It's like an NGO, right? You do it for fun.

Quang Do

20:33Even not our parents don't get it. Not because our generation don't really understand the business behind it. Good time to quickly talk through Podium. What is it? And how do you run it?

Mai Vo

20:44So we call ourselves a platform. But we do run an membership. Where you pay quarterly or annually to access in-person experiences. And usually those are very intimate. So we realize that with all of this social media and everything these days, actually what a lot of us in big cities who are working and very busy and very ambitious, are lacking, are opportunities to connect at an intimate level with other people who are our peers. And so our events are very small, usually seven women around a table. We discuss a topic like money mindset, which can be tackled both from a professional or a personal angle. Or we tackle topics like career change in the age of AI or parenthood and career. How do you navigate motherhood? So topics that really demand a lot of our time, energy, and space, but we don't always get to make it in our day-to-day life. Bringing those topics to your friends, maybe sometimes they're not in the mood. You're just hanging out, having drinks. And you can't bring your full self to those topics, if you only discuss them in a professional context, say. And so we really create space for that. So that's one part of it.

22:03And we also host retreats actually. For women currently living in Singapore, to get away and do some personal development, really recharge their batteries and connect with each other. And we've hosted a few retreats before and people come back still wanting to see each other. You know, every month. And I'm just amazed because a lot of these women are very different. And I think that's key. Building this peer group that's very different, but also relevant for you. So that's what we do.

Quang Do

22:32That's wonderful. How do you measure success at Podium? You know, community is always a bit- the human side and more emotional side as well. How do you measure it?

Mai Vo

22:41So we take a lot of feedback. And I know we have a lot of impact. And that impact is initially how I measured success. Are we shifting someone's perspective on a fundamental topic in their life? Are we allowing them to make progress on something in their life? By offering them a chance to connect with other peers? But also just emotionally, I know some of these women really don't make enough time for themselves and being a space where you can come and take your mask off, right? Because we're all performing at work and in life and sometimes it gets exhausting. Work can be just real with some of the things we're dealing with and also celebrate the wins with people who are not jealous. Don't have any agenda with us. I know that it's a valuable space for women to keep finding motivation and inspiration to be the woman that they want. And I think men should have this space too, by the way. I don't think it's just women. And we should have mixed gender spaces. I think OV is a brilliant example of that. But we also need single gender spaces because some of the things we deal with are so particular to our gender.

23:58You know, your egg count declining. And thinking about, you know, you're also thinking about parenthood, but in a different lens.

Quang Do

24:03I naturally gravitate to talking to men just because it's more relatable. Just because we are from the same gender. Back to that question with measuring, I think that's something I think about as well a lot, just because I'm running a community as well. It's just very qualitative. And it's very hard to measure it quantitatively. We do measure, of course, everything that a business does. Monthly revenue, you know, return everything, but in the end it's really quality of connection. And I always try to frame OV to people that ask, what's the benefit of joining? The value of a network is always the network. Meaning quality of the people and connections. And the ways for you to be able to connect with them. The end metric is quality connections made through the community that you wouldn't have not made anywhere else. Right. Yeah. That's how I try to measure it. And then the outcomes from their jobs, which is very tangible. Yeah. Next step, maybe co-founders. Maybe even friendships. Some relationships sometimes. But it's downstream from you being the enabler and being the matchmaker. Yeah. Building the most conducive environment and place with curated people who naturally fit invariably, right. For us, it's the heritage cultural Vietnamese part. Yeah. For you, it's the women part, right.

25:25Yeah. This is something I feel a lot of people or other entrepreneurs don't understand about the community space. It's actually more qualitative. Leaning more subjective. Yeah.

Mai Vo

25:34Yes. In some ways, but there are tangible outcomes as well, right. I want to say this, so people understand that what we do has a lot of value. It's just measured very differently than SaaS. Yeah. You're right, same as you. We track our retention, monthly active, all of that. But what really matters in the community is sometimes those lagging metrics- like they found a new housemate, they've got a new job, like you said.

Quang Do

26:06Yeah. You focus on women founders. What are some lessons you’ve learned from leading, empowering, and connecting women, especially?

Mai Vo

26:16Yeah. This one I would say is universal for everyone. It goes back to that point of having a peer group. I realized that so many of us probably know what we want to do deep down inside. But we need the courage and support network to do it. Putting yourself in the right environment, where others recommend content and resources for you, is vital to being the person you want to be. That applies for both women and men. For us, we've seen people who went on a career break, got a new job, started a passion project while and after they started coming to our community. That's because other people gave them that energy. Humans are social creatures. If we only are in the environments we're trying to leave and don't put ourselves in new or different environments, we won't change and won't make different choices. That is a big learning so far: it's about who you're around.

Quang Do

27:21Any surprising or counterintuitive lessons learned from building community? For a fellow community builder?

Mai Vo

27:29A lot of people, especially if you want to do this as a business. Firstly, I believe in doing this as a business because it ensures you deliver consistently. You deliver in a way that enables you to remain sustainable. And not be one of those communities that goes up fast and then dies.

Quang Do

27:53100% agree.

Mai Vo

27:54I believe in doing it as a business for those reasons. One thing I've learned is to start by doing the non-scalable things. And test those. Then learn what the principles and playbooks are, and try to do it scalably once you have that. But going straight to only doing things at scale. We would've never done in-person events. But now we know they are what for us, in the context we operate, moves the needle on women feeling more connected, empowered, all of this, and we found ways to scale it. For example, women in the community are hosts now. I'm not hosting the dinners anymore, even though at the beginning I hosted 65 events last year. That is so unscalable, right. But it had to happen that way.

Quang Do

28:39More than one a week.

Mai Vo

28:40Yeah. It was intense. But without doing that, I wouldn't have built the playbook for our hosts today. Doing things unscalably is counterintuitive, but maybe that's what enables you to scale.

Quang Do

28:56On that point, what drives you and what should be the reasons for someone to start a community. It doesn't seem purely money, right.

Mai Vo

29:07For me personally, there is a lot of purpose in this. That goes back to who I was as a person, always needing to find belonging and always being in between places. It's so fulfilling to now be able to use that and turn it into a strength of bridging different groups of people. I'm sure it's the same for you being a community builder. You shouldn't only build a community of people who are exactly the same. Try to bridge, and so for me. Yeah. That was one thing that really helped.

Quang Do

29:38Yeah. I realized when I was connecting with a lot of people, I would call myself a natural connector. I'm just super curious. About other Việt Kiều and other overseas Vietnamese out there. Yeah. I grew up with not many other Vietnamese. Whenever I found one, which was not that often, we instantly connected because I was trying to build that relationship more deliberately with that person. Yeah. That's OV at scale. Yeah. We are this bunch of Việt Kiều who might not have such a strong link to each other. Maybe a lot of us succeeded in isolation. Yeah. We had maybe a handful of friends, but we know there are so many out there. That's what OV's trying to capture. It feels very natural to me. What I would say for community builders, this is very similar to your drive, is to build a community around what matters to you. And who you are. This community is always very identity-based. I meet a lot of people who try to build communities with cool ideas for entrepreneurs and so on. But the question is, are you an excited entrepreneur? Are you a successful entrepreneur already yourself? I think that's very important to be your own core member and target member as well.

31:00I would say that's a very important requisite. The idea alone cannot stand alone. You have to be. Purpose-driven and passionate enough to build a community of your own people as well.

Mai Vo

31:17That's so important. That's what I see is the difference between a failing and a community builder that persists and perseveres. And I think when you are your own target audience, which was also my case, you are solving your problem, so you are deeply connected and you understand at another level. You're able to make sure that you keep solving for the right things.

Quang Do

31:46Yeah. I'm with you completely. Yeah. Zooming out 10 years. What impact do you hope to have driven or built with Podium?

Mai Vo

31:56I would love us to become a global community and membership. Because I think for women who want to live modern lives, it helps to go outside their cultural context. To see what's possible. I would love to build a sustainable business so this can go on for the next 10 years. And connect thousands, if not more, women who want to live intentionally, be successful in their career, but also know the value of being very present in their own life. That's the vision, I guess. On a personal level, I hope to grow into that woman myself. I would love to be a peer among my community members so we can grow together. It sounds cheesy when I say it, but it's really true. When I look at the next decade, when I enter new chapters, hopefully motherhood soon, things like that. I want to take the community along with me and provide more value for members who have that lens.

Quang Do

33:05Has your Vietnamese heritage shaped how you lead and build your company?

Mai Vo

33:10Yes, definitely. I think that especially spending more time in Vietnam after being in Europe where everything is more structured or even Singapore, right. I am embracing my creative problem-solving side and my scrappy, proactive side because in Vietnam, you have to get ahead of things to make things happen. You can't just wait for things in the process to come. It's helped me with speed, for sure in building my business and just getting on with the next step. The other thing is, because Vietnamese culture and language is so contextual, I used to be a more direct communicator compared to the communication and leadership style here. I've learned to add more nuance and context and understand that more now that I am building as a Vietnamese founder and trying to make that my strength and bring the things I've been exposed to in my upbringing that come naturally to me to come out more. Sometimes growing up in Europe, you fit into the more structured things and everything is set.

34:27I really enjoyed coming back to this side of myself as a builder.

Quang Do

34:30This one is for OV. If you could give one message to Vietnamese women worldwide, in your generation or the younger ones, what would it be going through everything that you went through?

Mai Vo

34:44I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but find those peers that really push you forward. And not only push you forward, but are also there for you when you need them. And just build that support system, right. It can be people a few steps ahead, but finding others going through similar things. I sound like a broken record, like I said, but for me, it's been life-changing. And I know that with communities like OV, there are so many avenues for us to do that these days. There's no excuse for you feeling you can't do something because the people around you aren't doing it. You will find groups of people doing whatever you want to do. It's the beauty of us living a more globalized life. Go out there and find those people.

Quang Do

35:31Perfect. How can people learn more about Podium, learn more about you, and stay connected with you?

Mai Vo

35:37Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. All the Podium stuff is on there as well, but on a personal level, I'm always up for meeting people of Vietnamese heritage who want to build something global and something for Vietnam as well. I would say LinkedIn.

Quang Do

35:56Thank you so much, Mai.