From Harvard Business School to a Vietnam startup.

Quang Do

0:00Welcome to OV Career Stories, where we tell the remarkable and diverse stories of Vietnamese professionals worldwide to help inspire the next generation of us. I'm your host Quang, the founder of the Overseas Vietnamese community. Let's jump right in. Hi Robert, tell us a bit about yourself.

Robert Huynh

0:15Hi, I'm Robert, it's great to meet everyone. I'm Vietnamese American. I grew up in the US, and after going to school in Texas, where I grew up, I decided to start my career at Microsoft. Spent about four years there before going on to Google, and after fully vesting my stock options there, went off to Harvard Business School and eventually decided to leave early to move to Vietnam and finally start my entrepreneurial dreams. Here I am three years later.

Quang Do

0:43Love it. So I would love to talk about your entrepreneurial journey in a bit, but let's start in the beginning. Can you tell us a bit more about your early life and upbringing in the US? How did it shape who you are today?

Robert Huynh

0:55Yeah, so I come from boat people. My family moved from Vietnam to the US after the war, and like many others I grew up in one of the three big areas in the US. I mean, it's got to be Houston, Orange County or San Jose. Our family just relocated to Houston, but very quickly afterwards we made our way down to the border of Mexico. So I had this really interesting upbringing where I had this, like, mixed identity of being Vietnamese but brought up on the Mexican border, one kilometer north of Mexico. And so for me, identity has always been a big thing that's been on my mind. I also grew up, like many other Vietnamese Americans, in a nail salon. I am still haunted by the smell of acetone in my nose every single time I walk into a nail salon. But you know, my parents really moved over from Vietnam to give my sister and myself a better life, and for them that meant doing whatever it took. We really spent a lot of time just trying to grasp at every single opportunity. And so I would say that my upbringing is very much shaped by that scarcity mindset of never having enough opportunity, never having enough food on the table and not really having a bright path on what we can follow.

2:18It has really pushed me to seek out the light in any single situation that I've been put into.

Quang Do

2:25And tell us a bit about your educational journey. Where did you go to school and what did you study?

Robert Huynh

2:31Yep. So for me, I had gone to, you know, elementary school in Houston, but really by the end of elementary, middle school, high school, I did all that on the border of Mexico, Laredo, Texas. So in Laredo, we had never really thought about going to higher education. I was the first person in my family to go to college, but the choice wasn't as clear back then. I think back then it's like, hey, you know, there are jobs that you can take that pay you $25 an hour, and that's awesome, dude. My family had moved on from owning a nail salon to really starting our frozen yogurt empire. We opened up a frozen yogurt shop and expanded along the South Texas area, and the choices between, like, hey, actually this yogurt shop is doing really well, or hey, I can be a dental hygienist or a dental assistant. Like, these are great jobs that I can get right out of high school, why do I need to go to college? I think for me, going to, you know, the local universities in Laredo, like Laredo Community College, was really, like, some of the thoughts that we had at that time. I ended up getting a full scholarship to University of Texas at Austin, and even then it was like, I don't know, what's the point of going to this college thing? We haven't seen anyone really go to higher education.

3:51So for me, I think I have a lot to thank my counselor and the people around me that really encouraged me to start thinking about, hey, well, maybe higher education can open up these new opportunities for you. And once I did get to college, that scarcity mindset kicked in again, dude. Like, I ended up doing three exchange programs. I did a summer in Paris, Hong Kong, a full semester in India. I did, like, eight different internships. I joined, like, every single club available and took on leadership roles, just because, like, I didn't know what I wanted to do, dude. I wanted to go out there and try everything, because every single opportunity was so precious that I had to make the most of all the sacrifices that my parents made to give me and my sister this opportunity. And so I think from an educational perspective, I think that was really important to recognize that I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And by the time I did get to college, I think you get wrapped up in the meta, and at that time it was like, you know, you're either going to go down the ABCs of accounting, banking or consulting, or something like that. And I think along that line I realized, like, okay, well, maybe the entrepreneurial dreams that we had... We were operating a small business when we were in high school, opening up this frozen yogurt shop, and even before that my mom had gone on and done a ton of stuff, from not just, you know, opening nail shops, but then opening a chain of nail shops or nail supplies and expanding from there.

5:18And I think once you get to college, the more traditional paths start to emerge, and like a good student, you know, I decided, okay, well, this is what I got to do, right? Like, I've been playing Pokémon, and Pokémon Gold is probably one of my favorite games ever. You got to go from a level one Squirtle all the way to level 100 Blastoise, and there's a very clear career path. You stop thinking about what you need to do and you just kind of follow the sequence in front of you. So that's what I did.

Quang Do

5:52How much was this driven by your entrepreneurial parents? Because I also know for myself, my parents, they run a restaurant and they were entrepreneurs from always, they never knew any other life, but they always wanted for me to go into higher education and follow the more traditional path. How was it for you when you saw your parents actually succeed entrepreneurially? Did they, where would they be okay for you to follow that path as well, or did they push you more towards the more traditional system?

Robert Huynh

6:24Yeah, dude, I think I had the exact same experience. I think for them, entrepreneurship is all they knew, and also they're kind of forced to be entrepreneurs. They have to hustle because they don't have the skill sets that, you know, corporate America talks about, right? They didn't go down these more traditional paths, and they don't look like everyone else in this nation. And so I think for them, they had to make their own path. So entrepreneurs out of necessity is what I would say. And I think they found this really awesome niche where they were able to thrive and survive in, and give us that opportunity. So they didn't want that for us. They wanted us to go and do what everyone else is doing, kind of follow the meta, if you will. So I think they were quite happy when I decided to graduate and go into, like, a really big corporation. Microsoft, everyone had heard of Microsoft, and I was placed into this small leadership program where they would rotate us through different roles. I'm very thankful for that opportunity, because I got to see all these different functions, from finance, operations, sales, strategy. I even spent time working in Beijing and picked up Chinese. Like, it was just amazing to have this awesome opportunity to see, like, what else is out there. But I think more importantly is seeing what is a good manager. I think that was probably one of the biggest things that program gave me, is the opportunity to see how many different people could lead, and not all leaders look the same.

7:44So going down that route of continuing to climb the corporate ladder... I mean, like, when you start at a big company like Microsoft, they put you on, like, level 58 or 59 or something like that, and I was like, oh my god, dude, I just got to follow these steps and I'll make it to 60, to 61, and it all goes up to, like, I think, like, level 70 or 80. Literally, we were Pokémon. And so for me, that was really appealing. It took me four years of staying there before I realized, like, wait, actually, maybe I should try and do something else. And that's what led me to the Bay Area. I decided, like, you know what, I love being in Seattle, it's my comfort zone, but I wanted to see what other companies were doing. And for me, while I was a big gamer, and that's what drew me to Microsoft originally, they had Xbox, and I did one of my first roles at Xbox, I saw that, wow, Google is a place I really admire and respect. And so I decided to join the corporate strategy team there. So we're in a small CFO SWAT team type of situation, and it was awesome to see all parts of the company. But I'd always been doing a bit of programming, and I always loved the more technical engineering side of things, and the company was so supportive that they helped me make a transfer over.

9:01And so I decided to go into the more technical ladders at the company, and that was really amazing. I loved how supportive they were. Fast forward, though, after spending another, you know, four years at Alphabet, I decided, like, hey, I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I spent so much time climbing these corporate ladders that... Actually, I really admire and respect what my parents have done, going down the entrepreneurial routes. So why couldn't I do that? And if I was going to do that, like, how would I even start? We were in the middle of a pandemic at that point in time, and so for me, I was either going to go directly into entrepreneurship, but that would mean sacrificing some of the more personal parts of our careers. I think, going back to the scarcity mindset, right? Yeah. When I told my parents that I had left Microsoft and was planning to go down to the Bay Area, they were like, why would you do that? What if they don't love you as much? What if you don't perform as well? There's always this, like, hey, you have something really, really good, so you should stick to that. And when I was leaving Google, the same thing happened. They're like, wait, actually, I now know about this company, I now know about the stuff that they do, and if you go to, you know, entrepreneurship or a smaller company, like, is it going to be stable?

10:24Are you going to have a good life? What would that mean? And even when I got into my dream MBA program at Harvard, they were like, I don't know, that thing's, like, pretty expensive. It's 100K plus per year. That's a big opportunity cost if you think about your salary that you're forgoing and everything like that. Are you sure you need to go? Why don't you just get a stable job that you already have, meet a nice girl and settle down? I want grandkids. It's what my parents always tell me. They've loosened up on that by now, but at that point in time I was like, whoa, this is a really good point, but, like, I don't feel fulfilled. There's something deep down inside that I wanted to go explore more. And so I was struggling, dude, with going down the entrepreneurial route directly and doing the startup in SF, or trying to figure out, like, who I was. You know, I'd grown up as an American on the Mexican border. There was this notion that my parents are from Vietnam, and it's the place that I went to when I was younger just to see relatives. Honestly, as a 15, 16 year old, going back, I hated it. It was horrible. I was like, oh my gosh, there's no AC here, the food is different than what I'm used to.

11:43And I didn't appreciate it. I didn't appreciate my parents taking us on this, like, expensive vacation across the world to go see where they grew up. And they would put us in, like, this one AC room that we had at my, like, grandparents' place, and we would drive from Quảng Ngãi in the center of Vietnam to Da Nang, the next big city, to go to these gaming cafés, where I, as a spoiled child, would just play Dota all day. And so to me, Vietnam was like this, you know, concept of, okay, home, but not really. And not having the right language capabilities and not being in the right community growing up to really understand my culture in Texas. I started thinking about it a lot more when I had moved to Seattle. So, you see, my first job in the Seattle area, Pacific Northwest, I had joined a nonprofit. One of the mentors I had at Microsoft was Vietnamese, and she was like, you know, there's this Vietnamese Friendship Association, it's the largest nonprofit in the area, they helped to resettle Vietnamese refugees. And I started to get involved as a volunteer. I joined their finance committee, and over time I became the treasurer of this nonprofit. I think that was what started planting the roots of, like, there's something to my identity that I just don't really understand.

13:00Because, like, talking to these refugees, talking to these families that were similar to mine but really different, it started planting the idea of, like, wait, actually, am I Vietnamese? Like, I don't really speak the language that well. It's kind of embarrassing that I, at some point in high school and college, even felt ashamed to call myself Vietnamese. I didn't really join, like, the Vietnamese Students Association at UT Austin. And so what is this about me? Like, I feel like I've hit all the milestones of what my parents thought I needed to do. I got good grades, I'm well traveled, I get paid a lot at, like, these prestigious jobs, but something was missing, dude. And at that point in life, I was like, okay, YOLO, let's just see where we go. So how do I merge this idea of exploring my heritage, doing something that's entrepreneurial and meaningful to me, and also, like, just figure out who I am? And this is all in the context of this big pandemic. So I was like, all right, let me just apply to a couple of business schools, because that's what smart people seem to do. I quickly realized, like, okay, maybe that wasn't the best idea, but I somehow got into my dream school, like I said, with minimal preparation.

14:21Decided, you know, because I couldn't enter Vietnam at that time, I'll spend my first year at Harvard, I'll drop out after six months in, you know, just the first semester, because by then the pandemic is going to be over and I'll be able to go to Vietnam come fall semester. I loved the experience, it was so great. Spring semester, there actually was no end in sight to this pandemic. We were, you know, actually in this really funny world where Vietnam was pretty open before that 2020 fall, but after that it was like complete lockdown. And so I convinced a bunch of my classmates to go with me, two dudes that had never been to Asia or had never been to Vietnam. One of them had never been to Asia. And we decided to start this company in Vietnam, and to do that we had to go through, like, almost five weeks of quarantine. And to me, that seems super dumb, but at that point I had been telling myself, I'm going to move to Vietnam and I'm going to build a startup, and this further obstacle of this complete military lockdown wasn't going to stop me. I was like, I'm just going to go and do it. So just like that, that's how I ended up moving to Vietnam.

Quang Do

15:33Why did you not decide to finish the MBA first? What was the urgency for you to do the move so immediately?

Robert Huynh

15:40Yeah, so that summer was a really interesting summer after my first year of business school, because that fall semester I was thinking I'm only going to do fall semester and go to Vietnam, but I ended up loving the experience, so that by the end of the first year I was like, okay, I'm gonna do a quick three months of entrepreneurship, fail quickly, take all those lessons with me and then do this thing for real when I graduate. Turns out, by the end of the summer, I loved building something. It is so satisfying when you have this instant feedback loop. When you're working at a big corporation, the things that you do, the planning, the strategy, it just takes a long time to see the fruits of your labor, whereas in a startup you know immediately if something's working or not working. And so for me, I really enjoyed that. The urgency here was because, well, I could spend another year in business school waiting to do the thing I want to do, or I could just go do it. Business school wasn't going to help me in building my startup. The only thing it'll do is it'll suck up another, like, you know, 100K plus in savings that I can use to extend my personal runway. So I decided to just go out there and just keep working on it. And a couple months after that, we felt really validated. You know, two of my classmates, I said, had gone with me to build the startup.

17:01One of them decided to go back to school, the other one stuck in Vietnam with me. And a couple months later, we were like, oh man, I don't know if this is the right decision, man. Like, we're still in this pandemic, we still can't really meet our customers. But we got into an accelerator program and we had raised, like, lots of money, and then a couple months later we raised even more money. I mean, now we had two commas and we were like, okay, cool, we have a million plus in the bank, we're going to go do this thing. And I think that helped to provide confidence, even though, honestly, it shouldn't. I'll say it again, that I think as first-time founders, we conflated having investment success with startup success, and those are totally different things. You got to just focus on your customers and listen to what they want, but the problem is we couldn't talk to customers. We were completely isolated at home. So those were probably the main reasons why we decided to leave and stick with the startup during that summer and then that fall, spring semester.

Quang Do

18:06Interesting. Look, before we go into the Vietnam entrepreneurial story, I think a lot of listeners also are curious about, you know, you joined all these quite hard to break into companies, and then Harvard Business School as well. What kind of student, or what kind of characteristics, you think have led you to be able to join these institutions and to join these companies?

Robert Huynh

18:35I would say that a lot of it is luck. I say that because I think that these organizations, you know, reject tons of really great people all the time. I remember YC said that, you know, they're really good at matching patterns, but they're definitely really wrong every single time that they put out these investment offers or when they reject someone. Because you don't need something like YC, Harvard or Google to feel successful, right? Success is really in what you make of your life. I think that while I would say that luck is a big part of what got me to where I am, I would also say that it's my curiosity. I've always been super curious about stuff, how it works, how to tinker and make it better and optimize. And that is rooted deeply in the way that I've grown up with video games. I think that video games really just get you into this gamer mindset where you're constantly min-maxing. So min-maxing is this concept of, you know, you're playing a team game and someone needs to soak up all the damage, so you'll need a tank, and so you'll have a lopsided character, where maybe Robert has maxed out his HP and defense but has no attack, because his friends are going to go max out on the attack stats and do the opposite.

19:51And working together, you're able to achieve so much more. Specialization, essentially. And so I think I've spent a lot of time just min-maxing my career, thinking about, like, okay, how do I focus on the things that will get me the highest return for the minimum effort, and where to focus the things that I want to do in life. The problem with min-maxing is that you're just not as balanced as you should be, because you maxed out a couple of different stats. And I think that's really great if you're trying to get into these, like, organizations or whatever. Like, you should be a top 1% programmer to get into, like, these tough engineering organizations. But then the trade-offs are, well, how do you get a more well-rounded experience to tackle problems in a more interdisciplinary way? And so those are the things that I've been developing over the last three years as I've been running my own startup.

Quang Do

20:43So cool. Luck, a lot of hard work and a lot of curiosity, just trying to figure out how things work. Love that. Let's then start talking about your businesses and your startups a bit. Could you walk us through the moment you ended up in Vietnam, and then how did your entrepreneurial journey pan out from there?

Robert Huynh

21:03So when I got to Vietnam, I had an inkling of what I wanted to do. Honestly, I was just so excited that two of my classmates wanted to do a business with me. And so for me, it's really about the people. I'm excited to work with the right people and the right team, because the idea is going to change, the market is going to change, the product's gonna change, everything's going to change except the people. And so for me, I said I really wanted to work with these two guys, and I had a blast working with them. It was an awesome summer. That's what kept me going. And the idea, I mean, honestly, I would have done something in, like, edtech, is what I told myself back even when I was at Google. I was like, education is something that is so fundamental and so broken that we really need to change the way that education is delivered and served. And for me, I feel like that has played a critical part in shaping the trajectory of my life. What I ended up doing instead was not related to that at all. We ended up copying an idea that we saw in the US, and we were like, okay, real estate, home renovations, these are things that sound like it could be a good, simple three-month project that we can do before going back and finishing off the second year of business school.

22:19Turns out that, you know, fast forward, like, two years later, doing home renovations in a box was something that I was just not passionate about. It was not something that the market actually needed. You can't just copy and paste something from another country into Vietnam thinking that the dynamics are the same. And three, it was really something that was way harder than I thought it'd be. The view of third parties in Vietnam, I think, is just hard, right? They don't want, like, middlemen taking a cut of what they do. And so for a number of reasons, the business idea did not work, and I had pushed through with it with my co-founder Nathaniel, who, you know, I loved to do... We had a great time going through the startup, but we were so stubborn that we didn't end it when it probably should have been cut a lot sooner. I decided to spend, like, a couple of weeks kind of thinking through, like, okay, well, what do I do now? And I ended up realizing, like, hey, actually, I still have a lot of fight left in me. I still want to do the startup thing, but if I was going to do it, it has to be these three things. It has to be something that I'm passionate about, something that I'm actually good at, and it has to be with good friends.

23:37It has to be with people that I trust, that I know that, you know, even if this startup fails, which, against all odds, it probably will, the odds are stacked against you, so how do you make this experience, like, really awesome? Because you're going to dedicate at least five, 10 years of your life to the startup thing. So that's when the second act began. I met my new co-founder Oscar, since both of my old co-founders left. And Oscar was just amazing. He is this friend that I got to know through the startup circle. He was doing another startup at that point in time, and we had really bonded over playing video games. He's a big Dota player. I grew up playing Dota 1 and had switched over to League, and we played Wild Rift, which is the mobile version of this game. And throughout that time we were like, okay, well, let's make a video game. But we also want to make money, and so that turned into some sort of, like, casino gacha game. And fast forward a little bit more, we realized, like, actually, wait, we are both AI experts. Why are we just making a simple video game? We should make an AI-powered video game, or tools for AI companies. And it was only until this year, three years later from eventually stepping foot into Vietnam, that we realized, like, actually, the gaming market is really tough.

24:54You can't build a startup with [unclear] alone. You have to look at what makes sense from the economics of the game, of the business, of the startup. And for us, we realized, okay, we're gonna have to make some trade-offs. We want to do it with video games, we want to do it with AI, and we want to do it with each other. The part that we needed was a business model that made sense, and so that's when we started working on advertising. So what I do today now, with advertising tech, is that Reforged Labs is a platform for GenAI marketing solutions. Think of it as: I built this really cool AI with Oscar that can watch, like, any sort of video, understand it and create miniature trailers for it. So that if we're watching Harry Potter, we might get individual trailers that are personalized just for us. And that's been a really awesome journey, where we can have our base in Vietnam, where we've been living, and now go out and do sales all around the world, in a startup that's not just confined to Vietnam. Take our strengths and network of people that we know from the US, where I spent the majority of my career, Sweden, where my co-founder grew up, and really combine the best of everything that we have here.

Quang Do

26:15Amazing, that's really amazing. Look, I hear it's probably, it was a very emotional journey as well. As you shared, you know, taking that risk, coming to Vietnam and then sort of failing that first startup. How was that emotional journey for you? And, you know, I'm also very impressed by how you got back up and really showed that resilience, and now you seem to be on the track that is really fulfilling, and you really are building something really, really great, because I have been following Reforged as well. So how was that, you know, emotional journey for you? Like...

Robert Huynh

26:51Yeah, definitely. So there's many aspects of it, right? I can start with the emotional journey of, hey, moving to Vietnam, that's really exciting, because it's something that I've been wanting to do for a really long time, to connect to my heritage and my culture a lot better. There's a lot of challenges there. The emotional roller coaster of, like, hey, oh my God, we think we're doing really well because investors have noticed us and funded us, but also, like, wait, the economics of the business don't make sense, to, oh my God, we need to tell everyone that we failed. We need to tell my old boss that funded me, my people that I respect, investors, that we could not do it, and that the startup, the money that you put into it, the three years that we had spent trying to build something, wasn't as successful. Telling your customers that, hey, actually, the service is no longer operating, and seeing how the workers that we were supporting, we were helping them to find jobs, that we wouldn't be able to help them find their next paycheck. It's gut-wrenching, man. It sucks to tell your employees that, hey, this is not going to work out and that we're going to have to move in another direction. The whole entire roller coaster of, like, oh my God, wait, dude, I need to start afresh, I need to tell people publicly that this is not working out, is really hard.

28:12It was really hard. And so I think there's a lot of shame in that failure process that I was coping with towards the end, and contrast that to the peak of, like, oh my gosh, like, this is something that I'm really excited about, that I'm doing with the right team, the right people, with the right market and in the right geo. Like, it was probably the biggest roller coaster of my life. So where do you want me to start? Like...

Quang Do

28:40How did you sort of... And thank you for sharing so openly and vulnerably. I think that's where, you know, it's a really valuable conversation. Like, that feeling of shame, doubt, how did you overcome it, by yourself or with whom? Who did support you through that journey?

Robert Huynh

29:00Yeah. So I would say that, talking about the tail end of this roller coaster, right? Like, how to manage winding down of a startup, like, what do you do next? So I would say that, one, I'm really grateful and thankful that I've built a number of safety nets. I think if you had asked me this, like, a decade ago, when I was, so, you know, trying to figure out the corporate ladder, my parents' scarcity mindset would have been so deeply rooted in me, meaning that I'd be like, I have no more options, I have nowhere to go, I can't get out of this. And along the way, what I've done is that I built a number of safety nets. Like, I felt like, hey, if this Google job doesn't work out, I could still go back to Microsoft. They loved me there, it was awesome, I was on a great trajectory. This business school thing doesn't work out, Google loved me too, they were so sad that I was leaving, I could always fall back on that. And so I think by this time, a part of me, you know, recognizes that, hey, I'm in a really fortunate position where I have these safety nets to fall back onto. I would also say that at the same time, it is so hard to do a startup, because you have to put yourself out there. And in a startup, you're essentially doing two things at any given time.

30:21You're selling: the company, the vision, who you are, meaning you got to be super public about it. And you're building, right? So you're working on the product and working on engineering work. But because that first part is so public, and everyone has now tied your identity, and you have tied your identity with the startup, going out there and saying, like, hey, I messed up, I failed, is so hard to say, especially when you have a prior history of just success. And so I think that was a really humbling experience, of going and recognizing, like, hey, I am not the 1% that can outperform. Startups, you, like, you go into startups knowing that there's a high chance you're going to fail, but you don't think that you're going to be that person. And so for me, like I said, going through and telling our customers that we're not able to support them anymore, talking to our employees, letting them know that, hey, you have a couple months to transition out of this and pick yourself up off the feet, I'll help you how I can, but, three, I'm also trying to figure this out myself too, was a really tough time. And the way I coped with it was, I thankfully had just some amazing co-founders, and one of them, Nathaniel, I decided to go on a retreat with. He had been going through some difficult medical issues, and for his final hurrah, we decided to go to Cambodia, and we did this digital detox meditation camp.

31:46And I had never been, like, super spiritual. You know, like, when people start talking about their Kundalini energy and chakra points, like, my eyes glaze over that. But actually this was such an amazing period. It was a gift to ourselves to rest and recover, because when you're building a startup, you're firing on all cylinders and you don't really have that time to process all the emotions that you have. So taking some time to think about it, it's like, actually, I'm proud of what I did. I'm proud that we were able to make 50,000 jobs in [unclear] and that we were able to help people put food on the table. Sure, I thought I was running a startup, I actually ended up running a social venture instead, but this entire experience was really, really great, and I can put it to rest before I think about my next act. And for me, I still want to do startups, but I take all those lessons forward, and I just applied again, knowing that, hey, I'm probably going to fail again this time. But if I believe that I can do it and make myself vulnerable... I mean, it's kind of like love, right? Like, you don't know if things are going to work out, but you have to just trust and be openhearted about it, because if you don't go in fully vulnerable, you're not going to be able to really have that future with someone. But you know what past hurt and past trauma looks like, and so there's always that tension of, like, hey, how do you open yourself up to someone, making yourself vulnerable, but also giving it your all?

33:08And so just know that, like, if you really want to, like, push something, you need to make yourself vulnerable too. And so I had to open myself up to hurt, pain and sorrow if I was going to commit to doing another startup again.

Quang Do

33:26I love that. Very candid sharing, and I think it's very insightful, you know, to know not all careers, even if they look very linear and, you know, straightforward, it's not always like that, and there's a lot behind the scenes. So I really appreciate you sharing that. Look, you already touched on a few advice points for people who would follow your path. And, you know, what I really admire about you is you had it all and you really went sort of betting on yourself, all in, and really skin in the game here. If you would meet someone who is sort of five years earlier than you, and sort of in that more traditional career path, very coveted firms, overseas Vietnamese, maybe US, really high flyer, currently up for promotion and really on that corporate ladder, but the true dream of that person is really also to do something in Vietnam, with Vietnam, something related with their roots, what advice, or what would you tell that person?

Robert Huynh

34:29I would say that, you know, every situation is different, right? I can't give you a "here's the answer, go and do it", but rather, like, just kind of thinking about, like, well, what is it that you really want to do, and how do you take micro experiments to learn about that? I think that for some people, they might think that they want to do entrepreneurship, but without actually trying it out, they won't actually know. And too often, people don't prototype and experiment enough. I think letting your curiosity run wild, but then actually acting on it, I think that's the key to success. And so if you're in the position where you think you want to go and do a startup, I would say that the key advice I would give is that you're never going to feel ready. You're not going to have all the right experiences. You can't have the mindset... And I think, like, the common thinking is that I need to put my time in consulting or banking or whatever the heck, so I can build the skill set in order to go follow my dream. Following your dream takes you being really honest with yourself, with a great team, just doing it. And so if you put your dream out there, people will follow you, and you're going to figure it out along the way. Because you're not going to have all the right answers, but if you're tenacious and resilient enough to go seek it out, you're going to get there.

35:51So that corporate job, that day job, it's always going to be there for you. It's just a matter of, okay, well, think about the opportunity cost, right? It's going to be harder every single year that you level up and get to Wartortle status, and by the time you're a Blastoise, like, are you really gonna go out there and do your startup dream, or even your small business dream, right? Like, a lot of people, they want to open a milk tea shop or a coffee shop. Like, these are all awesome things that, if you don't put yourself out there now, you're not going to know. And it's a two-way door, so take that experiment, take that learning. Because a true experiment, you don't know the answer yet. You don't know the answer if you're actually experimenting. Otherwise, you're just looking for confirmation bias. Yeah. And so just go do it, man.

Quang Do

36:38Love that. What's next for you, Rob? Any upcoming goals, projects that you're excited about?

Robert Huynh

36:44Yeah, for us, it's just working on the startup still. So we have a bunch of really exciting things to announce on that front. For me, I think that deepening my relationship with my identity is a big reason why I'm still here in Vietnam. I have all my extended family here, learning the language better, great food. I mean, honestly, it's the big reason why I'm in Vietnam. I'm a big foodie. But two, I would say that on the professional side, right, I think that Vietnam is an awesome base. There are some challenges building a startup here in Vietnam. You don't have the same community that you would have in a place like San Francisco, where everyone's talking about AI and tech all the time. But by balancing the mindset that you have in a fast emerging growth market like Vietnam to some of the more futuristic and maybe sometimes academic areas of the world, I think that's the key to success, is just having many different perspectives and keeping all those things in mind.

Quang Do

37:40That's amazing. Look, there are so many things, I think, that we could continue this conversation forever, for a lot of topics that are actually also my favorite topics, but let's keep it at that for today, and we can have another conversation another day. Robert, how can our members or people connect with you or follow your work?

Robert Huynh

38:00Yeah, you guys can all connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, email. I like to help other members in our community, so I'm just excited to hear from y'all.

Quang Do

38:09All right, thank you so much, Rob.

Robert Huynh

38:11Awesome. All right, thank you guys, thanks for having me on the podcast.

Quang Do

38:15That's it for today. If you enjoyed this, you will love the OV community. Learn more at overseasvietnamese.com.