In the MHV Podcast, we speak with leading founders, VCs and operators on their journey in Southeast Asia. In this episode, Jeremy Au, MHV Head of Strategic Projects and host sits down with Justin Nguyen, MHV Partner with over two decades of experience in Silicon Valley and in Asia as a founder, entrepreneur, and engineer of early-stage tech startups and global tech companies.
Listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast or watch the video on Youtube.
Prefer reading? Read the transcript below.
Jeremy Au:
Hey, Justin. Welcome to the MHV podcast, where we get to share our journeys, and we're just getting to share your journey to everybody else who somehow doesn't know who you are as a champion of the Southeast Asia ecosystem.
Justin Nguyen:
Cool. Yeah. Good to finally be on. So, for those of you who don't know me, I'm a GP, general partner, here with the firm. Based out of Saigon. My office here that I'm currently recording this out of is probably about six kilometers away from where I was born. And so, I was born here in Saigon, and raised in the States. Been with the firm a couple of years after inception. So, about a little over five years now. And I obviously look after the Vietnam market, plus we do deals all across Southeast Asia, as you well know.
My background is actually, prior to being on this side of the table, I was actually at... spent 18 years helping to build two startups, right? Most recently as founder CEO of a gaming company in Shanghai. So, I was based in Shanghai for about 13 years, actually. And started that company in 2008. We ended up selling it in '14. Had to stick around for a couple of years. And after that was when I made this career change.
Prior to that, I was head of engineering, and eventually Greater China CEO for early SaaS companies. This was a dot-com company, and that was out that we pivoted, eventually, into a SaaS company before the phrase SaaS was even used. So, that will give you a hint as to my age, and how long I've been doing this. So, yeah. So, 18 years between those two companies. And then decided that the next phase of my life was going to be sort of giving back to the ecosystem.
Jeremy Au:
Amazing. And tell us more about your roots in Vietnam.
Justin Nguyen:
Yeah, yeah. So, I was born here in Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City formally, but actually the center of town is still called Saigon. And I was born during conflict years, right? And so, but of course as a child, you don't remember any of that, right? You remember flying kites on my grandmother's... Houses her tend to go kind of vertical, right? Not what we're used to in the States. We kind of build up. So, flying kites as a kid. And actually, believe it or not, a very normal childhood. We were kind of shielded from the world around us, as most kids are. Parents would kind of shield you from that.
But when I was about six, was when we packed up our bags and immigrated to the US. Took us about a year to get there, and so there's a whole bit of a refugee in the middle of that. But yeah, landed in Silicon Valley, and for most of my life, I felt like I was kind of a bit of a native Californian, actually. So, I had kind of the best of both worlds. I was here long enough to have my roots firmly planted, but sort of in the States early enough for assimilating and feeling very Californian. Very American, very Californian. Wasn't a problem.
Jeremy Au:
Yeah. And what was it like growing up in California as part of the Vietnamese diaspora?
Justin Nguyen:
Yeah. I mean, I loved growing up in California. In fact, I loved growing up in the South Bay, right? We had all different types of personalities, of cultures. I had a very diverse group of friends.
We were in and around tech all the time. I remember when I was in the eighth grade, my school had a careers class actually that you could take in the eighth grade, and I remember the speaker that they would bring in, one gentleman from HP that would do these classes for us. We did play stock market trading, right? And my high school, went to just the normal public high school, but we had one of the first CAD, computer aided drafting labs in the state, actually. So, we had a lot of donations from the various tech companies around us. So, we were kind of in and around it all the time. My first computers class I think was probably the fifth grade there.
And so, it was great to be all around that, and having all these great tech companies that were supporting education there. So, it's probably no wonder that despite my parents wanting me to be a doctor, I ended up becoming a computer engineer, actually. I went to school and did the equivalent of... You're all modern. You'd call it ECS, right? ECS. At poly, we called it computer engineering. So, I was trained as an engineer. That seemed like the natural thing to do, given the roots.
Especially since, actually, I should probably go back. My parents actually, when we got to the States, worked for Atari, for those of you who remember that. And so they were able to buy the Atari units for us when I was really, really young. And I was kind of hacking away, trying to do games and things like that. So, yeah. The Valley was great. Loved it.
Jeremy Au:
I've got to ask, what were your favorite Atari games? Did you get any freebies?
Justin Nguyen:
You know what was funny was the early computer part, the Atari... I had a 400 and 800. The 400 had the membrane keyboard, if anyone remembers that. 800 actually had the keys that would travel. And parents didn't know anything about software. They were working... Don't get me wrong. My parents were... I grew up very, very middle class. My parents had to get retrained when we got to the States, and so they worked on the assembly line, actually, at Atari. And they just knew... They had the foresight to know that this was something kind of important for their kids. But they weren't users themselves.
And so, it wasn't like we had a lot of software. And software costs money. And so, the only cartridge I had in there was a basic cartridge. And so, to make it useful, I was trying to figure out what to do with it. And I wrote some of my first code on that machine. Eventually, we got a word processor and things like that.
Jeremy Au:
And when you think about that time, coding, Atari, what was that like feeling... And you were doing that family you mentioned as well. So, what was that tinkering like?
Justin Nguyen:
I loved it. I loved the fact that you could create something essentially out of nothing, right? And I know people do this with woodwork and metalwork, and in fact my younger brother was quite gifted at those sort of things. I wasn't. Right? I could draw straight lines and whatnot.
But the computer allowed me to do things that... I'd sit there and I'd spend time doing this, and I'd create something of value that people could sit and play. I remember writing my first game. Right? And then you'd play it, and you'd get some entertainment value out of it, right? And I really saw that as a... It was my canvas, actually. And to create, right?
And the pleasure you get seeing people use your stuff is actually really, really amazing. Right? It's really a rush, right? And I've kind of been addicted to that ever since, right? That's probably what's driven me to go help create companies and to create companies of my own and whatnot. It was just a great, great medium for expressing that.
And really almost no limitations. I mean, you don't know... I mean, the next generation comes. Like, "Oh, how could I have done that?" But it's an awesome medium. I mean, I'm one of these proponents of computer science, at least introductory, shouldn't be an elective. It should be a core course like math and science and all the other sciences. Yeah. Fantastic.
Jeremy Au:
Amazing. And there you are, obviously tinkering away. What was your first jobs like? I'm just wondering about that.
Justin Nguyen:
My first jobs... So, once again, we came from working class roots. And so, my older sister and I, we're only a little over a year apart, we went to work pretty early. Obviously going to school and working at the same time. So, I've held various jobs, actually. A number of different jobs. I've sold shoes. I've flipped burgers for a number of years. I did telesales. And this is all in high school, by the way. Okay?
But I managed to actually get a job as a data entry clerk when I was in high school for a medical clinic in Sunnyvale. And back then, it was on an old K-Pro which was running something like DOS And the accounting system we were using had some issues. And so, one day I kind of... Yeah, I'm a data entry clerk, right? And I suggested that maybe I can fix it if I looked at the source code.
And in the end, I was helping to work on the system. So, it was actually a lot of fun to actually do real... I wouldn't call it computer science. Back then it was kind of deep base programming, which is very specific sort of 4GL, almost. Fourth generation language at the time. But it got me my first sense of what doing this for business would be like, right? And by that point, I hadn't decided that I was going to do a computer engineering major. But I think that probably helped shape. I was like, "Oh, you can make money doing this too. This is pretty cool." Right? Before that it was like, "Let me create games so I can play." Right? And yeah. Yeah.
And so, I held a variety of jobs. I actually think those jobs in high school were very... It was quite varied, and it taught me actually a lot of skills that I think later on in life that I've used, right? Whether it's selling shoes, or trying to get a donation over the phone. Literally, you go to work and you get a sheet of... something out of the White Pages, right? For those who remember what that was. And you just go down a list and like, "Hi. I'm Justin. I'm calling for..." I still remember the Police Athletic League. I almost remember the script, right? And trying to get support. $5, $10 at a time. And really interesting, useful nuggets of skills that I picked up during those years. Yeah.
Jeremy Au:
Wow. So, there you are, taking on lots of different skills, becoming an engineer. And somehow you end up becoming a business leader and founder.
Justin Nguyen:
Yeah.
Jeremy Au:
So, how does that transpiration happen, story of a time?
Justin Nguyen:
You know what's funny? When I was growing up, when you're an engineer... I had parents who... Parents. I had friends whose parents were lifelong engineers at NASA and those sort of things. And that was the career path, was you went in... When I first started college, you'd go in, and you would think about going to an aerospace company or something like that, and a defense company. And you would be kind of a lifer there, and you would hit sort of technical fellow at some point. Right?
But at some point probably... I was getting out of school right when job was at 0.7, 0.87 or something like that. Right when the internet boom started to happen. And at some point, the Valley switched to engineer to head of engineering to founder CEO and then to DC, actually. So, in some ways, I took a very traditional path, right? Because I know a bunch of people like me in the Valley that sort of took this path. But it was very different than where I started off thinking my career was going to go, right?
So, that's been a surprise. And it was really... I think a lot of it comes from that desire, first to... You see a problem, and you want to see the solution to it. So, the desire to create. Solve and create, right? And then at some point you do that enough, and you naturally start getting people coming to you for advice and see funding and things like that. And then you turn it into this. It was all very organic.
Jeremy Au:
Now I've got to ask. I mean, let's zoom in a little bit. I mean, first of all, what was your parents grand plan for you?
Justin Nguyen:
I remember my dad... My dad wanted me to be a doctor. Most Vietnamese parents want their kids to be a doctor, so no real secret there, right? And I think a lawyer would've been okay, and then an engineer was kind of like a distant third. My sister went into... She got a business degree and my parents were shocked. It was like, "What do you do with that, going into that?" Sorry, she really wanted to do psychology, right? And then, so, she ended up doing the double, because at least business was a little bit better. So, that's how we kind of grew up, right? With that.
And then even, I tell you, even after I had actually been promoted to be head of engineering. So, I was VP of engineering at one of the startups. Which, by the way, at a startup, anyone can kind of be a VP of engineering. But you know, I was doing okay, and we had sort of survived at the dot-com crash. We were doing a little bit better, and my dad was... I remember one conversation. It was like, "Hey, it's still not too late to go to medical school." And I'm in my mid 20s, right? And I was like, "Dad, I'm not going to go to medical school. I remember being 25 or 26, right? When we were having this conversation. Like, "I've got this doctor in Sacramento. He's a good friend of mine. You can talk to him about the career."
Because he wasn't sure. Here I am, because he would ask me, "How's your company doing?" And it's like, "Oh, you know, we need to get more money." You know, he didn't quite get what a startup was, and he always felt like it was a really unstable career. Right? And he wanted something a little bit more stable for me. So, that was their grand plan. And I certainly deviated from it.
Jeremy Au:
Yeah. And what's interesting is that there you are, obviously cutting your chops as a software engineer. And there you start also making a transition into a business leader as well.
Justin Nguyen:
Yeah.
Jeremy Au:
So, how does that happen?
Justin Nguyen:
You know, I've had sort of two major step functions in my career in terms of moving to management. And they were both once again... It wasn't even seizing opportunity. It was actually just trying to be helpful, and then I stepped into it. So, I'll tell you my first one, was I was at a company called Silicon Gaming. And we'd just gone public. And it just happened. The core product team was super, super busy.
There was a separate product that they wanted us to do, which was to link all of these machines together in sort of a statewide network, right? And the engineering department said it was too de-focusing. They couldn't do it. They hired in someone who had done something similar around that business. And so, they were going to go outsource this major chunk of it. And I don't remember exactly why, but I thought that was a really interesting project to do. And so, originally I just went there to actually help. Sort of being loaned out by engineering, to go look at these outsourcing companies. And I spent months looking at these outsourcing companies.
Jeremy Au:
So, Justin, so, how did you transition from VP of engineering, towards becoming the China CEO, i.e. the business leader?
Justin Nguyen:
Great question, actually. And once again, it wasn't deliberate. I think it was one of these where you see a gap at the company that looks interesting, you're curious about it, and you go and you try to solve something, and then I kind of got into it. So, I remember the transition made from first time I went into management was I was working at a company called Silicon Gaming at the time. I was a software engineer there. And the company had just gone public. Engineering was super, super busy. Back then we had a hardware component, so, we were revving software the entire time and sort of trying to build on top of that.
But there was a second initiative after we went public, to connect all of our systems together, right? Into a wide area network. And so, the company wanted to do that. Engineering basically said, "We're too busy to do that." So, they brought in someone to oversee that business unit. And the decision was made that we're going to go outsource that, actually. But someone still needed to go help evaluate vendors that would provide the connectivity.
And so, I volunteered from the engineering side, right? Because it was obviously someone who you trust. So, I volunteer to go do that myself. And actually, my manager had actually gone at the time also there. And so, it was just the two of us. And as we were evaluating this, it was months. This was a big deal for the company. It was going to be a big licensing deal, right? And we were looking at it, and I was like, "Man. I think I can actually build this for a fraction of the price in less time," than they were talking about. There were so many changes that we needed to make, to make it work for our system.
And Alison Stroh, I still remember, who was my manager at the time who was overseeing the business unit, I think she was really gusty. Took a chance on this kid. I mean, she'd just come into the company to run this, right? I said that outsourcing probably would've been... Going to the other vendor probably would've been safer. But she's like, "Hey, you think you can build this, let's go do it."
And so, as a separate business unit, we spun off. I hired some engineers, and a bunch of IT folks, and we went out and we built this. We came in under budget, and we delivered for the company. And Alison, actually I just saw here a few years ago when I was back in Vegas. And so, that was how I grew up into management, was just trying to be helpful as an individual contributor, and putting forth ideas about... When you see it, you're like, "Well, this is how I would do it." Right? And you come up with a plan, and someone green lights it.
Actually, almost the same thing when I was head of engineering. I mentioned earlier, I was head of engineering for this dot-com company. And I had actually replaced one of the co-founders, who was actually head of engineering at the time. Right? And once again, it was one of these situations where I thought the direction we were kind of heading in, we were kind of walking off a cliff.
Somehow decided that I was going to speak up at one of the meetings. CEO asked, "Well..." he firstly asked the head of engineering, "What do you think?" And I think it was almost a sense of relief for him. Just like, "Yeah, he's actually right." And then CEO asked me, "Well, what would you do?" And I said, "Well, I'd switch off this platform to that, and this is what I would do. I think we're building too much." And they're like, "Okay. Well, you pick one engineer, and go off and do your scout works project. Come back and prove that we can get..." So, we got to almost feature parity, actually, with something we were working on for years, a couple of years. And then afterwards, the folded engineering under me, actually.
So, yeah, no grand plan. It was never the intention to go out and say, "Okay, yeah. I see an opportunity to go in." It was just kind of like, "Hey, that doesn't make sense." Or, "Hey, that's really interesting. Let me go look at that." And then putting in the work when folks ask, and not just saying, "Oh, I think..." Not being on these where, okay, that's the problem, without having the solution. Having a solution, and then having some very courageous managers to go back it. Which has affected sort of how I hire for my entire career.
Jeremy Au:
Amazing.
Justin Nguyen:
Yeah.
Jeremy Au:
And there you are, and after all of that, you decide to go become a founder.
Justin Nguyen:
Yeah.
Jeremy Au:
So, explain yourself there.
Justin Nguyen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, we go through all this. And I worked for a gentleman named John Chang, who is a dear, dear friend to this day. He was the one that, when I said talk about courageous leaders, to give someone who was barely qualified, probably not qualified, and take a risk on me. I worked with John for 10 years. And coincidentally, John is how I know Peng. And so, I've known Peng for a long time. John used to work with Peng. You know of it.
I remember, when we sold the company, we sold it 2007. I think by then, we were a little over 400 to 500 people. Somewhere in there. I want to say about 50 billion run rate. We ended up selling the company. And I was in my 30s, and I told John, "Hey, I'm thinking about moving into venture capital." By that time... Not always. By that time, I'd developed a pretty keen interest in venture capital, right? Because I think the software was so bad. John had taken me along to all the pitches, just to hold the system together while we were doing demos, right? So, it was actually John and I who would go out during the series A, all the way up until our B or C round before I stopped building, right? So, I thought it was really, really interesting.
I told John I wanted to switch into venture, and he actually said, "You're too young." He didn't mean too young in age, per se. But he said, "You have a startup in you. You'd make a great CEO." And he really encouraged me to go start... And I had ideas. I'd always have ideas, which we would constantly talk about ideas. Because once again, I think as an entrepreneur, one of the traits I think is you look at the world. Everyone sees the problems. And everyone even sees potential solutions. It's the engineer who just... Or the entrepreneur's the one that sits there and he's just really itching to go solve it, right?
So, I've seen these things, and so, I had an idea for a gaming company. And told John about it. He's like, "You should go do it." Right? And he was my boss, he was my mentor, and so I listened. Right? And then I went off, and John sat on my board. He was our independent board member. Sat on my board for eight years afterwards, so I never stopped working for him. And yeah, that was how the transition was made. It almost didn't happen, actually. If I had my way, I probably would've figured out how to be a principal somewhere, and figured that out from that age.
Jeremy Au:
And there you are. You became a founder. So, what was that transition like? Because you had done engineering. You had become a business unit leader and CEO. And now you've become a founder. So, what was that transition like? Tough? Easy? What was that taste like?
Justin Nguyen:
First year I started my company, I developed these rashes on the side of my body, first few months. And we'd already got the funding, actually. So I mean, it was like, we raised pretty big ground at the time, for the time, right? We raised a little over $5 million dollar for sort of first check round. So, money wasn't necessarily the issue. Delivering on that money.
And I went to the doctor, and the first doctor said it was hives and sent me home, and I was feeling really, really bad. And I went to a second doctor, and she said, "I think you have shingles." But she said, "It looks like shingles, but you cannot have shingles. You're way too young to have shingles." Right? But she said, "Let me just do the test." Right? And sure enough, I got shingles, right?
And so, for those of you who don't know, shingles is the second incarnation of chicken pox, and you get it when you're much, much older in life, right? And what the doctor finally told me is it can also be brought on by stress, right? And so, basically after you get chickenpox, it recesses and then it comes back up once more. But I didn't feel stressed, right? I'd rarely sit there and go like, "Oh my god, I'm so stressed." But I guess my body was really telling me that it was pretty stressful.
The transition was profound, I would say. I never thought I was CEO material. And like I said, it was actually more John seeing the raw talent more so than... I'd not even say talent, to be honest. But you know, I was an engineer. I understood that. I understood you could optimize. I understood that. And I knew nothing about marketing. I knew nothing about lead generation. I knew nothing about sales. And so, you're willfully unqualified, right? As a first time company. And the sooner you recognize that, the better, and just go do it. Because nothing you're going to do will prepare you for that job, right? Completely prepare you for that job. It is that many different skills. The buck stops with you on everything, right? You have to decide.
But I'll tell you, that part was okay. The part that was a bit surprising was how lonely the job can be. Right? Even though I have two co-founders, and we were very transparent. There's nothing I hid from them, as there was nothing that John hid from me and the other executives at the company. There is a loneliness that you feel. When you're out fundraising, you can tell folks, "Hey, this is exactly what happened. This is what I think the chances are," and all this good stuff. But when you're the sitting there figuring out how to make payroll this next pay check, and you see you have all the optimism, but you also have everything that can go wrong, it is super, super lonely.
And I wanted to say that, was because we were a dot-com company when I was working for John, and we had some really, really bleak moments. I did layoffs. I flew to Vancouver to close down that office. I ran engineering, which was half the company, right? So, I did a lot of riffs. And even then, I never felt the way I felt when I was founder CEO. I understood it. John told us everything. But it was always like, "Well, he'll figure out something." It was always the belief.
When you're the founder CEO, you're the person who has to figure out something, right? And that was quite a lonely spot, actually, to be. And the uncertainty and all that. Because I mean, your co-founders are your co-founders, but they're still looking to you for some reassurance. Everyone, when the times gets tough, looks for someone for reassurance. Who do you look to? Who do you look for during that time? That was probably the biggest... I don't know if it's a lesson, right? But that's the biggest... had sort of the most impact, that I didn't expect a lot going into that, actually.
Jeremy Au:
You keep pushing on and you're pushing on and pushing on as a founder. And how did you progress and mature as a founder over time, in terms of self regulating that loneliness and that stress? I'm just wondering, how did you personally come to grips with that?
Justin Nguyen:
Yeah, yeah. Having... Doesn't have to be a huge circle, but having a small circle of other founders, founder CEOs in particular. Whoever is really kind of, regardless of title, founder, president, that's running the company. And that's actually one of the reasons why at the firm here, we do these founders dinner and founders lunches, was out of that those folks understand this.
And so, I was fortunate in that I had John who was a board member, but also a trusted friend that I could... And he had started another company, so he was super busy too. But he'd always make time, and was always a phone call away. And then as the company matured a little bit, I made a few more friends that were founder CEOs. And it was probably, I want to say, about three of us in Shanghai at the time that would regularly get together and sort of trade... It was informal, but we could commiserate, actually. And that itself was liberating to sort of just keep it raw.
But then you could also get some decent feedback about your... Like, at one point, we lost one of our co-founders, actually. Lost, like, he had family issues. Lost from the firm. He's still a good friend today. But that was tough. And so, how do you go talk to your board about that, and your employees, and all of this good stuff, when the company wasn't always up and to the right, right? So, a good support... It doesn't have to be big, but a support network I think is very important, of people who really understand, right?
And that's why, when I was thinking about what I was going to do next, and doing venture capital here, that's why when I went and I met back up with Peng, Kuo-Yi, and this whole idea about entrepreneurs, backing entrepreneurs resonates so much with me. Right? Because this empathy that you have, as a former founder, it may not be you, whatever, but the stress level of making payroll, and the struggles of that and of losing people, and sort of all this good stuff. That empathy was really what drew me to what we were doing here actually also, right? I really resonated.
You know, Peng, Kuo-Yi, started the firm about two years before I joined. But when I was talking to them, everything they had said about how we think about entrepreneurship, how we treat founders, really resonated. It was like, "That's what I would build." Right? And so, that's what I'm building with them. Right?
Jeremy Au:
Let's talk about that, right? Which is about founders backing founders, and that being something that resonated with you. What's it like being on the other side of the table, right? Because you said your first check was $5 million dollars. You used to be VP engineering of a venture backed startup. So there you have all this capital coming down at you, and then you were working on that timetable. And now you're on the other side of the table. What do you think you've learned? What's that perspective, kind of looking through the looking glass a little bit?
Justin Nguyen:
Yeah. It's funny. So, when I talk about the... When people hear sort of of our DNA and my DNA about former founder, one of the questions I used to get asked a lot is, "Oh, you must be really hands on with your company, and you must be..." And one of the questions sometimes is, when something's going wrong, "You must feel so tempted to sort of dive in and just be there and fix things with them, right?"
And it's actually kind of the exact opposite of that, which is that I understand as a former founder that the founder's the one living it 24 by seven. Okay? And that they will understand their business so much more than I will. And the best that I can do is offer my perspective. And I'm quite... And I think in some ways, having actually... I mean, let me explain it this way. Having actually sat in a board meeting with various investors, some financial, some former entrepreneurs, and as a founder, taking all of this feedback from your board members, and sort of almost taking it as gospel, okay? Because you're supposed to. I am aware of the power of our suggestions. Right?
And so, I'm very good at calibrating and saying, "Okay, this is one data point, right? That I'm going to give you. And it's backed by all of this. And I'll give you my opinion, right? But this is your decision to go make." Right? So, in some ways, that recognition I think almost helped. Because I've had really good advice from well meaning people, smart, intelligent, well meaning people with plenty of data to back it up, that were completely conflicting, right? For one situation. And in the end, the quicker you as a founder figure out that those are just data points and that's your company to go run, right? And the quicker to me, what it allows us to do as investors, is having that empathy, and giving your input in a way that allows founders to perform their best. Making sure they've thought about this, this, this.
But you're not there 24/7. You don't understand their business the way that they do. Right? So, that's the perspective that I think being a former founder gives me, when the tables are turned. So, it's actually kind of a little bit of the opposite of what people think, in terms of valuing. It's like, I know that I don't know enough to just dive right in, right?
But yeah, I mean, but the lighter side of that is I really do miss the build, right? And so, I said, it's great seeing new products get built. We sort of live vicariously through our founders in that respect, but it's not the same as like, I make a decision to do this or something like that. Right? I invented that, right? We don't have that fun. Right? That satisfaction, right? So, we get that vicariously. Yeah.
Jeremy Au:
So, living vicariously, missing the build, and the founder knowing best about what's really happening on the ground. When you think about working and collaborating with the founder, what would you say are signs of a good investor founder match? Because you've been on both sides of it, right? As a founder working with good investors and less good investors. And as an investor working with good founders, how does that work out from your perspective?
Justin Nguyen:
I often say... The other question I get is that, "Your sort of firm with all of your operating experience, Peng, Kuo-Yi, and whatnot, founders must really kind of rely on you guys all the time for advice." And actually, my joke is that I actually probably wouldn't fund a founder that needed me. Right? Need. Like, in the strictest sense of the word need, right? Whether or not I'm useful or not is sort of a different story, right?
And so, I think the best relationships... And this is how you know if you're a good investor to a founder, is that the founder sort of listens to your input. Right? Not because they have to. Not because it's a quarterly board meeting, and because grants above a certain size, or it's restricted by some government or something like that. Right? But they're there, and they sort of listen your input, right? And so, one of the thing that I offer our founders is that one on ones. Right? They're not mandatory. This is in addition to the board meetings, which are kind of mandatory. We have judiciary responsibility, et cetera, et cetera. But we can do a one on one, and we can cover stuff that's not board related, and see how many founders actually take me up on that. Right?
And no problems if they don't. Right? But I find that more often than not, helps to... I'll do the first one. I'll say, "If this is useful, we'll schedule it again." More often than not, they're scheduling it. And I've actually had times where at first it was kind of like... Well, no. It was always quite good. But then they'll have one. We'll have a board meeting on Friday, and there'll be one on ones. Because they're regularly scheduled. Sometimes they'll align in the same week. And I'll get a message, "Hey, can we still keep our one on one? I know we're meeting on Friday, but can we still keep our one on one this week?"
And I think that's a sign of a really, really healthy collaboration there, right? Is when they want your input, and you're doing it in a way that's not a judgmental way. You're there. You're on their side with them, right? And of course, they respect that you're an investor, that you're a board member. And it's not necessarily the same as management. But when they sort of listen to that input, I think is one of the key indicators of it working well, actually. So, quite proud that we've been able to sort of build that here. Right?
Jeremy Au:
Amazing. And kind of starting to tie things off here, Justin, obviously one interesting thing is that you also at the start mentioned about how you were born not far from where you are currently. And you also made a decision to come back to Southeast Asia, and come back to Vietnam as well. So, I'm just kind of wondering about what that was like for you emotionally and as a personal decision.
Justin Nguyen:
Yeah, yeah. You know, I was thinking to myself... At some point in my career, I was thinking to myself that I was lucky. We ended up, when we left Vietnam, some of my family members ended up in Australia. We ended up in the States. I ended up in Silicon Valley. I can't say I'm particularly gifted at anything, right? I did okay in school. Probably because of my mom. Her badgering. No. I did reasonably well at school and all this good stuff. But by luck, more so than anything else. I ended up right time, right place with some very supportive public school system, et cetera, et cetera.
And I did okay, right? I managed to create some jobs. I managed to create some value and in some cases, in my last company I managed to create some entertainment, right? And things worked out. I was thinking, what about the folks sort of in Vietnam, or in the region here, who don't have access, but actually are that much better? What could they do if they were one level removed from someone who had done it before? If they had access to funding, right?
And I thought they could do so much more than I ever will, or even set goals for, right? And so, I thought, but we're missing that bit. Because it's just a function of the age of the ecosystem in Southeast Asia and Vietnam in particular, right? We have great business heroes everywhere in banking and logistics and that, but we don't have business heroes here in tech necessarily yet. Certainly not when we started six, seven years ago. Okay? And so, I wanted to go back and support what I can. Because I said, "Wow. If I can do kind of this, and grow a company that has a few hundred people, whatever, what would people who are smarter, more qualified, what would they be able to do, if they had that?"
And so, to sum that up, it was really that I thought it was sort of a coming of age for the region. And I really wanted to put Southeast Asia companies on the global map, right? I was in the Valley. I saw it happening there. I was in China from 2003 to 2016, and I saw it there, right? And I thought about, well, I'm from the region. I know the raw talent exists, right? I know it's missing a couple of pieces, and there was one piece that I could fill. I could at least, in some limited way, affect a small pool of founders, right? And out of those, maybe a few will pop up to be really, really, really amazing. And I wanted to lend my hand in that effort. And that's what really brought me back.
Jeremy Au:
Wow. Amazing, Justin. Wrapping things up, thank you so much for sharing here. I'd love to paraphrase the three big themes that I got from this discussion here. The first of all, is just thank you so much for sharing about your roots, growing up in Vietnam, and the fact that you're not currently recalling this and sharing your journey not far from where you grew up.
And I especially love how you just brought it all back together, by sharing the fact that you also grew up in California, and how you built up your career not just in technology, in Atari, as part of diaspora, and how your Vietnamese parents wanted you to be a doctor or a lawyer, but you disappointed them by being an engineer. But not as much as your siblings, to be an engineer. And then how you ended up being in China, and then eventually back in Vietnam to help pay it forward to build up the ecosystem is amazing.
The second of course is thank you so much for sharing about what you learned from step by step as a software engineer to VP engineering, and thank you for not becoming a doctor again. And eventually somehow deciding to be a founder, and pushing on despite the stress induced shingles to push on and keep going, and take everything that you learnt to eventually become a VC, bringing capital, your personal experience and your learnings back to Southeast Asia.
And lastly, thank you so much for sharing all that you've learned from both sides of the table, about what it means to have, at a high level, a healthy relationship at the board level, right? Between the VC and a founder. But also, what it means at the one on one level and on a personal level, on a relationship and strategic and day to day level. So, thank you so much Justin, for sharing your entire journey. And look forward to hearing more in the days ahead.
Justin Nguyen:
Yeah. This was fun. I look forward to the next one.
To hear more founder and entrepreneur stories, follow the MHV Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.