From zero to one: The journey of Got It inspires Vietnamese startups

WHEN CANDIDATES "RAN AWAY" BECAUSE OF THE SHABBY OFFICE

Silicon Valley has always been appraised as "the heaven for startups" since it has everything a tech startup needs to succeed. However, the harsh reality is that not a lot of companies can survive in this competitive ecosystem, especially when rivals within the same sector can be "kicked out" at any time. Got It, along with Elsa and Gear, is currently one of the only three startups that has established offices in both Silicon Valley and Vietnam. Its products have been sold for over 250 universities and colleges in the U.S (accounting for 10% of the total customers) with thousands of users. Got It's education experts came from around 79 countries, of which over 50% are Indians.

In 2011, being a fourth-year Ph.D. student at Iowa University and without any business management skills, Hung Tran decided to start his own business with Tutor Universe (a platform that connected tutors and students) - the predecessor of Got It. At that time, the company's office only occupied a few square meters of the laboratory for Ph.D. students in the Computer Science Department of Iowa University.

Among Tutor Universe's employees, Hung and his cofounder were the only people working in the U.S., while the other five worked remotely from Vietnam. All of them were within Hung's network connections, working only as part-timers. Thus, their operating system was rather amateur, resulting from the many struggles the company was facing as a young startup.

In 2012, only when Tutor Universe received extra funding that helped Hung's Vietnamese team to becoming full-time employees. Nevertheless, due to the lack of company regulations, the company's members were allowed too much freedom and started working in an unsystematized style. Some engineers even changed the UI/UX design to make it easier for their work while neglecting the user's experiences.

The year 2013 opened up a new chapter for Tutor Universe when Hung was determined to move his company from Iowa to the "the startup heaven" Silicon Valley. The move was a strategic decision, yet a highly risky one. There was hardly any startup founded by Vietnamese people that could survive in a harsh environment like Silicon Valley. During that difficult period, all six members of the Tutor Universe team worked enthusiastically, even though their company's fate was constantly hanging by a thread.

In the fall of 2013, Hung managed to connect with Peter Relan, the "godfather" of Silicon Valley, who owned an excellent start-up incubator. The whole team was assigned an unexpectedly demanding task, which was to turn  the Tutor Universe web-based application into a mobile version within a month. Facing such a challenge, Tutor Universe realized the need to increase their team size.  However, Tutor Universe was only an underdog within the tech industry, having neither fame nor funding. Many candidates immediately rejected joining the team as soon as they saw the poorly furnished office.

Even in 2016, when the number of applications had reached over 1,000, recruitment remained a quandary as 98% of the applicants did not meet Got It requirements. This happened partially because Vietnamese engineers usually found it difficult to communicate in English with experts in Silicon Valley, and Got It demanded many qualities that had never formerly been required by any other companies.

After all the hardship, at the end of 2016, Got It, with 20 employees, succeeded in raising 9 million US Dollars from Silicon Valley investors and became the first startup founded by Vietnamese people to have its products recognized in Silicon Valley.

Before studying in the U.S, Hung used to be the leader of Vietkey Linux - the very first Vietnamese distribution of Linux. Nevertheless, he regretted not having much experience and a product mindset when he first started Got It. These weaknesses made him delivered many bad decisions that set back the company. "If I could start things over, I would work for a big corporation for some years before starting my own. With the skill set that I could have gained, Got It might have developed much faster and did not miss many opportunities as we did."

Explaining why he chose to start up in the U.S, Hung shared that he had witnessed so many "impossible become possible" start-up stories. "In the U.S, there is no free lunch. If you want success, you have to fight for it. But the competition is very fair. If you fail, there is a reason for it. And also, here in America, the chance is there for everyone. This inspired me a lot to start my own business - Got It."

INVESTORS REFUSED TO INVEST AS THERE WAS NO FORMER VIETNAMESE STARTUP THAT SUCCEEDED IN THE STATES

The blog "Got It Start-up story at Silicon Valley" has portrayed its journey in the startup heaven. As stated in the article, there are millions of startup ideas in Silicon Valley but whether you can turn such ideas into a real high-quality product is crucial. Back in the time, Got It did not only have the idea, but it also had a platform with over 20,000 users - Tutor Universe - a promising prototype. It was the potential product that has helped Got It attract the very first funding that allows it to come this far.

The first official product after the company changed its name to Got It is PhotoStudy. The application gained thousands of attention, got featured on the App Store, and ranked second in the Education category, right after iTunes U and proved its potentiality.

Got It focuses on English-speaking markets, especially the U.S market. Since Got It is a start-up with several shortages in resources, it is reasonable to gain certain support from the U.S customers before expanding its market further.

In terms of human resources, Got It prides itself on a team with the most talented people. The head office in Silicon Valley has around 25 employees with admirable backgrounds. Among those is Peter Relan, the investor who made Discord, CrowdStar, or OpenFeint possible. Moreover, the Got It team members included many people who worked for Google, eBay, Oracle, GREE, Lyft, Rakuten, etc.

In the fierce competition at Silicon Valley, the three characteristics mentioned above: product, market, and human resources - are the key for Got It to attract investments and succeed to get over 20 million US dollars from world-class ventures. Many of them have only invested in the "craziest" ideas that could change the world, such as SpaceX, Tesla, and Planet Labs.

However, similar to other startups, Got It also faced several life-and-death situations. No one used their product when the first version of PhotoStudy launched on the AppStore. The whole team had to spend around six months identifying the issues, figuring out the users' needs, and rebuilding the product. If Got It did not define the problem and "bounce back" after failures, it would never be able to mark itself in the tech industry.

Besides, Got It also encountered a few issues when calling for more investment. Some first rounds were not so demanding, but the more money they wanted, the tougher it became to convince the investors. One of the "painful" reasons why Got It could not close the deal was the founder's origin. In Silicon Valley, there was not any startup founded by Vietnamese that managed to impress the investors. Thus, they did not feel it safe enough to fund the company.

When the product was not completed, and the funding round was not finalized, Got It was in a life-and-death situation. It was the time when no one in the team could tell about the company's future. At that intense period, Hung always saved himself 1.000USD for a one-way flight to Vietnam, and the other co-founder quitted.

When asked about the difficulties of being a Vietnamese founder in Silicon Valley, Hung shared the importance of customers' insights in the targeted market. "It was the lesson that I learned after several ups and downs, especially when you develop a product in the education sector, which often has certain characteristics. Even after five years doing a Ph.D. and three to four years developing Got It, I can understand just a small part of the market."

Fortunately, Got It has an outstanding team of employees who used to work in big cooperation like Uber or Amazon to upgrade the team and build the product that the market needs.

AT GOT IT, SOFT SKILLS ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT

According to Hung Tran, besides a professional working process, personnel should be carefully sorted out and selected from the application round. At Got It, soft skills are valued and continuously trained.

First and foremost, it is vital to maintain work efficiency and productivity. Many Vietnamese spend much time on Facebook, YouTube before actually working, so even though

they spend the whole day at the office, their performance is still deficient.

Another important soft skill is English. If the employees do not feel comfortable using the language, it will increase the time they take to handle simple tasks. For example, it can take them 30 minutes to read an email that can be finished within 5 minutes, or instead of taking 3-4 minutes to reply to the email, they will need 15 minutes. Those are the things that Got It measures frequently. Moreover, they require the whole team to take a standardized English test at the end of the year to see whether their employees have improved each year. In which, the critical level of skills is reading, writing, listening, and speaking, respectively.

The last soft skill is the keyboard typing skill. If the employee keeps hunting and pecking, it will take them a large amount of time to finish the job. "These are soft skills that any Got It employee will be trained. Even a 3rd-year college student will receive these training programs and excel at these skills when he/she graduates", Mr. Hung shared.

Besides, the process at Got It is unified and follows certain principles. Specifically, to build a product at Got It, the process always starts with an American Product Manager. To ensure there is no conflict and misunderstanding between product teams in the U.S. and engineers in Vietnam, Got It always offers various training programs to both teams. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Got It used to organize business trips and let Product Managers in the U.S. come to Vietnam or bring Vietnamese engineers to the United States to ensure the team is in sync. "It is necessary to have a team with many different divisions from Q.A. (quality assurance), Marketing, Engineers, ... in which the Product Manager is the lead to develop a completed product," said Hung.

GO GLOBAL? FOUNDER HAS TO UNDERSTAND THE FOREIGN MARKET

Hung Tran believes one of the main factors that hinder Viet startups from going global is the inadequate understanding of the foreign market. It is essential for the founder to live and work in that market for at least six months to a year or be actively involved in some events and groups to know the consumers' behaviors. "Only then will Viet startups have the chance to succeed at the international market" - Hung Tran stressed.

Another method that can help startups go global is to hire excellent native managers, similar to the approach that Grab and Gojek have applied in the Vietnam market. However, the cost to attain these managers will not be reasonable. Not to mention that for startups, money is fuel. The trial and error process can be expensive and last long until these organizations find an appropriate model. "The Vietnam startups will not have enough resources to execute these things" - Hung added.

Thus, the only way that Viet startups can go global is to live in the targeted market, understand their culture, speak, and use their language fluently. "Still, English is the weakness of many Vietnam startups and founders" - Hung stated.

Since then, according to Mr. Hung, to improve this and have a startup generation that can "go global", Vietnam needs to focus more on training high-quality human resources seriously and methodically. "Only a few recent graduates can meet the company's requirement. These students often cram before exams and then apply to an outsourcing company when they finish schools", Mr. Hung shared.

To create high-quality human resources, universities and colleges may consider collaborating with enterprises so that students can both learn the concrete foundation and practical skills. This way, they will be ready and build real products instead of being an outsourced developer.

GOT IT'S SUCCESS IS CONTRIBUTING TO IMPROVING VIETNAM'S IMAGE

In 2015, DesignBold CEO - Hung Dinh met Hung Tran after 15 years of losing contact. He felt contented that his old acquaintance had successfully started the business.

When Hung Tran shared the investment Got It received, Mr. Hung Dinh said: "It is almost an unbelievable number for a one-year-old software startup, let alone whether the amount was big or small".

In 2016, Got It received an additional investment of more than 9 million USD from prestigious investors in the US. "I am happy for the Got It team and for Vietnamese startups because this is a powerful testament to the role of a startup in the country's economy in the next 10-20 years. Some said startup is a trend that will fade, but I think it is more than that.

The Singapore, Malaysia, and Israel governments consider startups as their country's economic revolution. The Vietnamese startup community, though small, has been bringing certain values to the country, and successful overseas startups like Got It are making a considerable contribution to improving Vietnam's image on the world map", Mr. Hung Dinh concluded.

Mr. Hung Dinh is famous for JoomlArt, a top website for web design templates with Joomla open-source code. He is also known as the "new phenomenon" of the tech field when his startup, DesignBold, got 3.000 orders equivalent to 117.000USD in the first two weeks./.