I respect people who dare to follow their path of entrepreneur, a lonesome and tiring road. Many fail, a few success; however, success has nothing to do with cash nor fame, in my opinion. As much publicity as I got recently, I care less about how people portrait me, judge my decisions. Those who care don’t matter, those who matter don’t care, simple as that!

Sami shared, “As an entrepreneur, you will have 100 moments that you want to quit, but don’t” I asked him, “On my entrepreneur path for the last 4 years, I probably wanna quit about 200 times or more, but I didn’t. I want to know what are the top 3 reasons that kept you going?” And he said, “The desire of solving the problem, my users, and my employees”

It brought me back to a conversation that I had with Amy Lin (former President of USC SWE in 2007), she shared, “When I worked at Microsoft, I know every lines of codes I wrote will potentially impact million of people using MSFT products around the world; however, I could never get a chance to hear directly from them” In 2009, I also interviewed with MSFT. I was in Seattle in a rainy day, 3 interviews back-to-back with 3 Project Manager at MSFT. Working for big corporate like MSFT is nice, happy and successful life, but it was definitely not for me!

Some reporter asked me the same questions that I asked Sami, “There will always be the time that you feel defeated and disappointed, what keep you going?”

And here are my reasons:

1. Those who supported me: First of all is my mom. She understand nothing about technology and didn’t have her first iPhone until 2013. But she is the best mom that I could ever ask for, who took the biggest risk of deliver me at age of 40 with C-session, almost lose me since I haven’t seen earth yet, but I was lucky enough to survive. She taught me how to appreciate this life, and never force me into an arranged marriage or stable job. Since my life is too valuable to ever be taken lightly, I want to make sure it’s worth it to live once. Secondly, my friends and supporters, I always said I’m just a damn lucky girl. Once my advisor said, “I’m your advisor, you can put my name into your company profile, just make sure take it off with you whenever you leave”. I simply cannot be where I am today (although I’m still nowhere) without them.
2. Those who discourage me: I can’t even remember number of people who said directly to me about how useless and worthless I am. And I’m sure there are many more say it behind my back. One of the biggest mistake I made was listening to them. However, I’m also glad I did. Those, who I used to care as friends and more than friends, they gave me the biggest reason to prove them wrong.
3. Those who benefit from my products (aka. my users): I have been writing too much about our users already, but I never feel enough. They are my biggest inspiration and certainly the reason for me to keep working on my products everyday. I read every single email from our support emails; there are always a good story to share. At the time that I feel down and so disappointed, there will always be an email come and give me the best reason for not giving up. Sometimes offer them my direct phone number if I feel that I should talk to them more directly. (One of my user actually did called me, she woke me up at 7am while I was just get on my bed at 3am. One of her student’s iPad cannot open Whiteboard). To know what the technology that we’re creating is appreciated by others, to know that what your time and effort would make an impact on someone’s life is a greatest feeling ever.

Paul Singh said, “If you just want to have a happy and successful life, go to get a job”. The entrepreneur path is not for everyone, it’s for the chosen ones, those who dare to dreams, with passion, and vision to change something in this life.

Silent night at 500Startups – May 24th, 2013 – after earthquake

With co-founder and a batch-mate 

I was thinking about giving Greengar as an example of each questions in my vlog; however, I don’t want to make the video like PR/advertising for our company.

Just in case if you’re interested in to know my 30-second-pitch for Greengar, here it is:

Greengar develops collaboration applications to enable mobile devices connect and sharing information together, solving real-time visual communication problems in classrooms and meeting rooms. Our apps have over 14 million downloads across iOS, Mac, and Android.

The clip made to E27 feature-section instantly after I publish it on YouTube.

And here is the clip (English caption is available, turn it on!)

Hope you enjoy it, and feel free to drop me questions if there is something you want me to cover in my next vlog.

By the way, read the description

Greengar started in 2008 with one developer, the Founder of the company, Elliot Michael Lee. He developed his first app, the Brain Tuner game, as a way to learn Objective-C. It’s a very simple math game that anyone can just pick up and play for a few minutes. Brain Tuner became an overnight sensation with a million downloads in a couple months, and it eventually paid off his USC tuition that year.

While taking the Computer Graphics class at USC, unlike classmates who focused on impressive 3D objects, Elliot built on his simple productivity app, Whiteboard: Collaborative Drawing. It enables two iOS devices to connect and draw together in real-time. He published a polished Whiteboard app on the App Store, and recorded one million downloads in only two months.

Upon our graduation in 2009, I went back to Vietnam to start my first Parallel Frozen Yogurt shop. With over 3 years of experience in retail banking and marketing, and a degree in Computer Science, my first business venture in Vietnam has nothing in common with my background. After the grand opening, Parallel became the iconic brand for premium products, superior customer service, and a viral marketing campaign on social media. I put everything I have into the shop, heart and soul: I was able to secure many prime locations, negotiate each and every single deal with vendors, and expand up to 5 different stores.

Parallel become the biggest curiosity that made Elliot take his first trip to Vietnam in 2010. Despite having over 6 million downloads across his apps, Greengar was still a single-person company. In 2011, I helped Elliot to hire his first developer in Vietnam to create the Android ports of all Greengar apps. The team grew bigger and we decided to move from a living room office to an official office building. However, managing a team of developers and running a company takes more than just having an idea or writing lines of code.

In 2011, the company scaled so quickly that we had over 10 full-time developers and many interns. Our company retreat in the summer had 18 people including family members. Greengar also brought the first Hackathon event to Vietnam and attracted over 100 participants and produced over 25 mobile applications within 48 hours of hacking.

I made my decision to go full-force with Greengar in 2012 after so many sleepless nights. I opened each store with my own hands, decorate each tile on the wall with my own hands, and the day I shut down each stores, it’s painful as hell. However, if I’m gonna spend my 20′s to build a company, follow the entrepreneur’s path, I would prefer to take the risk for building something that touches more people’s lives than just being the best frozen yogurt chain. I remember when my team helped me to carry a piece of ceramic to a corner of the shopping mall, and I had to break it into smaller pieces in order to dump it in the garbage area. The minute I broke that piece with my own hands, my heart was totally torn. Most entrepreneurs write the story of how they started a great company; there should be more people who dare to write about how they finish their companies.

It was the most awkward moment when I sat down with my best friend, my co-founder of Greengar and told him that I want to ride the boat from now on. Though Elliot is the best engineer, great innovator, and the best hacker that I’ve met, Greengar needs an experienced leader who can build the vision and direction, execute the plan, and passionately take the company to the next level. At the end of the day, we both want the best future for Greengar, and that’s what really matters!

After five months as CEO, I took Greengar from Ho Chi Minh City to Silicon Valley, from our motto of fun • simple • useful to become the next revolution in collaboration technology on mobile platforms, from an app development company (which people often think of as “outsourcing” – but we’re not) to a platform builder where developers, educators, and thousands of students are waiting for our next launch. We accepted our first-ever outside financing from the top-tier accelerator program in Silicon Valley, 500 Startups, and moved our team to Mountain View while blowing past 14 million total downloads of our apps.

I came to the States 10 years ago with broken English, and struggled in the classroom with listening to professors and taking notes at the same time. I wished there were a tool that could use to synchronize the notes of my professors with my notebook so that I could focus more attention on listening and understanding the lecture. In the past ten years, many technologies have changed, but no one come close to solving my problem. While talking with many educators and students from Georgia to Massachusetts, Chile to Vietnam, they all have this problem in their classrooms. Now’s the time for someone step up and solve it, and who better than the person who has this problem herself?

Building a company takes more than just great products; it takes time, effort, commitment, vision, direction, execution, and passion!

ThuyMuoi

- A Sunny Day @ 500 Startups -

—–

Orb

The first accessible technology I joined was SS12 in 2007 in USC. I still remember when SAL an SSL in USC was decorating with many white A4 paper with the SS12 logo and slogan “Code for a cause”. I didn’t even understand what it is, but it was my most remarkable memory at USC. I team up with Sherwin, my classmate, and 3 other developers and designer. My Java coding was very beginner at that time, it’s still beginner now I guess

That was the first SS12 event ever, but it was super awesome. My team of 5 people developed a PC game called Orb, a binary game with only 2 states, “ON” and “OFF”. It’s a very fun and challenging game indeed. So, the idea is for users with very limited muscle control (maybe they don’t have fingers or cannot control their fingers) to experience some simple and fun games. Most of game nowadays are very complicated, too many buttons, controls that would challenge the disable people to enjoy.

I take a lead on develop the calculation to detect the collision of the Orb and the walls. It requires some intensive math and physics calculations, and it’s the most important part of the game. After about 40 hours, the game came out with a really good shape; however, our team decided to took a step further to change the graphic of the game to abstract colors so that those who are color-blind or limited-color-visions can still enjoy the game.

 
Color ID 

The second accessible technology I have worked is the ColorID application. It’s also a project starting from SS12 event! Elliot Lee, Co-Founder/former CEO of Greengar was the mentor/developer for the group. After the event ended, he continued to work on the app and published it to AppStore. In the end of 2010, when I joined Greengar, I decided to hire a Vietnamese engineer to develop the Android version. Toward the end of 2011, ColorID suddenly got a lot of publicity from technology press and media all around the world. It started from a very touching and appealing blog post from Austin Seraphin, who experienced iPhone for the first time and appreciated the app to enable him learning all the colors that he never knew in his life.

That blog post keep staying in my mind every night. “If I gonna spend my 20s to build a company, follow the entrepreneur path, I would take the risk for building something that touch more people life than just being the best frozen yogurt chain” I made the decision of going full-time with Greengar in early 2012. I opened each store with my own hands, decorate each tile on the wall with my own hands, and the day that we shut down the stores with my own hands is painful as hell. I remember my team helped me to carry a piece of ceramic to a corner of the shopping mall, I have to break it to smaller piece in order to dumb it to the garbage area. The minute I break that piece with my own hands, my heart was totally torn. Making a rational decision was never been easy! Most entrepreneurs wrote the story about how they started a great company; there should be more people who dare to write about how they finish their companies.

Whiteboard/Smartboard

Due to a very high demand in collaborative between iOS and Android platforms, the development team of Greengar in Vietnam started to develop the cross-platform collaborative application from our own success, Whiteboard: Collaborative Drawing, to a more universal version and expandable called Smartboard.

I led the company with CEO position starting in 2013 and start learning about our users. We got many Education Volume Purchase every month without having much knowledge about how users have been using it. I went back to our support email, which have over hundred of email everyday from thousands of users around the world, I found a very interesting case of Nathan Smith who has been using our Whiteboard product to collaborate and communicate with his professors and doctors effectively.

At the age of 3, he was diagnosed with Autism and Apraxia, two diagnose said more about what he could NOT do that what he could do. His remarkable inner drive and contagious smile encourage therapists, teachers, family and friends to believe in him and give him opportunities to learn and succeed. Speaking through typing on an iPad has given Nathan great opportunities to share his thoughts and excel. He will earn high school diploma this year and entering university.He has GREAT success in using Whiteboard among others in the iPad.

—-

My tweet last night “@500Startups is better than most MBA program in my opinion” got a lot of retweet and reply. Again, it’s my opinion! This day last year, I was still in Ho Chi Minh City to study for the GMAT exam. Today, I’m at Mountain View to work on the most awesome collaborative platform ever. I don’t know if this platform will change the world, the way how people will connect and collaborate, but it certainly will help people who have been struggling with note-taking in class-room and conference like me. As an graduated-MBA, I can certainly change my life with stable income in a big firms; as an entrepreneur, I will have a shot of changing people life, first starting with myself.

Vietnamese and English by: Le Thi Bao Tram

The very first time calling for Thủy, her cold, strict voice made me think about typical model of women who work in technology: Wearing jeans and T-shirt, logical thinking, being detailed orientation, not know how to smile and drinking black coffee without sugar.  But meeting with her gave me a totally different impression: Humorous, sunshine smile, eating sweet cake…She shows me the world of talented women engineers: Being an engineer does not mean losing your femininity.

Why did you choose “Computer Science” major which is much more suitable to men than women ?

I chose this major because communication skill has not been my strength since I was born so I chose the major I don’t have to work with too many people. In majors of technology field, I feel that computer science is most suitable to me. In additionally, I had a chance to approach computer since 6^th, 7^th grade so I had some passion for it.

Why did you choose to start up in Vietnam while USA has more advantages about law, good human resource, etc.? You have too many smooth conditions in USA such as network, family, degree, nationality, etc.?

The very first day I landed in America, I knew that this was not my home immediately. In life, there are so many irrational decisions but sometimes, you will decide based on your emotions. To me, startup is not important about the geographic location but what you do and how could you do it. Though I have enough smooth conditions in USA but everyone has a youth to dream and desire. Startup and living in Việt Nam is the dream I always desires to achieve.

Before building Greengar, you opened a frozen yogurt brand in Ho Chi Minh City, right? Which motivates you not to continue this brand and focus on Greengar?

There are many reasons but the main reason is because I love product of Greengar. Anyone has a dream and if I wants to build something, I want to build a company which is potential developing and approaching more users all over the world. Greengar could help me do this. In business, we need to know when we cut loss and move.

How do you feel about human resource of technology in Việt Nam ?

Technology human resource in Việt Nam is very good, I have worked with many technology students. They are very creative, but the creativity is not put in right place.

There are two kinds of creativity: creativity to finish task and creativity to be potential and sustainable. Creativity is put in the right place will be like “fish in the water”, that is the reason why Vietnamese people are very excellent in other countries.

When I joined PITCH SF 2013 Startup, many people asked me how many people my company had. I answered that total number of people in my company was not over 10 but product of Greengar had over 13 million download times. Technology companies in USA need a very big team to create apps which have more than 1 million download times. To reply for these concerns, I explained that: “Vietnamese people are very excellent, you just need to give them a problem, they will definitely give you the solution”

When you joined the final round of PITCH SF 2013 Startup in USA, what advantage does USA have but Việt Nam doesn’t in creating app on smart phone? And in high technology countries such as USA, what does women have common and different things with Vietnamese women? 

Compared to Vietnam, companies in the US have an deeper understanding about market and broader vision.  For example, if you have intention to do something but if someone says to you “Someone else did this before you”, Vietnamese people will usually feel worried, but people who are grown up in USA environment will want do better. USA children are trained to be confident. It belongs to cultural aspect.

Especially, Vietnamese people are usually biased. In USA, if women want to startup in technology, they will study and do it but in Việt Nam they usually have thoughts “Women should study majors about business, accountant, etc”. In USA, there are some popular prejudices like Việt Nam “Women should not work in technology field”. But this is not true, I have many female friends who are working for big technology companies and in fact, technology women are really excellent.

Being a female, what is your biggest disadvantages in technology?

At Women 2.0 Conference, I heard a very impressive sentence “Never let anyone treats you differently, they can only do it when you let them do so”

What strength of women do you think that will help them success and how could you apply these strengths?

Vietnamese people have a very meaningful sentence “It is very hard for heroes to win over a beautiful women”. If women know how to utilize their tenderness to make men feel that they are heroes, it will helps the business relationship a lot.

Is there any time your capability is being underestimated and meet many obstacles in fund raising because you are a women startup in technology?  If yes, could you please share your experiences with readers and way you pass these obstacles. 

It happened quite frequently such that there was a time I doubted myself about my own capabilities? But it was so lucky that my family gave me a strong energy resource to walk on.

But those people who underestimated me is necessary for my life because they showed me the reality. Other people just could underestimate us when they find our weaknesses. That is chance for me to try more and more. A startup needs to listen to others. But the most important thing is that you have to believe in yourself

I guess that working in startup technology company, most of your team is male? Which obstacles did you met when you leaded team as a women?

My first leadership experiences is when I was 22 years old, it has been a long time ago. Most of my teammate are men, there are so many obstacles, male colleagues usually underestimate women.

22 year olds, my position was marketing director, many candidates coming to interview asked me “This is your marketing director?”. Many men underestimate women and have high ego. They don’t want to listen. Women often try to listen to whatever it is right or wrong (smile)

Which strengths of women help you lead team well ?

There are 2 strengths of women which have helped me a lot. The first strength is that women in Việt Nam usually have to do multiple task at the same time so they don’t have much time…Women usually choose product easy to use. It helps me design product easy to use for users.

The second strength is that women in Việt Nam are trained to be “have to please everyone” (smile). So in my company, it have helped me “The big problem becomes small one, the small problem becomes nothing”. Men always try to analyze everything.

When I reviewed your profile, I have a feeling that your life and your entrepreneur path is very smooth, could you please share with me and readers some failures that you never announce for people?

There are so many failures in my life, but my character is very positive so I don’t want to show something negative. If you say that I am lucky, I agree with you but if you say that my life is smooth, it is not true. Thủy also had period looking at account balance bank and wondering myself “Where is money to pay for my employees?” or “How to convince partner?”.  But I am very lucky because there are so many friends, family who always support me.

Each person has different definition about success and failure. In the final round of PITCH SF 2013 Startup, when I knew that I passed to top 10, I felt very worried. But after watching other team’s presentations, finishing mine and observing audience’s reaction, I didn’t think that my team would get the second position. But at least, I gave everybody in the conference a good impression when I came to the competition with traditional dress of  Việt Nam: “áo dài” and said that “I am Vietnamese” in the introduction of presentation. Maybe they could not remember my name but they could remember the girl with the pure white color of “áo dài” Việt Nam. In additionally, I want to break down the prejudice that technology women just wear jeans, T-shirt. People will always have different opinions. I just wants to show that Vietnamese engineers could create products which are as good as others.

What is direction of Greengar in future? Do you have any desire to make Greengar become an international company? People usually say that “app business is very hard to be profitable”, how about you?

I want to focus more on 2 markets: Việt Nam and USA. Nowadays, Greengar is already an international company. 80% – 90% of Greengar users come from USA market. The most important thing, now, is developing user community in Việt Nam, Southeast Asian market. Smartboard is very popular and featured by iTunes in 14 countries of Asia such as Việt Nam, Thailand, Việt Nam.

About “app business is hard to be profitable” depends on personal view of each person and direction for app in the first days. To me, app is the tool for Greengar to change user’s experiences in fields such as education, business

In recent video, you said that you will join more startup companies. Could you please share details about your intention? 

In future, I will join a small project with an American professor and Vietnamese students. Project is about collecting experiences of founders in Việt Nam. I hope that entrepreneurs in Việt Nam will be open minded to share valuable lessons for the next generation to start up.

Thanks for joining the interview. Wish you every success in the future.

We have a team member who is getting married, who is still spending more time on his codes rather than his wedding project.

I personally don’t even have time to spend with my family in the entire Lunar New Year because of preparation for the Women 2.0 Conference.

But why are we doing all this? Here are the reasons:

• Nathan Smith: At the age of 3, he was diagnosed with Autism and Apraxia, two diagnose said more about what he could NOT do that what he could do. His remarkable inner drive and contagious smile encourage therapists, teachers, family and friends to believe in him and give him opportunities to learn and succeed. Speaking through typing on an iPad has given Nathan great opportunities to share his thoughts and excel. He will earn high school diploma this year and entering university. He has GREAT success in using Whiteboard among others in the iPad.

• South Shore Educational Collaborative: provides specialized education, counseling, and therapeutic services for approsximately 350 individuals with moderate to intense learning, intellectual, emotional, physical, and medical challenges. They have been using Whiteboard to enable their students collaborative on syllable game, multiple choices questions, tackle and analyzing the problems without have to share pen and paper. Moreover, they use Whiteboard to give direction for autism kids of what they need to do next.  They are demanding Bluetooth-collaborative on Smartboard and the Wi-Fi accessible in 8 schools in their district to enable 100 more students collaborative using Whiteboard.

They are the two stories among hundred of other stories that we wish to share about our users of Whiteboard and Smartboard. When Elliot developed Whiteboard 4 years ago, it was just a class project. The first version of Whiteboard, releasing on Cydia for beta users, has been put together within only one month. He hacked days and nights on the codes and Whiteboard hit one million downloads within the first 2 months on the AppStore. We have never thoughts about being the most popular collaborative drawing applications on mobile, but we are right now.

In the last four years, regardless how much the technology has been change, resolutions and displays have been changed, the commitment of Greengar team stayed the same with the Whiteboard product:delivering the most useful applications for people to collaborate on mobile productive and effectively.

Since the Women 2.0 Conference, our team finished as a Runner-up and have so much attentions from press, media, and investors from all around the world. It’s very exciting! However, what really made all of our efforts, lack of sleep and scarifying family-time are really the stories that shared by our users. Each lines of codes we are writing and each dollars we spend to bootstrap this company in the last four years are totally worth it.

I’m thrill for the future of Greengar and wake up everyday like our journey has just begun.

I really hope we could find a partner who are crazy enough to bring Smartboard to every classroom in the world and changing more people lives together

By Thuy Muoi - Co-Founder/CEO

Ho Chi Minh City, peaceful night at Central Garden Apartment

• TechInAsia: http://www.techinasia.com/greengar-asias-contestant-women-20-releases-smartboard-app/
• Action.vn: http://www.action.vn/tin-cong-nghe/tin-moi/2909-smartboard-san-pham-cua-startup-viet-tai-women-20-conference-2013-san-francisco
• Inc.com: http://www.inc.com/francesca-fenzi/5-women-led-startups-to-watch.html
• E27: http://e27.co/2013/02/12/vietnams-greengar-launches-smartboard-for-real-time-sketching-and-note-taking-collaboration/
• E27: http://e27.co/2013/03/04/women-2-0-celebrates-females-love-for-tech-on-valentines-day/
• Women 2.0: http://www.women2.com/women-2-0-my-best-valentines-day-in-silicon-valley/
• Action.vn: http://www.action.vn/khoi-nghiep/tro-chuyen-voi-startup/2972-nu-gioi-nganh-cong-nghe-viet-ceo-greengar-duoc-khoi-nghiep-va-sinh-song-o-viet-nam-la-uoc-mo-thuy-luon-khao-khat
• Kien Thuc: http://kienthuc.net.vn/doanh-nhan/201303/diem-mat-Ceo-nu-Viet-tuoi-tre-tai-cao-898426/
• Women 2.0: http://www.women2.com/female-founders-to-watch-celebrating-international-womens-day-on-march-8/

While I was surfing around on Internet today, I found this page (with broken CSS) from HTV3

That was actually my first time on TV. The interview was conducted before Lunar New Year, and broadcasting on the 2nd or 3rd day of Tet. I was not in Vietnam at that time.

The producer of the program gave me a DVD after. I just wanna save it here for those who are interesting in watching (it’s entirely in Vietnamese)

Happy International’s Women Day!

My respond was, “I will agree if you say that I’m a lucky and positive person but my life and entrepreneur path are certainly not smooth and easy” In fact, I think most of the entrepreneur paths are not smooth and easy. My favorite quote from Edward Phelps was “The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything” … I probably made every single mistakes that every entrepreneur make in the last 5 years, from leadership to management, from vision and directions to detail-oriented, from raising funds to manage cash flows, from product positioning to intellectual property protection. Entrepreneur is never an easy path, because the word itself mean to describe the person who willing to take greater than normal financial risks to build a business or a company. It’s the path for only few chosen ones!

I was trained by Jeffrey Tsao, “The reason why Michael Jordan is the best player is he missed more shots than anyone else”. Among so many valuable lessons that he taught me in my early days, this lesson is the both encourage and challenging one. Many days I come back home, exhausted, lay down on sofa in the living room and wonder myself, “Is this worth it?” and the next morning I woke up and find myself ready for every challenges again.

This year, 2013, is the 10-year anniversary of my first-day in America, the land of dream and hope, of challenges and opportunities.  And … I feel lucky to be a female entrepreneur!

A lifetime learning experience.

“You don’t have to study business major to become an entrepreneur”. With over 3 years experience in retail banking, marketing, and personal finance, I graduated from USC with a Computer Science degree and start my first business venture of Parallel Frozen Yogurt in Vietnam. It become an overnight sensation with huge number of visitors, many prime locations, and become the iconic brand of frozen yogurt in Bien Hoa and Ho Chi Minh City. My working experience, my educational degree, and my first business venture are totally unrelated! However, these are the things that I learned in my 6 years studying and working in the US:

• Do it yourself, get your hands dirty: I never work in any restaurant before, neither have any experience in frozen yogurt or ice-cream; however, I did my own research, taking class with suppliers, contact and negotiating with them for the logistic and pricing, and most important is developing my own secret recipes for my frozen yogurt.
• Don’t avoid risk, manage risks: Entrepreneurs are risk-takers; even if I invest into a business with $0 cost, the biggest risk I take is the opportunities costs. The only way to avoid the risk is to avoid the entrepreneur path, and that’s all! And if I don’t want to avoid it, I gotta learn how to manage the risks on my best knowledge, even that mean to spend many sleepless night with accounting books, or to calculate to every penny on each gram of milk.
• Someone are not on the same roads with you, that doesn’t mean they’re lost:  Many entrepreneurs was even discourage by their closed friends, family members, or even their loved ones. Aren’t they supposed to be my most crazy fans, my biggest supporters? It’s not always the case! Many of them just hope that discouragement will make me give up. But the fact is I don’t need the whole world support me, only fews those who matter.

I left Vietnam when I was 17 with no experience in business and negotiation with Vietnamese people before. When I come back to Vietnam building my business at the age of 23, I have to learn how to overcome the culture shock by practicing my negotiation skills everyday, whether for renting a locations or dealing salary with my employees. I was extremely lucky to build that business with my best friend, Ha Pham, who is the super star of networking and “get-things-done”. Without her, there would not be a Parallel!

A college degree from prestigious university is a ticket for me to any decent jobs in America; however, entrepreneur is a chance for me to keep learning and practicing my knowledge in a lifetime regardless where I am.

Work on the projects that I love the most

My second business venture in Vietnam, Greengar, started unintentionally. When Elliot Lee, my Hackathon-buddy in USC, travelled to Vietnam to visit my Parallel Frozen Yogurt. I started with helping him recruiting Vietnamese developers, training, and managing them. We decided to start an official office in early 2011 at … a living room of an apartment. The team grew bigger as there are more works from the exponential growth of Greengar’s users. Beside fixing bugs and improving the existing applications, our developers started come up with many new games and apps. In 2 years, we completed more than 20 different mobile applications, many of them still available on App Store today. The end of 2011, Elliot shared with me a blog of a blind person found how useful our Color Identifier application on his iPhone. I never thought such a simple application have a big impact to a person life. The blog was featured on NPR, Lifehacker, and many of international tech media. However, what impacted me was not the popularity or publicity, I found my passion in technology that make people life better.

In early 2012, I finally decided to shut down the chain of Parallel Frozen Yogurt and go full-force with Greengar. Elliot decided to move back to America and started traveling around the country. I start seeing the problems of visual communications. My engineering team decided to develop the Internet Collaboration feature for Whiteboard so that I can collaborative brainstorm with Elliot from half of the globe away. Whiteboard and Skype are the two main tools that Greengar team use the most to communicate with each others everyday.

Whiteboard is the most popular collaborative application on iOS App Store and Android Google Play. Though there are over 8 million downloads up-to-date, the app is only enable 2 devices connect together in real-time. There are many users requesting the cross platforms collaboration functions. And their voices are heard! Smartboard is my latest project at Greengar, which I proudly brought to the Women 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, enable more than 2 devices connect together, across platform, and cloud-storage integration. I remember my days in USC, when my Professors explaining the codes while writing on the white notepad, which is projected to the board. I had such a hard time of both listening and writing at the same time. I couldn’t wait for the day that my professors in USC start using the Smartboard for their lectures so that their notes will be synchronized with all students’ smartphones devices. I’m sure those students who English is not their first language (like me) will appreciate the technology a lot. And certainly not only USC students, but many other classrooms, meetings, and conference rooms around the world.

Being a female entrepreneur, I’m not alone!

Being a female entrepreneur in Vietnam is a little challenging, and I’m sure it happens in most of Asian countries. I can’t believe that, in 2013, women are still expected to get married, have kids, and take care family by the age of 30. Don’t get me wrong! It should be part of women’s lives, but should not be their entire lives. I kept hearing the questions about boyfriend, marriage, and kids every single family events. Everyone are very skeptical when I start talking about my business, my company, my products, and things that I build. The only thing they care about is whether I can build a family, a happy one.

I was selected to the Top 10 Finalist of Women 2.0 PITCH Competition. On Feb 14, 2013, I wore my traditional Vietnamese dress, Ao Dai, on stage to present my product Smartboard in front of 1000 entrepreneurs and investors in The Westin. After my presentation, everyone gave me a big round of applause and surrounded me with many questions about my products. That’s my first time ever have that many people pay attentions about my products and what I do rather than my personal life. In three weeks in San Francisco, I met  many investors, entrepreneurs, and many talented developers. The Women 2.0 organizers, like Angie, Shaherose, Rebecca, my mentors Tom Kosnik and Linh Thai, and many other friends in San Francisco gave me lots of tips, connections, and even helped me setup meetings. They made my trip totally worth it!

“Entrepreneurs is a lonesome road, people will give you courage and support, but no one will walk it for you” However, the encouragement and supports of women entrepreneur ecosystem and many supporters have certainly make my path more meaningful and worthy!

Time flexibility for the family and my loved ones

I saw many happy family came to an end because of the entrepreneurs didn’t have anytime for their loved ones. The fact that entrepreneurs have their mind occupied 24/7 with their companies and products is inevitable. However, that also give them a chance of being the most responsible and committed ones. They would never have time, but they can always make time for our loved ones. The myth of dating entrepreneurs are very tough because they would never have time is not true. The fact is they could stay on bed cuddling on Monday morning and work all night long on a Saturday night should not be surprised at all. In fact, I’m surprised that you’re surprised!

Entrepreneurs are just like normal people, we love and care for family and our loved ones with all our hearts. However, we just use our time more wisely. In April last year, I decided to took my Mom on a trip from Vietnam to Malaysia, Indonesia, Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane for 30 days. My Mom is now 67 years old and I really don’t know how many more trips we can travel together. During the trip, I always have to stay connected to work with my team in Vietnam, but we was also able to enjoy many exotic and interesting places and foods together. I rarely have any real vacations, I even have to work everyday during the Lunar New Year to prepare for my PITCH Competition; however, I certainly have the best time in San Francisco with my friends, Leslie and Judy, enjoy the most delicious ramen in Izakaya Sozai, fresh oysters at Water Bar, and many Philz Coffee in my trip.

Being with an entrepreneurs could be tiring and neglected sometimes. However, when we make time for someone, they are certainly one the most important people my our hearts.

More productive and effective

For me, 24 hours a day would never be enough. I always have some many ideas and works that I want to get done; besides that, I always want to make time for my family as well. Procrastination is my biggest enemy! I learned how to use my time more effective and productive.

• Instead of wasting 5 mins to decide what to wear every morning, my set of clothes are always organized by Sunday nights for the whole week.
• I will always go for grocery shopping with a list of items that I need/want by categories and not wasting my time for walking around the supermarket .
• Google Drive and iCloud became my hard drive so that I can access my files from any devices at any time.
• Instead of wasting half an hour to explain with someone my ideas, I could just ask them to join my Smartboard and get the problem done in 5 mins.

Time is always limited, and every small decision counts

Treat people with care and love

Sometimes, I make time for some old-friend-reunion party and I hard so many complaints about their co-working and their bosses. I just listen but couldn’t join the conversation at all, not because I don’t understand but I don’t know what to say. I never have to worry about my boss hating me or co-workers back-stabbing me.  I learned over time how to treat people with care and love. In a start-ups, we’re all like family members and the only thing we care about is building a great products for our users. We do not need to prove with anyone but ourselves about the capability of delivering scalable code structures, expandable UI/UX, and compelling business strategies.

I’m lucky for being a female entrepreneur and I know that …

On the International Women’s Day, I wish all the female around the globe to feel the same …

An article about me on E27 by Jasmine Ho

I learned more about the entrepreneurship in the last 2 weeks than my entire life, and what I learned the most is compacted into one day in the Women 2.0 Conference.

My trip starts with visiting the Head Quarter of Google in Mountain View, a nice dinner chat with Thuc Vu, Co-founder of Katango (acquired by Google last year), and Adam Lasnik, a project manager at Google. It’s really interesting to see how the entrepreneur mindset of people who work at big corporate, each project is like a small start-up, and we obviously don’t need to be called “Founder” to be an entrepreneur.

I fall in love with all the start-up office in Silicon Valley with the high ceiling and very open environment. It’s really help for your brain in problem-solving and thinking-process! I visited Pinterest and AirBnB offices with Tracy Chou, and early developer of Pinterest. Though we just met a week before in Vietnam, I feel such a pleasure to know her.  The early employees are risk-takers, they should be recognized as much as though successful entrepreneurs as well. Without these early developers, there might not even any products or platforms. The AirBnB office is my most favorite one, it’s like the whole world within an office. It inspired me a lot in my plan for re-design my office space.

My entire Lunar New Year was just working constantly on the pitch and incubator applications. Working on the applications are actually forced us to think really hard about the business, which is very helpful for preparing the questions from the judge panel. And our hard work paid off!

On Feb 14th, 2013, I decided to wear my most traditional dress to present my current working project at Women 2.0 Conference. I was really nervous whether my dress is too elaborate for such a technology event. However, Shaherose told me that I should just be myself; therefore, I chose to wear what I felt most comfortable with. Traditional dress is a way for Vietnamese ladies show their respect with an important events, such as conference, ceremony, weddings, graduations, etc.

Though I didn’t win the first place for the Competition, I did try my very best and I’m glad that many people liked it. There was about 20 tweets @greengar and many people downloaded Smartboard right at the Conference. I received many complements at the cocktail networking after that, as well as some personal noes and emails as well.

I think Shaherose was absolutely right about the culture of Women 2.0, it’s about “TO GIVE AND TO GET”, but giving is receiving! I felt that I have been receiving so much from this Conference, especially the chance meet 2 of my idols, Julie Zhou and Lynda! I have never attend any technology conference that people are so fire up, so focus and inspire each others as this event. I met so many inspiring female investors, entrepreneurs and amazed by their levels of focusing into building the products and the companies. My favorite quote from the event was, “Don’t allow people treat women differently, they can only do that if you allow them to do so!”

I was completely exhausted after very long day/week/month, all of my mind before the Conference was nothing else but releasing Smartboard and the Pitch.

However, since it was also a Valentine’s Day, here is my Valentine’s Day status (on FB, now translated upon Angie Chang requested)

• Dating is time consuming. But if you don’t date, how would you learn more about each others. I’d rather use that time to date with angels and VCs, who can write a check to invest to my company (who says I don’t like sugar daddy)

• Break-up is hurt! Though you don’t say it out, it’s still painful, lots of tears, and lots of time for recover. I’d rather use that time to build a product or a company; when it fails, the pain is about the same.

• When we’re “in a relationship”, there are only two choice, get marriage or break-up (it’s binary choice, by the way). It’s very similar to working with employees, partners, or investors. If things go well, everyone are happy, we’re building career, products, and wealth together. If things go wrong, we’re apart. They both consume as much time and efforts!

•  When we have boyfriend/girlfriend/good friends (with benefits), there will be someone who give us a hug, kiss our foreheads, or scrubbing our backs at night. But when I build a product with more than a million people using it, and see the digits in my bank accounts increasing, it’s an awesome feeling as well!

Everything is an investment, everyone has their own choice. In this Valentine’s Day, I’m still single, but after my pitch, I got hundreds of people give me a big round of applause, that made this my best Valentine’s Day ever! That feeling is priceless and no one could bring to you except yourself.

So, let’s go out there, build a product, build a company, change the world, change yourself, and I hope to see you in the next V-Day in Silicon Valley!