A Decade of Building Together
Eddie & Binh mark 10 years of investing in Vietnam
Welcome to the latest edition of The Ascent, presented by AVV. Coming to you from Ho Chi Minh City, this is your front-row seat to how the next-generation market of Vietnam is building global winners, one startup at a time.
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This is a special edition of the newsletter, focused entirely on insights and reflections from our GPs, Eddie Thai and Binh Tran, as they commemorate ten years of investing together in Vietnam.
At this point, they are two of the most experienced early-stage VCs in the country, and we think readers will find plenty of value in what they have to say.
Comments, questions, or feedback? Hit ‘reply’ to this email and let us know.
When Eddie and Binh began working together in 2015, Vietnam’s tech ecosystem was still widely labeled “emerging.” Much of that label was fair: smartphones were new, broadband penetration was limited, and local engineers were still in the early stages of adopting modern tech stacks. Valuations for early-stage startups were often under $1 million, and many market participants were first-time angels, accelerators, and founders still learning how venture finance worked.
Yet even then, the potential was visible. As Eddie recalls, founders were thinking in terms of US$30–35 million exits and considering that a major win. But conversations with Binh revealed a bigger opportunity. In the years that followed, companies in Vietnam and across the region repeatedly broke that ceiling, proving that ambition, talent, and timing were aligning.
More important than just investing, their journey since then has been about validating a thesis: that Vietnam could cultivate world-class technology companies, and that investing in this shift early could produce an outsized impact.
How Vietnam’s Tech Landscape Has Changed
From Outsourcing Base to Global Competitor
In 2015, engineers in Vietnam were not yet considered globally competitive, but the trajectory was clear. Within a few years, Binh and Eddie watched local talent adopt the newest programming languages, frameworks, cloud infrastructure, and distributed computing.
As Eddie notes, “You didn’t necessarily need world-class talent at the beginning; you needed good-enough talent, solving the right problems.” Over time, good-enough became world-class.
Now, Vietnamese engineers are among the best in the world. Mobile gaming surged, making Vietnam a top global producer. Web3 innovation emerged from first principles, with local builders solving developing-market problems that engineers elsewhere were not even considering.
This shift was reinforced by ecosystem milestones:
ELSA, an early AVV investment, became Google’s first AI investment in Asia.
Trusting Social became Sequoia’s first investment in Vietnam.
Sky Mavis, which we backed from seed, became a16z’s and Accel’s first investment in Vietnam, and Vietnam’s only unicorn in 2021
TechCoop clinched one of Vietnam’s largest-ever agritech rounds in early 2025
A More Sophisticated Market
The last decade has also seen major changes in how the market understands and absorbs technology.
In 2015, SaaS was a foreign concept to most SMEs. Investors frequently asked for their money back because they didn’t understand the risk curve or timelines. Today, local founders, family offices, corporates, and institutions have much more conviction. Vietnam’s government prioritizes digital transformation, and there is a growing appetite for venture capital as an asset class.
Capital Cycles and Market Discipline
When global capital overheated in 2022, AVV returned to fundamentals: cost discipline, unit economics, and validated growth. The bar for quality rose sharply, and today’s founders are stronger for it.
Lessons from a Decade of Investing
1. Ambition Compounds
One of the clearest patterns is that it is not dramatically harder to build a high-ambition company than a low-ambition one. The same core tasks apply: building product, hiring, and finding customers. But progress in a big-vision company attracts talent, investors, and partners.
“Might as well go big,” Binh says.
2. Discipline Pays Off
Early on, the team operated with speed and gut instinct. Today, the firm relies on structured processes, rigorous risk assessment, and a team-based approach to deal evaluation. Eddie and Binh still bring distinct perspectives, but when both get excited about a deal, those companies often become breakout successes.
3. Support No Matter the Check Size
A surprising operational lesson: a US$100,000 check requires nearly the same level of support as a US$1 million check. Providing real partnership, such as sounding boards, customer intros, and strategic guidance, takes time. As a result, the workload from the first fund was far greater than expected.
4. Vietnam’s Marketers Are World-Class
One of the biggest unexpected insights has come from data: Vietnamese marketers compete globally in hyper-casual gaming, print-on-demand commerce, and other performance-driven categories.
Some Vietnamese gaming studios achieved 4+ billion downloads without raising venture capital.
On Dreamship’s global fulfillment platform, Vietnamese marketers were consistently the top performers, building businesses generating US$5–30 million a year.
Understanding this capability has reshaped how AVV thinks about global go-to-market strategies.
5. Automation and AI Are Now Expected
AVV has taken a strategic approach to AI internally, automating low-value tasks so the team can focus on founders. The firm considers itself in the top quartile in terms of practical automation, but also recognizes that these will soon be baseline capabilities.
Why Vietnam Will Continue to Produce Global Companies
Deep, Proven, Affordable Tech Talent
Vietnam graduates 50,000-60,000 new engineers each year. STEM fundamentals are strong, with PISA scores ranking among the world’s best, even when compared to wealthy countries. Costs remain significantly lower than in developed markets, with AI engineering talent still roughly one-tenth the cost of the US when factoring in overhead and equity.
For founders, this creates a powerful equation: build and validate products quickly with world-class talent at a significantly lower cost.
A Great Testbed for Innovation
Vietnamese consumers are early adopters, especially in web3, mobile gaming, and new digital experiences. Acquisition costs are low, feedback cycles are fast, and willingness to try new products is high.
With this foundation, companies can:
Build MVPs cost-effectively.
Test and iterate quickly.
Expand regionally or globally with validated products and efficient teams.
Demographic Tailwinds
As Eddie puts it, “Demography is destiny.” Vietnam has another 10+ years of strong demographic momentum. Population growth, urbanization, and rising incomes are reshaping what consumers and businesses need. This will drive continued investment in education, healthcare, housing, and digital services.
The Coming Renaissance
As early players have already invested in infrastructure and consumer behavior shifts, the next wave of startups will be able to focus on higher-margin, algorithm-driven, data-rich businesses rather than infrastructure-heavy first movers.
This will unlock stronger unit economics, sustainable value creation, and more mature capital formation. Vietnam is already diversifying its supply chains, but the next phase goes beyond “China+1” toward more nuanced global integration.
The Next 10 Years
Looking ahead, AVV remains anchored in its core belief: Vietnam will produce more and stronger globally competitive technology companies. Capital markets will evolve even if Vietnam doesn’t develop a startup-friendly local exchange, while global exchanges are already open to Vietnamese founders.
Most importantly, AVV is doubling down on its thesis:
Vietnam’s talent base is world-class and still scaling.
The domestic market is an ideal proving ground.
Global opportunities are increasingly within reach.
Local investors are becoming more sophisticated and engaged.
Ten years ago, neither Eddie nor Binh imagined that the ecosystem would grow this fast. Their partnership, shaped by debate, discipline, and conviction, has mirrored the evolution of Vietnam’s startup landscape itself: fast-moving, resilient, ambitious, and increasingly global.
The next decade stands to be even more transformative.
See you next month!
The AVV team