The girl who talked with the US President 6 years ago became a famous CEO in the Vietnamese startup investment world

In May 2016, when Barack Obama made an official visit to Vietnam as US President, the head of the White House had a dialogue with Vietnamese startups.

One of the three honored faces to have a direct conversation with the US President at that time was Le Hoang Uyen Vy – CEO of Adayroi.com, belonging to Vingroup. Opening the conversation, the girl born in 1987 surprised Mr. Obama and many people in the hall by the question: “When you were young, did you dream of becoming president?”.

After the conversation, Uyen Vy also wrote an article about entrepreneurship. This article later appeared on the White House website.

In fact, it was not until that time that people knew the name Le Hoang Uyen Vy. She is a famous young entrepreneur in the Vietnamese startup community, entering the Top 30 under 30 in Vietnam in 2015 and the Top 30 under 30 in Asia in 2016.

Making money from the age of 7

Le Hoang Uyen Vy showed her passion and acumen in business from a very early age. At the age of 7 – when her friends were still playing with dolls or reading stories – she earned her first coins.

In 1994, an Indian magician came to Uyen Vy’s school to perform and offer to sell a magic book for 5,000 VND. The children are all very excited and want to go home and ask their parents for money to own this interesting book.

Seeing that, the second-grader girl’s mind suddenly flashed with the idea: “What if I take a photo of the book and sell it for 2,000 VND?”.

Thinking about doing it, Uyen Vy bought an original book, took it for a photocopy, and offered it to her classmates. The photo books were quickly sold out by the student. As a result, after the first business deal, after deducting all expenses, Uyen Vy pocketed 15,000 VND.

In 1998, the little girl began to have access to computers and the Internet. Through chat groups, Uyen Vy was introduced by some people to personal websites with their own domain names. The 11-year-old girl is very excited about this and also wants to create her own website with the domain name huyenvy.com.

One day, Uyen Vy discovered Vietnam’s largest information technology company quoted web development services at over $1,000, when she could do it for less. Vy decided to start her own business with web design, domain name services and servers. She was only 13 years old then.

“Selling a domain name for $2,100 is one of my successful deals. After that incident, finding good domain names became very difficult for me. That’s why I focus on hosting space on the server. I came up with the idea of ​​giving students a free server space rental service to promote the brand,” Uyen Vy said in her 2016 article on entrepreneurship.

After a difficult initial period, her business progressed and was covered by a major newspaper. However, soon after that, Vy’s system was attacked by hackers. Her entire website crashed and her clients’ websites suffered the same fate.

“Customers called in anger and I had to pay their damages. Feelings of disappointment overflowed, because I lost everything overnight,” Uyen Vy recalled.

From Chon.vn, Adayroi to venture capital

After graduating valedictorian in finance from Georgetown University (USA) in 2009, Le Hoang Uyen Vy turned down many attractive job offers to return to Vietnam to start a business.

Not long after returning home, Uyen Vy established Chon Trading Joint Stock Company and started building an online fashion center through the website Chon.vn. To make a difference for her platform, Vy has spent a lot of time and effort to choose reputable suppliers, to ensure the quality of goods as well as customer satisfaction.

After nearly 5 years, her website became one of the most famous fashion markets in Vietnam and was acquired by Vingroup. She also joined this group and held the role of CEO of e-commerce project Adayroi when she was 27 years old.

Le Hoang Uyen Vy when running Cho.vn.

In mid-2017, Uyen Vy suddenly left the position of CEO of Adayroi after nearly 3 years and went to the US to study virtual reality. In early 2018, she returned to Vietnam and assumed the position of General Partner of ESP Capital – a venture capital fund focusing on early stage startups.

In September 2020, Uyen Vy and Nguyen Manh Dung (Former director of Japanese venture capital fund CyberAgent Capital in Vietnam) launched Do Ventures venture capital fund with a scale of 50 million USD. The fund’s goal is to find investment opportunities in technology startups that can build products and services that bring convenience and improve the lives of consumers in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

The “powerful” woman in the start-up investment world

Sharing about the reason for establishing Do Ventures right at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, Le Hoang Uyen Vy said that the outbreak had a great impact on businesses, in which startups are the group of businesses that are affected. The biggest is because startups often don’t have much capital and cash flow is not residual.

When Covid-19 arrived, Le Hoang Uyen Vy believed that two things happened. The first is that a lot of online consumer behavior has changed.

“Looking back at the story of Alibaba nearly 20 years ago during the SARS pandemic, at that time a lot of Chinese businesses knew how to take advantage of online to do business. I believe that Covid-19 also offers a similar opportunity, although it is limited in other aspects, but it can help a lot of technology businesses grow,” CEO Do Ventures said. Partner in an interview.

On the other hand, when Covid-19 took place, foreign capital inflow was very limited, it was very difficult for a foreign investor to make a “deal” in Vietnam without flying here.

“For those two reasons, Mr. Dung and I have more determination in establishing the fund. We also think that although it is very difficult, but it is difficult, we have to do it, if it was easy, everyone would do it. During this challenging period, Dung and I want to make a positive impact on the Vietnamese startup ecosystem,” she shared.

Le Hoang Uyen Vy is currently the co-founder and CEO of the venture capital fund Do Ventures. Photo: Do ​​Ventures

Although less than 2 years old, Do Ventures is currently one of the most active venture capital funds in Vietnam. As CEO, Le Hoang Uyen Vy has led Do Ventures to invest in a series of startups such as the online fruit selling platform F99; company that provides solutions for retailers Palexy; accounting support platform Bizzi; fintech startup Mfast; VUIHOC online education platform…

Not only supporting Vietnamese startups, Do Ventures also pours capital into Asian startups. This past March, the fund announced an investment in education technology startup Ringle based in Korea. Ringle was founded by Seunghoon Lee and Sungpah Lee, both Stanford University MBAs. The company provides online English tutoring services with a team of tutors from leading universities in the US and UK. This edtech will start serving Vietnamese users in 2022.

According to Linh Lam