Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Mentors areneeded to help young Vietnamese entrepreneurs grow their businesses, butconnections are still modest, experts said.

Vietnam’s start-up ecosystem has a lot of potential and can be a prime marketfor start-up investment, but many say the quality of start-up projects have notmet the potential due to these firms’ lack of market-oriented policies anddevelopment experience.

While experienced investors are capable of supporting the country’s immaturestart-ups by providing experience or capital, a lack of proper connectionsbetween start-ups and big firms was blamed for stopping the country ecosystemfrom blooming.

Tran Anh Tuan, General Director of the Sao Bac Dau Technology Services Company,said due to such a lax network, many start-ups had not been able to attractinvestment or make products meeting market needs.

“Start-ups’ inexperience is the most crucial reason for their failure. Theyneed support and connections with other components of the ecosystem, which are businesses,researchers, government and investors, to be able to succeed. Of which,experienced businesses play a very important role,” Tuan said.

“Big businesses can be the investors, the consultants and clients for start-upsin Vietnam, which are often started by very young people who mostly have basicknowledge but not real market experience.”

Echoing Tuan’s opinion, Pipa Turvanen from Finland’s Turku SciencePark, affirmed the role of big businesses in the development of start-ups.

“Without their experience, ideas would be narrow. Otherwise, co-operation withstart-ups, students and scientists can open the way for products or businessmodels that are cost-effective,” she said.

She cited the start-up incubator model of the Finnish company, in which theTurku Science Park would facilitate and provide connections, experience andknowledge sharing between concerned parties based on business and innovativedevelopment.

“It would be brilliant to witness big companies paying respect to start-ups orco-operating with their rivals for the purpose of improving innovative capacityand the start-up ecosystem as a whole,” she said.

Hoang Minh Tri, Director of AiPac, a US-based one-stop-shop manufacturingservice, said big companies could co-operate with start-ups to maintain theircompetitive advantage.

“The development of technologies creates opportunities for businesses toinnovate, improve their services and provide new experiences for their clients.In order to apply technologies quicker and better, big companies often shakehands with start-ups,” he said.

Tuan from Sao Bac Dau Technology Service Company, said from his own experiencesuch co-operation actually helped the company provide solutions that suitedmarket needs quickly.

“If we were to walk alone, it would take a long time to achieve what we haveachieved,” Tuan said.

What big companies can offer are vast – from building business plans, productdevelopment plans, giving business experience to capital management or humanresource planning.

Tony Wheeler, founder of ImagineX Ventures, senior mentor to Startup VietnamFoundation, said in order for start-ups to develop and contribute to theeconomy’s development, big firms have to “sit on the same boat” with start-upsand offer support.

“It can be financial support, or the offer to become clients of start-ups – notrivals,” he said.

Vietnam’s 3,000 start-ups have been boosted with investment and it increasesevery year. In 2018, start-ups received investment worth 889 million USD,almost triple 2017’s figure (291 million USD).
Tony Wheeler from ImagineX Ventures, saidthat a strong start-up ecosystem needs cooperation from businesses, theGovernment and scientists.

There have been a lot of activities within Vietnam’s ecosystem but thesestart-ups needed to focus on improving their quality before expanding, he said.

“There is a need for a strategy to shift the economic structure towardsadvanced industry and services, which would need a smaller labour force butwith higher technological competencies and innovative thinking,” he said.

Another problem for Vietnam’s start-ups is that too many entrepreneurs weretrying to address minor issues.

“They need to find solutions for bigger problems – once they find answers tothese problems, they also find answers to the problems faced by many otherdeveloping countries,” he said.-VNS/VNA