Friday, August 15, 2008

VIETNAM?!?! Why the hell would you go there? I spent many years trying to AVOID going there!

WHOA THERE BUDDY!  I have gotten this from many people in my parents' generation.  Why would I go to a country that most people in America only associate with the war, when I could go anywhere else?  Why not London, or even Hong Kong?  Why not New York or Boston?  Do I hate my country?  

Fair enough.  Theoretically, I could have gone anywhere in the world.  How did I narrow that down to Vietnam?  Let us take a step back.  

After graduating college last May, and after packing boxes and working a forklift in a factory in order to save up some money, I moved to Cape Town, South Africa for seven months.  I worked (interned for free) as a business analyst at Cape Venture Partners (CVP), a venture capital and consulting firm which pairs entrepreneurs with investors and is also in the process of raising its own fund.  Although I was tearing through my my money from graduation, the warehouse, and other life savings, this was an incredible learning experience that allowed me to have much more responsibility than I could have had anywhere else.  Most importantly, it was my first lengthy experience in a foreign market and it made me hungry for more.

At first I was set to move to London.  I had worked there for a short while before and thought it would be a great next place to go to work in international investing.  Two things/people helped changed my mind away from London and towards the East.  

One was a banker from London who gave me the clear view that everyone was getting fired and the only people staying on were 35 plus with years of specific experience.  He was surprised that I would want to leave my current position when I was in the process of raising a fund for an emerging market venture capital firm, and said that if I succeeded in that, it would greatly increase my job offers.  When I told him that I wasn't being paid, he was no longer surprised.  This shattered my hopes of going to London, but opened my eyes to the possibility of staying in South Africa or going to another emerging market.

The other was a private equity fund manager from Cape Town whom I met at the "unquote South Africa Private Equity Conference, which I attended representing CVP.  This guy sat down at the end of the night with me and my friend Alison and gave the most moving motivational speech I have ever heard.  Our conversation changed the thought of moving to another emerging market from idea to necessity.  His single biggest regret was not taking more risk when he was younger and that above anything, he would recommend that we do what he did not.  He said I should just plop down in a place like Lagos or Sao Paolo, much riskier in terms of markets (and personal safety) than London or New York, which are quickly being viewed as financial centers of the Old World.  Although my salary would be a small fraction of what I could get in the developed world, the experience would pay off exponentially in the future.  

Now I decided that I would be willing to go anywhere.  However, as much as I enjoyed South Africa, I wanted to try a new place and get a fresh start.  Although Brazil always lingered in the back of my mind, I decided that Asia was the place.  I have never been there and it is clearly going to be the leader of this century, particularly with China and India at the head of the pack.  So I started with these two.  As I looked at some of the more frontier markets though, Vietnam came up over and over.  For a while I was leaning towards Mumbai or Bangalore, India, but after a less-than-confident talk with a hedge fund manager who invests only in India, all signs pointed to Vietnam being the right place.  He told me that the Indian culture and business practices rely mainly on inter-Indian trust and that because of that he would never hire an ex-pat for his ground operation in India.  This confirmed my prior belief that it would be tough to break into these huge markets which already had a billion qualified people each, and finally gave me the excuse I needed to narrow in on Vietnam.  

I didn't give up on India yet, since there are many more venture capital companies in India compared to the nearly non-existent market in Vietnam, and I also wasn't going to let one person on the pessimistic side of the spectrum rain on my parade.  However, I thought back to the risk-taking advice from the South African guy, and decided that now would be the best time to explore a frontier market that is in the process of building its financial sector right now.  Vietnam is one of the fastest growing markets in Asia and the World and it is thus showing a lot of potential to foreign investors.  Unfortunately at the same time that I decided to go, the country is experiencing its biggest financial crisis of recent times.  But I am going for experience and adventure, and the best time to experience these emerging markets is to go during a crisis.  

Everyone who I have talked to who has been to Vietnam (post-war) has fallen in love with it.  It is a beautiful country which is apparently quite friendly to Americans, despite what most would think.  This is mainly because 28% of the population is under 14 and 30% is between 15 and 30, and thus has no memory of the "American War" as it is referred to there.  This young population is extraordinarily resilient and entrepreneurial and strives for the success seen in the developed world.  Because its financial sector is in its infancy, there is much more of a need for outside talent than in China, India or Brazil.  This, coupled with the ease of getting a work permit, was enough to convince me.  The decision took a few months after returning to the US, but I finally realized that if I wanted to ever go, now's the time.  Otherwise, it would never happen.  It is the biggest decision of my life, but I am confident it is the right one.

I booked a one-way ticket from New York to Ho Chi Minh City on August 22nd.

Oh, and I don't have a job yet.  More on that to come...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Anyway, you're here;)