Week 10_ Toan Tran

Never before have I read anything remotely close to business, but I found what I consumed of Start-Up Vietnam to be very interesting and easily digestible from the viewpoint of someone who is not used to this realm of thought and subject matter. To start off, I appreciated the foreword written by Giang Lam, because it gave an accurate and insightful look into the outside of Vietnam from the view of a native and a foreigner. As I was reading, many parts stood out to me as being very evident and relatable from what I experienced when I went back to Vietnam this past summer.

As a pre-health student, I feel that so much of my attention is focused on the sciences that I do not pay enough attention to much outside of it. I want to make a more conscious effort to look into more topics such as business in Vietnam because it does interest me. Professor Valverde mentioned that as time passes on and more young entrepreneurs pave the way for Vietnam to be more suitable for business, eliminating the cons that Rowan mentioned, the older, more traditional and corrupt business people will cycle out and Vietnam as a whole will experience a greater growth in business than it is right now. I look forward to that day and am curious as I am getting older to see how the globalized future of Vietnam pans out.

References:

Business in Vietnam - Google Search. https://www.google.com/search?q=business+in+vietnam&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS789US789&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwvdOIvpnhAhWMHzQIHVwfCWUQ_AUIDygC&biw=1439&bih=690#imgrc=A5z-C17MgSYjfM: Accessed 23 Mar. 2019.

Rowan, Andrew. Startup Vietnam: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Socialist Republic. GKTA Group, 2018.

Week 1 - Yufei Liu

There are multiple start ups within the last few years ranging from Uber to Tinder and they all have a big target audience. Every start up is based on an idea of improving lives. The way a start up makes money is to offer people better technology than they have now. The article talks about Google as an example. Google was simply to create a search site that is helpful. They had three new ideas for Google which sets it apart from other search engines: index more fo the Web, use links to rank search results and have clean, simple web pages with unintrusive keyword-based ads. Above all, Google is determined to make a site that was good to use with the least bugs and glitches. Basically the main way to generate start up ideas is to look at something people are trying to do and figure out how to do it in a way that doesn't suck. One advantage startups have over established companies is that there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. For example, I would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small children or was likely to have them soon. However, you're not allowed to ask prospective employees if they plan to have kids soon. Under current US law, you are not even allowed to discriminate on the basis of intelligence. Whereas when you're starting a company, you can discriminate on any basis you want about who you start it with.

week 10- Vivianne Lee

        Gaining further knowledge on the country of Vietnam is significant to me, as I understood more clearly how Vietnam remade itself into a country currently thriving in economy and education. As it was previously known as a host to “revolutionary, civil, proxy, and conventional wars” (Rowan, page 1). According to the article“Start Up Vietnam”, Andrew P Rowan states that countries which were in war with Vietnam some being the United States, Japan and South Korea, are currently sending business people, investors and skilled workers to Vietnam. Furthermore, there are more than “thirty thousand Vietnamese students at institutions of higher education in the United States, Vietnam’s former enemy. Vietnamese students are the fifth-largest group of students in the United States from any country. ” (Rowan, page1). Aside from sending students to Vietnam, the United States is Vietnam’s largest export market exporting “USD $177 billion worth of goods” (Rowan, page 2). Vietnam has created substantial economic growth that it further experienced a rapid growth in population. According to the article within a span of thirty years Vietnam economy has turned into a “startup economy” with thousands of high growth enterprises. Thus, in order to continue achieving its maximum “national aesthetics” status of a country flourishing in economy and education, it must continue to carry on strong relations with foreign countries that take in their goods and students.







Works Cited: 
Rowan, Andrew. Startup Vietnam: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Socialist Republic. GKTA Group, 2018.

Week 10 - Diane Tran

Andrew Rowen's book called, Startup Vietnam: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Socialist Republic talk about how to start successful entrepreneurship in Vietnam. In the last 20 years, Hanoi's leadership is trying to make Vietnam a "startup nation" to help the country grow over the next few years. From this book, I learned that Vietnam is second to China of how much growth and development this country has had.  Even though Vietnam does not have a huge market, they still have about 1,500 startups. Rowen also describes how people outside of Vietnam have this idea that Vietnam is just a location where wars were fought. However, he goes into detail how Vietnam is undergoing massive change. The urban changes in Vietnam are visible. He talks about what has not changed and what stayed the same. He also depicts how to work in Vietnam, one must understand the people, culture, environment to successfully create a start up there. He also talks about how Vietnam is known for its political stability but this also somewhat not as true. There are other things that are going on that is operating in Vietnam. Rowen describes the challenges and opportunities in Vietnam and how the government should build a solid foundation if Vietnam wants to be nation that becomes successfully involved with startups.


I thought that this book easy to read because it was not the longest book. In my opinion, there was some information I thought was deemed interesting. However, I somewhat felt that he would be repetitive on the things he mentioned. Vietnam must recognize what the country needs to fix and improve on to excel forward.

Works Cited

Rowan, Andrew. Startup Vietnam: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Socialist Republic. GKTA Group, 2018.

Week 8 - Percy Yan

In the article "An ecological risk assessment of pesticides and fish kills in the Sixaola watershed, Costa Rica" by Matthew Morra, he talks about the risks Costa Rica is facing. Along the southeastern coast of Costa Rica, a variety of pesticides are intensively applied to produce export quality plantains and bananas. In this region, and in other argricultural areas, fish kills are often documented by local residents and in the national news. This study examines principal exposure pathways, measured environmental concentrations and selected toxicity thresholds of the three most prevalent pesticides to construct a deterministic risk assessment for fish mortality. Comparisons of observed pesticide concentrations, along with estimated biological effects and observations during actual fish kills, highlight gaps in knowledge in correlating pesticide environmental concentration and toxicity in tropical environments. Observations of fish kill events and measured pesticide concentrations in the field, along with other water quality indicators, suggest that a number of environmental conditions can interact to cause fish mortality and that current species toxicity datasets may not be applicable for estimating toxicological or other synergistic effects, especially in tropical environments.

Week 10 - Yufei Liu

Startup Vietnam: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Socialist Republic by Andrew Rowan captures the challenges, efforts, and successes of Vietnam’s youth, local startups, and foreign entrepreneurs during a time of transition between tradition and modernity. Having significantly evolved during the last 20 years, Hanoi's leadership is committed to making Vietnam a “startup nation” in an attempt to accelerate the country’s growth over the next 20 years. The spirit and promise of a resilient, improvisational, driven, and entrepreneurial people in this Southeast Asian nation are presented within an understandable operational landscape, in addition to creating a vision for what a 21st century Vietnam might become. Rowan talks about how Vietnam has developed significantly over the last 20 years. Many people outside of Vietnam first and foremost think of the wars fought there. But that’s not the everyday Vietnam that is undergoing massive change. The urban changes in Vietnam that are visible on the surface level and they are raw, real, and deep-rooted. In fact, it would be hard not to notice the hustle and bustle as well as omnipresent noise pollution in the most populous cities.It can be confusing for foreigners to reconcile what they read or hear with what they see once landing in Vietnam: it’s changing literally right before your eyes in the major cities. Vietnam is more than just a collection of rice paddies, conical hats, and water buffalo. "VC" used to mean VietCong but now it stands for Venture Capitalists in Vietnam. 

Week 10 - Alvin Du

Andrew seems quite contradictory in his book Startup Vietnam. It appears to be a book about how to manage a startup business in modern Vietnam but as you keep reading, you'll encounter statements that seem to direct you the opposite way. After about 40 pages into the book, I came across a list of pros and cons of startup culture in Vietnam. There are a handful of good things to say such as everyone's enthusiasm to create things and the rise of technology. But there are actually a lot of cons that are listed, nearly three times as much. Andrew lists things such as failure to commit due to family issues or lack of decency to reply even as far as claiming Vietnamese people don't respect your time because they sit on your offer and eventually ghost you. All these cons are listed and yet the book is called Startup Vietnam, a book that is supposed to introduce you to entrepreneurship in modern Vietnam. The reason I think Andrew contradicts himself this book is because he wants to expose the audience to the reality of Vietnamese business practices. While Vietnam's business practices dont seem too ideal for entrepreneurship currently, it'll get better as Vietnam grows. Specifically, when there are more of the younger tech-savvy generation. Vietnam has so much potential to become a tech powerhouse, but in order to do so, the younger generation along with newfound culture needs to envelop the country first.

Rowan, Andrew. Startup Vietnam: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Socialist Republic. GKTA Group, 2018.