Uncategorized – Page 13 – UF in Vietnam Internship

Learning new things: Spaghetti and software

Last weekend I decided not to travel because I’m broke, and traveling cost a lot of money. Both my roommates left Ho Chi Minh City to take a two-hour flight to go watch a firework festival and view other parts of Vietnam. So, what did I decide to do? I went grocery shopping because going out to eat every night is not sustainable or cost efficient. I made three trips to the grocery store in the mall because I didn’t have a car to carry everything so I must bring things into my place one at a time. After I pay for everything it came out to 776,219 dong which is about is about thirty-three dollars and more expensive then I thought. I was thinking of returning some things, but I was like whatever and went home to make some of the best Haitian spaghetti I had in my life. I fried some hotdogs, bacon, and peppers to mix it with some Vietnamese spices to give it a kick and added it to cooked spaghetti to make a dish that is very fond to my heart. I ate it out in the back porch looking at my amazing view while playing lil Uzi Vert. It was a memorable moment for me while I reminisce on my culture cooking’s.

While at work, I am learning new things. I’m researching about SAAS (Sofware-as-a-Service) businesses and the opportunities of being one. In my department GINAR, they look at themselves as a SAAS business but are looking for opinions on which industry to hit, online gaming or Software? American is dominating the global market industry while Europe is head of the online gaming industry. My role as a Business Development Intern is to find out which ways are more profitable and suitable for this company. My managers really give me no guidance on tasks, but it is up to me to make the right decisions. I must look at all the pros and cons of situations and examine how it will affect this business. I constantly look at market charts, graphs, and read research papers to make decisions. I look at both side of stories and communicate with my director to see what is best.

My regional director has the same roles as me, but has the final say in what the business does. He is constantly doing research to improve GINAR, he enjoys his job because every time I look at him, he is smiling. He plans for the big convictions in different countries and meetings with international teams in Taiwan or other parts in Asia. He is constantly pushing his workers to do their best to make sure GINAR is the best product in the market and loves to partner with any business that would like to use GINAR, a decentralized random number generator. One important trait to him is trust, he must have that with another person in other for them to do business. That is how the culture is like over here, trust overrules everything…….

Opportunity and challenge

As I start my second week at Cooptalis, it really sets in how many amazing and diverse people I am surrounded by on the day-to-day within my company. They all have extensive background in all kinds of fields from engineering to sales and come from all over the world. A few of my colleagues including my supervisor worked at the company’s headquarters located in France and then decided to come over and start the Ho Chi Minh branch in the last few years. I also have some colleagues who are from Vietnam. Regardless of where my colleagues came from, they all happily call Ho Chi Minh City home. They are all so friendly, giving me on advice on where to eat, what to buy and even giving me a heads up on how to avoid some of the local scams.

My position itself in the company is as a business development intern, but I focus mainly on prospection of potential clients in Vietnam, France, Germany and Canada. Prospection is a new area for me, and in the first week I felt very challenged by the projects I was receiving. As the week progressed, I started to understand more what I needed to do and how to market better to potential clients. It was actually a very rewarding week in the sense that by the end I felt very accomplished when I was able to successfully reach out to local Vietnamese clients and set up a meetings.

Another experience that I found very rewarding this week came from networking event hosted by CRCC Asia. The guest speakers of the event were three people who had come to Vietnam for various reasons and were now very successful here. After the event, I was able to talk with one of the speakers. I told her how I was struggling finding potential clients during my first week, and she told me that she actually had been in a similar situation when she first came to Vietnam. She then gave me pointers, and encouragement on how I could find prospective clients and reach out to them. I was not expecting my night to end on such a positive note and left the networking event feeling much more confident about finding clients and with many new ideas for my company. This week may have had its ups and downs, but it truly was a learning and positive experience for me, and I am looking forward to these upcoming weeks.

This is a picture of my co-working space

Daily Life

In the marketing department, I am one of 6 interns. All 5 of the others are Vietnamese. This may seem daunting, but they all speak English very well, so it makes it easy to communicate with them. Our supervisor sits one space behind me and to the left, and she oversees our continual marketing efforts as the head of the marketing department. On a daily basis, she will communicate with sponsors via email, communicate with the interns via our Skype group chat, and make sure our social media and our websites are up to snuff. She is rather quiet at work; she is not one to walk over to you and talk; she will send a quick Skype message and continue with her business. I have been semi-adopted by the group of about 6 or so ex-pats that work in my office and my supervisor, although a native Vietnamese, is a part of this group. The group goes to lunch together a few times a week, and my supervisor opens up a lot more around them. I have included a picture of the Storm Trooper stationed in my office.

My daily tasks include a lot of proofreading and editing. I make sure that when we have a press release the English makes sense, which takes more time than you would think. I think it is harder than being told what to right about, because I have to change someone else’s writing into proper English, instead of being able to make it up myself. I have been updating our websites for the Danang Marathon, Color Me Run, and Challenge Vietnam Triathlon. Since I am the only native English speaker in the marketing department, I often find grammatical mistakes or odd diction that a foreign English speaker may not see.

An experience in HCMC that surprised me I think would be riding in the car on the very first day of arrival. When we first got on the road, I realized I had never seen so many scooters in my life, not even in Gainesville. The constant honking and whirring of engines still hasn’t stopped, even after 3 weeks. But what was most surprising was the way people drove. Standstill traffic isn’t a thing here if you are on a scooter. Scooters matriculate any way they can, be it on the sidewalk, between cars, even in the lane going the wrong way. Vietnamese do not seem to be bound by traffic laws, but it definitely makes traffic flow faster.

Something Magical in HCMC

My supervisor is Rebecca Bauden and she is the Senior Event Manager for EVBN. Her main job and responsibility is to organize all upcoming events that EVBN hosts. This means handling all the logistics and behind the scenes of each event in order for it run smoothly and successfully. So, this past weekend my organization EVBN hosted our annual exhibition called EuroSphere-The European Art of Living. This is a massive event that my supervisor oversees. Part of the logistics involved were scheduling B2B meetings for our exhibitors who requested for them, marketing our event on our social media pages, setting up construction in the hotel hosting us, arranging interviews with our sponsors, etc. All that organization and planning by each separate department were all went through my supervisor for her approval. Ms. Rebecca has a strong personality. She is from France however she has lived all across the world. She’s very sharp and confident of herself. She knows how to read people and situations very well so she’s always making the best decisions in the room.

The department that I work in is pretty small. It’s comprised of me and two other Vietnamese co-workers, one of whom is an intern who just started a week after me. So in reality I have only one junior level co-worker who has been there longer than I who actually knows her way around our department. We used to have a French lady, Oceane, however she just left after our exhibition so now it’s only us 3 working apart of the Business Development department.

My role in EVBN is a business development officer. So for the last 2 weeks since I started I was helping my department schedule B2B meeting for our exhibitors. This meant doing cold calls, sending out emails, and compiling spread sheets of potential clients who would be a good fit as a potential partner for our clients. Now that our exhibition is over, I am going to be working on our new upcoming project, the Food & Beverage Trade Mission 2019, we are hosting in September.

Outside of work I am having a great time here in Ho Chi Minh City. What I started to realize is that I really enjoy going to networking events and meeting different kinds of people. The first day of our exhibition, the 14^th, we had a cocktail networking event for our exhibitors at night. So I was working the registration booth alongside my co-worker for about an hour. However about an hour into the event we closed the registration booth because all the exhibitors were signed in so my supervisor said I can go inside. I happily agreed and believe me, I had a great time. I was able to have amazing food, a couple of relaxing drinks by our sponsors, and had the chance to meet our exhibitors from all across Europe including Portugal, Sweden, Spain, and France just to name a few. H

My favorite experience of the night was seeing the fashion show I helped put together with my supervisor. Beautiful Vietnamese women in exotic outfits is a sight that words just can’t paint. All in all I am really enjoying my internship and the city itself. Every passing day I find something stunning and magical about this place and I can wait to see what next week has in store.

Just do it

Mae Catibog

My supervisor and favorite colleague’s name is Mae Catibog. She is a young independent woman filled with passion for her work and a lot of kindness and desire to give back. Her official title is Research Manager, but it did not take long for me to notice her responsibilities far exceed her official job description. Despite only having lived in Vietnam for three years as she is a Filipino expat, she has quickly become the leader here at Axis Group behind the owners Mr. Minh and Mrs. Hoa. As for her schedule and day to day activities, ever day is different. As of late she has been working out the logistics of dealing with a very difficult client. She is constantly on the phone finding solution to the ridiculous request made by the new client.

My Team

It saddens me to say that my previous team of four including Mae, Amy, Ha and myself is no longer. The other intern, Ha has decided to leave Axis Group for another opportunity. She was Vietnamese but studied in New York. Ha was so kind and it saddens me to say the our team is now down to three.

My Role

I am so pleased with the work I have been assigned. A lot of the information regarding my projects is confidential but what I can confirm is that my work is meaningful, thought provoking and multidimensional. Now not all of my days are full of jam packed action as somedays I am still assigned tasked label as “work for an intern.” Regardless I am not complaining as I have said in previous Journal’s I am very happy with my placement.

Personal Experience

As for my most interesting personal experience in HCMC, I can not pin point one event or one aspect. Our first week we had a random pick up soccer match with Vietnamese locals. That was a lot of fun. The food in the city is better than advertised. It is incredible the kinds of meals you can have for such a low price. The hospitality of the people here in Vietnam is amazing. Everywhere I go I feel safe and Welcome. At every moment when I am struggling due to the language and cultural barriers as well as my general ignorance there is always someone willing to go above and beyond and offer a helping hand. I HAVE SAID IT BEFORE AND I WILL SAY IT AGAIN. IF YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SPEND A SEMESTER ABROAD IN VIETNAM. DO IT !!!!

Ho Chi Minh Working Gal

My supervisor, Mr. Fred Ng, has already taught me so much about the private equity sector. Mr. Fred is the manager of the research department for IDG Ventures. Mr. Fred is located in the Singapore office. Fred’s job is to facilitate and assign research for new investment areas. Fred looks for trends in certain sectors to see if they are worth investing in. Fred has been working on new investments in the real estate sector. My main department is research with an emphasis on real estate.

My internship is definitely unique compared to others in Ho Chi Minh. I am able to work on fascinating projects in the real estate sector. I just finished up a presentation that was given to Chinese investors. It focused on new and upcoming real estate markets throughout Vietnam. Most investors are aware of the potential in the bigger cities of Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi. My presentation focused on the smaller, less known cities along the coast of Vietnam. As I mentioned last week, my office is very small. There is only one other employee in the office with my co-intern Rushi. Rushi and I try and collaborate our project together so we can get the most out of our internships.

Ho Chi Minh City has turned out to be an amazing city to be living in this summer. Everything here is so vibrant and full of life. There are so many unique people here and all of them are so kind and welcoming. One of my favorite experiences so far so been when I went to a coffee shop to plan my weekend trips. The cashier was a sweet Vietnamese boy who had studied abroad in the United States. We started talking about his experiences in America and then about the trips me and my roommate were hoping to do. He sat down with us and helped us plan out the best places to go and gave us amazing recommendations. My roommate and I now exclusively go to that coffee shop and have made an amazing local friend. It is so nice to meet such cool people in this city and to be able to share our experiences.

Law internship in HCMC

I am placed at PLF Law Firm, in the legal department. PLF Law Firm specialized in international corporate law, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property rights. As I boarded the elevator of my new office building, I felt my palms getting sweaty. The person introducing me also failed to mention, until that very moment that “my employers were quite mad, because they didn’t know I would be late. I reacted with little expression, because there was nothing I could do then.

As I walked into the office, I was taken by how fancy the door was, embodying pure glass with a fingerprint scanner. I was quickly shoved into a conference room and given a slide show presentation on work etiquette. After the presentation, I felt the nervousness again. I then had to face meeting the entire office full of people. As I turned the corner I was pleasantly surprised by the size of the office. A large carpeted office space filled with sixteen cubicles, a quaint break room area, and the managing partner’s desk placed at the head of the room. I entered the room with my head up, hand out, ready to meet my fellow colleagues; there was about twelve colleagues present. I was greeted with friendly smiles and warm greetings. My supervisor ended up being the woman who interviewed me. It felt great to be greeted by a familiar face.

Mrs. Megan, my supervisor, is a young female attorney she is about 4’10 but full of enthusiasm and a hard work ethic. My first day of work was consumed with tasks. On the first day I drafted three emails to clients, composed a research proposal for a client that wanted more information, I wrote a legal alert, I scanned in contracts to send over to clients, and I proofed a couple documents for correct translation and formatting. Though my first day was busy, Mr. James, the managing partner, took me out to lunch.

Overall, I feel that I had a very successful first day. As the week progressed my task load has grown lighter, but I have received some amazing opportunities. The other intern, Mohammed, and I are creating a presentation for a startup workshop that will be held in a month about how to start a company in Vietnam. I’m very excited to be able to put my presentation skills to use alongside with my creative aptitudes. Furthermore, I have made a personal presentation about myself that I will present to the office at the next faculty training on the 14th of June.

I’m even more ecstatic about my opportunity to sit in on a meeting with a client on Thursday. The meeting was most definitely not what I had expected, and the meeting solely lasted about twenty minutes. This opportunity would be very rare to come by in the States, thus I am so appreciative for my amazing placement at PLF Law Firm. Just within the first week I have learned so much about legal guidelines of mergers and acquisitions here in Vietnam, I feel that I may have even memorized the law by now. I learned about the structure of a Law Firm, how payments and service proposals work, and i learned about the office culture of the Vietnamese. All in all, I am so happy to be able to say I’ve gotten off to a great start in Vietnam and I am ready for what’s in store in the next upcoming weeks.

Co-Working in HCMC

I am working for a co-working/co-living startup. The industry is rather new, as the trend of digital nomadism and freelance work continuously grows. The information era has led way to the possibility of people in certain fields working directly from home. A lot of studies have taken place and proven that those whom work in their own off-site workspace often are significantly more productive and lead higher quality of work/life balance.

My company, Spiced, specializes in supplying and maintaining a co-working building. They plan to differentiate from competition by offering onsite co-living, as well as other amenities and services to adopt a more community driven environment. They aspire to bring people together and increase networking potential, rather than to simply supply a bland office environment. They also plan on increasing revenue for their location by adding a high-quality eatery within the building, run by a masterchef. This will lead to increased revenue, as they will be strategically re-purposing their office space to decrease the impact of overhead fixed costs.

The first days of my internship were rather hectic. In Vietnam, everything is a challenge, and the building was behind schedule on several renovations. Spiced also has ambitious plans of expanding operations. We arrived at a time where we were tasked to aid in the review of company financial statements, as well as sitting in on meetings to assemble a pitch deck for institutional investors, which included an internal evaluation process. The environment and culture of the workplace is certainly fluid, fast paced, and exciting. The company is scheduled to launch in a few weeks, and there is much to be done to prepare for customers. All while in the background we figure out ways to raise additional capital for the company, whether that be applying for loans, pitching investors, or optimizing revenue streams.

IDG Ventures Vietnam

Today is the end of my first week working as an intern at IDG Ventures Vietnam. IDG Ventures Vietnam is a venture capital fund. Venture capital is a type of private equity that funds new and emerging business that are seen to have high growth potential or have demonstrated great growth. I am working as a research analyst intern. In this role I will be supporting the research team in finding and presenting new and upcoming markets for investment. My sector of focus is real estate.

The first days of work was interesting to say the least. We were picked up at 8 am and had to drop off nine other people before I was dropped off. Luckily, I am working with someone else from the UF in Vietnam Program. Rushi and I are working at the Centec Tower. It is a huge building that was recently built so there is plenty of air conditioning and space. The top of the building has a fantastic rooftop bar and restaurant. The views from up there are amazing. There were two other students working in the same building, Richard and Cole. It turned out that we were all working in the same office surprisingly. The office is small, but financial offices don’t need too much razzle-dazzle. It was shared my IDG Ventures Vietnam and Impact Vietnam, an investment banking firm. We were welcomed by the supervisor of Impact Vietnam, Cole and Richard’s host company. Rushi and I were quite confused but found out that IDG’s main office is in Hanoi. His supervisor is based in Hanoi and mine is based in Singapore. Our main method of communication would be through skype, which was fine by me. I contacted my supervisor and he set up a call for us. He welcomed me to the company and gave me my first few projects.

IDG is a very spread out company, so the hours are quite flexible. Fred, my supervisor, allows me to work from home and anywhere I desire. Because most of my work is research based, all I really need is my laptop and some WIFI. He still recommended coming in a few days a week in order to bounce ideas off others. In the office, there is normally only one IDG employee. Unfortunately, we have not been able to meet due to some unforeseen circumstances on his side. Hopefully we can meet him in the coming weeks.

Everyday Rushi, Cole, Richard, and I would go out and get lunch on our break. It was so nice to have other students with me. One of the days we were invited by the supervisor of Impact to go to lunch. It was so nice of him to sort of adopt us as his own. I am very excited to see where this internship takes me and learn all kinds of new things. My first week has been positive and I cannot wait to get more projects.

Getting on my Axis

I am so thankful for my placement. After various interviews and less than ideal circumstances somehow everything seems to work out in the end. I have been placed with a company known as Axis Research, Axis Group or even Axis Research Group. If I wasn’t in Vietnam, I could simply tell you I work for a market research firm as an intern but that is not the case. What I have noticed is companies in the east or better said companies in Asia are not stagnant. Axis Research is a perfect example of this, despite being a market research company, my boss Mr. Minh, the owner of the company, has begun to expand the company into a tech-company. Businesses in Vietnam aren’t stubborn in the sense that if they are known or specialize in one industry but see an opportunity in another despite being unrelated they will jump at the opportunity without hesitation. So to tie this all back into my internship, my official tittle is unknown. But I was given a soft guide/ work plan by my supervisor which marks my top two responsibilities as Market Research and Technology Development.

The first task I was assigned was data entry. During my interview my supervisor and I identified the problems the company website had and agreed to tackle this problem together. So my first day I was given endless amounts of data to structure, organize and input into the new/up and coming company website. I was satisfied with the task and despite is being repetitive and exhausting I embraced it and pushed through. I have yet to complete this task now, on day five as day two was a whirlwind. Day two I was approached by my boss and supervisor and prompted with the task of developing the concept for an app. A lot of the information is confidential and I am not allowed to go into detail. Let’s just say this task was very exciting very important and this one project alone has made the trip to Vietnam for an internship worthwhile. When speaking with my colleagues we came to the conclusion that coming to Vietnam and interning here is a breath of fresh air compared to interning in the U.S. Back home most internships result in busy work, unimportant work or running around getting someone coffee. Here in Vietnam I feel like I am important from day one I was given a voice, I was given the opportunity to make an impact on this company and really showcase what I am capable of.

Being that I’ve only been here for a week I have yet to grasp all the aspects of the companies culture. What I can say is you can directly correlate this companies success to the way Mr. Minh and Mrs. Hoa operate their business. From the few conversations I’ve had with my co-workers they all seem to be very happy with their situation and hold Mr. Minh and Mrs. Hua in high regard.

Another interesting point I’d like to make is how humble the company operates and communicates despite being extremely successful in my eyes. When asked, the company is refers itself as medium size. When in reality they employee over 50 full time employees, 1000 part time employees and have multiple offices across Vietnam. More over they are an extremely well respected in Vietnam and have excellent working relationship with very large clients as well as the Vietnamese government. Just to name a few, their client list includes but is not limited to: Toyota, Sony, Nestle, UNIQLO, Levi’s and more.