Profile: IDG Vietnam's Henry Nguyen

New year the golden arches will extend over Vietnam for the first time as McDonald's opens it first restaurant in the country. For better or for worse, the arrival of the iconic brand marks a pivotal moment the country's history - for Henry Nguyen, managing general partner of IDG Ventures Vietnam, it marks the culmination of over a decade's work.

"In many ways - and this may sound odd for a hamburger restaurant - its arrival is a stamp of approval for the country," says Nguyen, who was recently announced as McDonald's Vietnam partner to bring the brand the country.

That stamp of approval has particular resonance for Nguyen who, despite being Vietnamese by heritage and birth, spent his formative years in US. Raised in Virginia, Nguyen - like so many in his field - started as a Harvard undergraduate. He did not find his calling in business straight away, though. His first ambition was to be a doctor.

"In my family I was the youngest of four. Today all of my older siblings are medical doctors," says Nguyen, "so it was a kind of a family calling."

After earning a BA in classics and completing pre-medical qualifications, Nguyen followed his family to Chicago and attended Northwestern University Medical School and the Kellogg School of Management, earning an MD and an MBA. It was during this period that he and his classmates launched their first enterprise.

"In the beginning we were just putting together our class notes and study materials and sharing them with each other,' says Nguyen. "And then we realized a lot of other people were asking for them."

What had started as Nguyen and his friends trading notes gradually evolved into a business in self published study materials - S2S Medical Publishing - and it spread to 130 universities. By his third year, Nguyen and his friends made their first exit, selling the business to Blackwell Science.

"If I look back on my life I have been an entrepreneur since I was eight years old with my first newspaper route," he says. "All these side businesses I had were a fun diversion from my studies. Now I look back I can see that those were the more formative things I did and being in school was the diversion."

Nguyen and his partners then put their own capital into building a medical distance learning company, Medschool.com. This was 1998, the peak of dotcom boom, and Nguyen, still a fresh graduate, was raising his first round of venture capital funding. Backing came from GE Capital and Apax Partners.

"It was an interesting experience just to be a part of that," he says. "Going from a bootstrap business to a company raising formal capital, especially at a time when there was so much disruption and so many industries were being brought to the internet."

Back to Vietnam

After stint working as an associate at Goldman Sachs, Nguyen decided to seek out his family roots and returned to Vietnam in 2001. He worked for medical charity Operation Smile, treating children suffering from cleft palate, but his entrepreneurial instincts were not far behind and he soon began making angel investment in local start-ups.

"To cut a long story short, what was meant to be a three-month stint ended up becoming six months, then 12 months, and here I am 12-and-a-half years later," he says. "I sensed there was real impetus for progress and market liberalization in the country and lot of entrepreneurial energy."

After two years Nguyen got his next big opportunity when he met Pat McGovern, the founder of International Data Group (IDG) and founder of IDG Ventures. McGovern was on his first visit to Vietnam and connected with Nguyen through the latter's involvement with the American Chamber of Commerce.

"We up ended up getting to know each other chatting at a breakfast and later over lunch," says Nguyen. "We shared our thoughts and ideas about progress and that was the genesis of our fund."

IDG Ventures set up its office in Vietnam in 2004 and the launched a $100 million maiden fund the same year - the country's first ever. "We had to be very careful in making sure the market understood our role," recalls Nguyen. "We even had to work with the media to coin a local term for venture capital."

Nearly 10 years later, IDG has investments in more than 40 companies across technology, media, telecommunications, and consumer sectors. A second Vietnam fund was launched in 2011 with a target of $150 million.

Bringing the Big Macs

Nguyen recalls often being asked why there was no McDonald's in Vietnam and it was during this period that he connected with the restaurant chain. This wasn't his first attempt: he reached out on his first trip back home to Chicago after moving to Asia, visiting the company's global headquartered in Illinois, but there was little interest at the time.

"I basically did a door knock and met some of the executives in person," says Nguyen. "They told me then that internally they had made no decision to open a new market so I kind of stayed persistent with them over the next 10 years, checking in once in a while."

The persistence paid off as McDonald's eventually said yes to the idea and chose Nguyen from a pool of around a 1,000 applicants to be its local partner. Needless to say, he is confident of the positive impact company will bring.

"It is symbol of something to people outside," says Nguyen. "In the months after the global announcement was made I never had more interest or enquiry about Vietnam than I did in all my years here."

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• People
• Southeast Asia
• Venture
• Venture
• Vietnam
• IDG Ventures