I was in a rural village when the first news of deadly disease hit China. That was time near the Tet Holidays - the biggest cultural event in East and South East Asia. An accelerator started to make more contacts. I had no idea who and where they were. I got a few emails but I was so busy with a tight schedule.
Early 2019, I joined the first learning group after the New Year in a university-hospital in South San Francisco. I was hunting for more computing power and collaboration to complete a research project. One person there suggested to me a website called pioneer.app To be honest, I did not feel lucky with any kind of application, but decided to give it a shot. The most interesting thing about Pioneer was a dynamic of communities in their Global Tournament. All I wanted was just a sense of connection. Without any expectation, I got into the top 100 global and top 10 of Asia and was then selected as the Winner.
News of the first lock down in China spread during the holidays. Two first positive cases were detected in Vietnam. Very soon after that it became my personal big story. I got the flu after a 2-hour flight. It was bizarre because I rarely got sick on trips. Lacking information, I became one of the first people who joined an online press conference of the WHO on the internet.
Unlike several countries, Vietnam has encountered a new infectious disease caused by a virus transmitted from an animal several times. In 2003, there was a chicken flu. Because of this, I did not have any chicken to eat in months and the next time it felt like in the heaven. In 2019, there was a flu for pigs that made it even more expensive than beef. In my knowledge, I knew how countries would react towards similar situations. However, I never ever saw that exchange by some of the most important and biggest events in culture or municipality. In months, schools and all crowding events were canceled, delayed or terminated. Borders shut down. Travels were restricted only for a very small group of people. Medical masks and hand sanitizers were out of stock.
In the West, this looked like a joke to several people. Similar to a story of climate change, people simply didn’t understand why they would care about a story from Asian countries. It would probably be a problem, but it was too far away with some tiny numbers. Compared to the health risk factor, it looked like a common flu, but less significant. Several politicians and media of the West down played how dangerous covid-19 was despite the WHO effort. Only after the first shocking news from lock down in Lombardy, people had a sudden wake up call.
COVID-19 was a new pathogen. A dynamic of knowledge changed every day as more data was collected. However, public perception needed a consistent message with a specific number. This was indeed a very difficult task. It was not simply making calculations with high school math or playing with statistics. It is about understanding evidence and synthesizing information based on observations of experiments with a careful design. It is not just about collecting evidence that serves our beliefs - it is about connecting evidence to advance our understanding.
Somehow I got into this story a little bit more than others. One of the very first messages I learned from the WHO was about testing, tracing and social distancing as a prevention to reduce the spread of virus. At that moment, I was trying to build an app that worked in the same area in the same vertical with preventative care and some connections in Silicon Valley. Plus, I was in touch with a group of health innovators in Switzerland.
The very first idea was to use GPS to track F0, however, this method still disclosed a fair amount of personal information. Big Tech in Social Media did not want to get involved with this topic. There was too much sensitive information. The technology had been invented yet. Finally the first time, Google collaborated with Apple to develop a project based on bluetooth. Only small groups of developers have access to build an app given permissions from health authorities.
When COVID-19 officially became a pandemic, I used to hope that it would accelerate more innovations in healthcare by technology. However, it is not the right solution. I learnt this by working deeper with an international community. Through a partnership with a core group from Oxford University and DeepMind, I found out a very promising technology as a solution for privacy. However, when digging deeper into a customer development process, the challenge was regulation and sale cycles. Those costs were not only capital but lots of time to go through the process. With COVID-19, this became more difficult with a gap of communication, especially between stakeholders and paperwork approval.
I could not raise funds, went bankrupt and completely ran out of cash. But I was lucky to manage situations in Vietnam with the bank and my family. That was a budget I planned for only two weeks that turned into 18 months. During that time, I traveled, lived, worked and networked in a scrappy way around the world. That was how I learned to bargain, do market research, and make friends with strangers on the way in the most unexpected situations.
My story would end here, but thankfully, my accelerator kept sending emails and invitations to their office hours. I was surprised but could not keep up with their schedule at midnight and early morning. In the first three months, I missed most of the schedule until the second demo live stream that featured a story of EventBrite co-founder. Until that moment, I started to see something very familiar, especially completely different from everything in the pitching competitions.
When I came to Pioneer, I was so desperately in need of resources to get things done and a sense of connection with people doing weird things like me. To be honest, I did not have a Silicon Valley Dream to become the next Google, Apple, AirBnB or the next Internet Empire. However, I always felt not fitted in any system in both academia and industry - that’s how I found myself in a startup world again and again in ten years.
I used to live next to Stripe HQ. A husky dog walked me around their building a couple of times but I had no idea who they were. I did not try to learn about YC or Stripe or Sand Hill Road. The dog even knew better than me. I should have probably let her walk me instead.
Sand Hill Road was more like a path on Google Maps to visit friends, nice coffee shops with good internet and a train station. I did not know how HackerNews, YC and Paul Graham were linked together.
What a completely broken knowledge about the Capital Venture world. Probably the group of people I searched for most was angel investors - people who have both real knowledge and financial capacity to help me write a longer story, but I could not find anybody.
And they found me before I even knew that.