From a game-obsessed boy to the founder of a multi-million dollar startup.

Nguyen Huu An (1989), who once used the excuse of going to exercise to play games from 4 AM, is now a co-founder of SotaTek, a top blockchain company in Vietnam.

The Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of SotaTek admits to being a gaming addict, having skipped school to frequent internet cafes. His path to technology began at gaming cafes, not in high school computer science. After graduating with a degree in information technology, Huu An joined a Japanese mobile game company with an office in Vietnam in 2011.

Từ cậu bé mê game đến nhà sáng lập startup triệu đô

Nguyen Huu An, CTO and co-founder of SotaTek - Photo: VNE

"Ten years ago, when mobile games boomed, I had the opportunity to develop and operate major games that topped the US and European markets. After four years, with the experience and connections I had accumulated, I decided to start my own company with a group of friends to begin my own business and do something of my own," Huu An recounted.

In August 2015, Nguyen Huu An and five friends founded SotaTek, but they didn't yet have a clear direction for the company. "At that time, everyone just thought about doing software outsourcing, using it as a short-term gain to accumulate experience and gradually find a way to develop the company. I decided to look for challenging technology projects that not everyone or every company could handle. To this day, SotaTek maintains this spirit, choosing difficult tasks to do, regardless of size," An said.

Starting with small but challenging projects, An's startup gradually gained the trust of partners and was entrusted with many new projects. After a year, the company quickly expanded from 6 people to 30. The headquarters moved from a cramped apartment to a spacious office. According to An, there were many challenges and differences when running a company with only 5-6 people compared to when it expanded to dozens. In the beginning, everyone was willing to work day and night, even without pay. But with 30 employees, the company incurred high operating costs but had not yet built a strong profile to expand into new projects. "Many times, close to payday, the company's account only had 10 million VND left. This period lasted 3-5 months, putting me and the founding team under constant pressure and forcing us to calculate how much more money needed to be added or how to prevent the account from going into the red," he recounted. In 2017, SotaTek gradually overcame its difficulties and entered a period of strong growth as the blockchain trend exploded. Nguyen Huu An , who started from scratch in the blockchain world, said that in 2017, ICO (Initial Coin Offering) projects flourished globally. Many domestic and international clients sought out outsourcing companies, but not many had blockchain infrastructure. After research and evaluation, although not expecting it to be a "magic wand," the 8x CTO recognized that blockchain could be a cornerstone platform in the future, so he decided to investigate the nature of blockchain, how it works, and what can be done with this technology. At that time, there weren't many model examples on the market, so An and a colleague had to fly to South Korea and work for two consecutive months to develop their first product. Half a month later, the project went live and became one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea, with a trading volume of over $20 million per day. Following the success of its first project, SotaTek became a highly influential startup in the community and was honored by the Vietnam Association of IT Enterprises and Services (Vinasa) as one of the top 10 blockchain companies in Vietnam in 2021. SotaTek experienced a growth period of 3,000%, and currently has 750 employees. Despite possessing the fundamental technology and having undertaken many challenging large-scale projects, Huu An and SotaTek decided to stay out of the trend and not participate in the ICO wave in 2017. According to him, not developing a product to raise capital was both fortunate and regrettable for the company. "Luckily, the market was very chaotic during that period, with many projects created just to attract investment and then disappear. Then the crypto winter hit, many projects shut down, but SotaTek continued to develop steadily and its reputation remained unaffected," An said. Regarding regrets, he believes that with a little more luck and the courage to step out of their comfort zone five years ago, he and his team could have escaped the shadow of software outsourcing and focused on developing long-term products. By 2021, when the blockchain wave returned, SotaTek continued to record impressive growth. Huu An delved deeper into the field, building and operating many projects himself. Among these, the most prominent is the DeFi Gaming platform called Bunicorn, which operates as an ecosystem encompassing decentralized exchanges, escrow, games, and expanding to products centered around NFTs, allowing for token auctions. Beyond blockchain, under Huu An's leadership, Sotatek has also implemented numerous technology and digital transformation projects for domestic and international clients. Notable examples include a "mega-project" for a Malaysian client involving the deployment of over 100 microservices, building a closed ecosystem, and perfecting all business operations from B2C to B2B, serving 3.6 million users. This article was supported by the Project to Support Innovative Startups in Hanoi City for the period 2019-2025, issued by the Hanoi People's Committee in Decision No. 4889/QD-UBND dated September 9, 2019. Details about the City's support programs can be found at: https://hotrodoanhnghiep.hanoi.gov.vn

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