From a game-loving boy to a million-dollar startup founder

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

The CTO and co-founder of SotaTek admits that he is a game addict, and used to skip school to go to internet cafes. His path to technology was through internet cafes, not through general computer science. After graduating from university with a degree in information technology, Huu An joined a Japanese mobile game company with an office in Vietnam in 2011.

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

"10 years ago, mobile games exploded, I had the opportunity to develop and operate big games, topping the US and European markets. After 4 years, with accumulated experience and relationships, I decided to open my own company with a group of friends to start a business, to do something of my own," Huu An said.

In August 2015, Nguyen Huu An and 5 friends founded SotaTek but still did not have a clear direction for the company. "At that time, everyone just thought of doing software outsourcing, both short-term and long-term, accumulating experience and then gradually finding a direction for the company's development. I decided to look for difficult technology projects that not everyone or any company could handle. Up to now, SotaTek still maintains this spirit, choosing difficult tasks to do, regardless of size," An said.

From small but difficult projects, An's startup gradually gained the trust of partners and was assigned many new projects. After a year, the company quickly expanded from 6 people to 30 people. The headquarters moved from a cramped apartment to a spacious office. According to An, there were many challenges and differences when operating a company with only 5-6 people compared to when expanding to several dozen people. When first starting out, everyone was willing to work day and night, even without salary. But when there were 30 employees, the company spent a lot of operating costs but had not yet built a capacity profile to expand new projects. "Many times, when it was close to the payday, the company's account only had 10 million VND left. This period lasted 3-5 months, causing me and the founding team to always be under pressure and had to calculate how much more money needed to be put in to compensate or how to keep the account from going negative," he said. In 2017, SotaTek gradually overcame difficulties and entered a period of strong growth when the blockchain trend exploded. 'Bare-handed capture of thieves' in the blockchain world Nguyen Huu An said that in 2017, ICO (initial coin offering) projects flourished on a global scale. Many domestic and international customers came to outsourcing companies, but not many units had blockchain platforms. After research and evaluation, although not expecting it to be a "magic wand", the 8x CTO determined that blockchain could be a pillar platform in the future, so he decided to find out what blockchain was, how it worked, and what could be done with this technology. At that time, there were not many reference models on the market, An and a colleague had to fly to Korea to work for two consecutive months to produce the first product. Half a month later, the project went into operation and became one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Korea, with a trading volume of more than 20 million USD per day. After the success of the first project, SotaTek became a startup with great influence in the community and was honored by the Vietnam Association of Information Technology Enterprises and Services (Vinasa) as one of the top 10 blockchain companies in Vietnam in 2021. SotaTek had a growth period of 3,000%, with a current staff of 750 people. Despite having the fundamental technology and implementing many difficult large-scale projects, Huu An and SotaTek still decided to stay out of the trend and not participate in the ICO wave in 2017. According to him, not making a product to raise capital was both lucky and regrettable for the company. "Luckily, at that time the market was very chaotic, many projects were created just to raise investment and then disappeared. Then the crypto winter hit, many projects closed down but SotaTek still developed steadily and its reputation was not affected," An said. As for regrets, he believes that if he had been a little more lucky and dared to step out of his comfort zone 5 years ago, he and his team could have soon escaped the shadow of software outsourcing, aiming to make 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. Notably, the DeFi Gaming platform named Bunicorn, which operates as an ecosystem including a decentralized exchange, consignment, games and expands to products revolving around NFT, allowing token auctions... In addition to blockchain, under the leadership of Huu An, Sotatek also implements many technology and digital transformation projects for domestic and international customers. It can be mentioned that the "super project" for Malaysian customers in deploying a system of over 100 microservices, building a closed ecosystem, completing all operations from B2C to B2B, serving 3.6 million users. The article is supported by the Project to Support Innovative Startups in Hanoi for the period 2019-2025 issued by the Hanoi People's Committee in Decision No. 4889/QD-UBND dated September 9, 2019. Details on the City's support programs at: https://hotrodoanhnghiep.hanoi.gov.vn

Tienphong.vn

Source: https://tienphong.vn/tu-cau-be-me-game-den-nha-sang-lap-startup-trieu-do-post1683666.tpo