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Posts Tagged ‘Paul Song’

Maneuvering Through Opportunities & Traffic in Vietnam

Posted in business, entrepreneur, tagged , , , , , on July 16, 2009 | 3 Comments »

Ho Chi Minh City traffic

Ho Chi Minh City traffic

I hold on tightly behind my brother as he deftly maneuvers his scooter through the seemingly chaotic traffic of Ho Chi Minh City.

At first, watching hordes of cars and scooters sharing the streets and avoiding each other without apparent defined rules can be both astonishing and terrifying. But from the back seat of Paul’s scooter, I soon begin to understand certain rules and reasoning behind the commuters’ actions. The traffic, as it turns out, moves along rather well, despite the congestion of the city.

Doing business in Vietnam works in similar ways. The rules and expectations are different than in the US. People seem to be coming at you from all directions, but then a pattern starts to develop.

Vietnam is a developing country. Its people have a relatively high education level.  The country also has a disproportionally high number of young people under the age of 30 compared to developed countries. The government is very stable. Compared to its Southeast Asian neighbors, I’ve also noticed that the Vietnamese culture has more elements of the Chinese work ethic like those in the Far East countries.

In addition, Vietnam is a handsome country, with a long, beautiful coastline. Vietnamese food is fabulous, gaining popularity throughout the world. With a population of around 82 million, Vietnam could someday become an economic pillar in Southeast Asia.

For now, though, Vietnam remains a developing economy, and the labor extremely cheap. Get a haircut, and you can have one person cutting your hair, while two others will manicure your finger nails. I played golf, and frustrated with a bunker shot, I raked my own mess. My caddy (and you have to have a caddy) thanked me profusely, embarrassed that she didn’t move fast enough to take the rake away from me. People are everywhere to serve you. It can be humbling, yet charming.

For the right type of business idea, Vietnam represents tremendous opportunities. Some entrepreneurs have already built technical development teams here to service the West’s appetite for off-shoring those components. International marketing and research firms have established operations here to help foreign brands move into the Vietnamese market. To support new innovations, venture funds are now being established here with both foreign and local money.

Nonetheless, many more foreign ventures will fail here than succeed. It is not easy to manuever through the local business and cultural environment. The risk remains extremely high. Like Paul steering us through the traffic, any company that has a fighting chance of success here needs the guidance and support of someone(s) who already understands the business climate and culture in Vietnam.

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Sharing a Drink, Sharing ARIS Memories

Posted in business, tagged , , , on May 14, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Just the other day, I had drinks with a long time friend, Kendall Kunz, at the Roanoke on Mercer Island. He’s not just another friend, he was part of our executive team that took ARIS public on the NASDAQ  in 1997. ARIS was founded by my brother, Paul Song, after which Kendall and I joined to help build the IT consulting company into an international player.

Looking back, we were so young and so naive. Success visited the three of us early in life, but life had a lot of lessons yet to teach us. I guess I’m still learning.

In terms of IQ, Paul and Kendall were phenomial. We lacked experience, however, and were too arrogant to bring on experienced outside executives. Investment bankers, industry analysts, partners, friends all told us we were “awesome” — and we believed the hype. It was an easy seduction.

We overcame a lot of obstacles with sheer perseverance and hard work. In the process, we learned a lot about building a company, managing layers of people and running a public company. Much of that experience was humbling. We made our share of mistakes. I guess our saving grace was our ability to learn quickly and continuously — and to rely on each other. We gained a lot of experience.

Eventually, the economic downturn of the dot bomb hurt ARIS as well. The company was later sold to Ciber in September, 2001. 

My memories of the ARIS days are some of the best in my lifetime. Kendall and others from ARIS remain as dear life-long friends. When I sit down with Kendall and reminisce about those days, time just flies by. It’s a blink of two hours, just like that! We finish each other’s stories. 

Since ARIS, we’ve both had additional successes and failures as entrepreneurs. The blood still boils hot for us “old guys”. You’ll continue to see us around the Seattle technology community, sometimes dishing out advice from our experience from the ARIS days.

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Life is but Series of Experiences

Posted in business, Entrepreneurs, People, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 3, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Guest Post by Paul Song

When John asked me to share one of my business experiences as a guest contributor to his blog a few months ago, I started to think which one would be the most interesting and relevant. Should I talk about starting an IT services company in my 20’s and what it was like to learn everything “on the job”? Or maybe the experience of taking a company public and playing with the “big boys” on Wall Street? Or maybe the humbling experience having our stock plummet by over 80% with the bursting of the dot-com bubble? Or starting a new company with millions in VC money?    I decided I want to talk about my little start up in Vietnam. It is not a big company nor even a successful one (yet). But it is has been a very rewarding experience in unexpected ways.  

My son Aaron, graduated from Pepperdine University in summer of 2006. During his college years, he had started an Internet company servicing the secondary ticketing market (ticket brokers and resellers also known as “scalpers”). By the time he received his diploma, Aaron was running a number of popular and very profitable web sites. When he asked my advice on what to do next, I encouraged him to explore living abroad to get a more “global” experience. As Thomas Friedman put it, the world is flat. We cannot ignore the growing interdependence of our global economy. Just look at how the US mortgage mess is affecting the credit (and now equity) markets worldwide! The next generation of business leaders must have a global perspective.

Having taken a more flexible role as Chairman of Noetix, I was not involved in day to day operations. So when Aaron suggested that I go with him to Asia and help him better explore business opportunities, I felt this was a unique opportunity for me to do something new and interesting with my son. We initially moved to Shanghai, China where we lived for about 5 months. But after a trip to Vietnam, we decided that we could best find opportunities to build a company together there.

So in April 2007, we moved to Ho Chi Minh City and started an Internet listing service for real estate in Vietnam. We’ve also launched a real estate magazine to compliment our web site (www.metvuong.com). When we started our venture, the real estate market was red hot, with prices nearly doubling from June 2007 to December of 2007. However with inflation and tightening credit world-wide, the market came to a screeching halt in March 2008 with prices declining as much as 40% in many markets (not too dissimilar to what is going on in the US). 

This has created some challenges for our business but it also is providing a great learning opportunity. It doesn’t take great management to grow a business when everything is booming (remember the dot-com bubble?). But when things are challenging, when strategy and execution become a necessity, when resources and money is limited and tough choices have to be made, that’s when management counts.    So even though metvuong is not a public company nor a company with millions in revenue, it has given me one of the most rewarding experiences of my career so far. It has given me the opportunity to start a business with my son. Though I was initially going abroad to help Aaron, actually, I may have gained more than he has from the experience. I’ve had the chance to live in a different country and to broaden my personal experiences. I’ve gained a much greater appreciation for developing countries and their challenges. I’ve come to understand first-hand what outsourcing means to companies both in the US and in the country. I’ve made many new friends including business leaders in other countries. And of course, I’ve had a chance to build some great memories and experiences with my son.  

Life is but a series of experiences. These experiences become our memories, prejudices and perspectives. Those become the basis upon which we make judgments and decisions. This is why we value people with experience. And for me, this has been one of my best experiences.  

_______________________________
Paul Song is my  brother.  He is currently the CEO of Metvuong and Chairman of Noetix.  He is also the former Founder and CEO of ARIS Corporation.  He is a former US representative for ABAC and is a member of YPO – Seattle Chapter.   

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Father, Son Venture into Vietnam

Posted in business, entrepreneur, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2008 | 4 Comments »


MEET Paul Song, a father, a world traveler and a visionary entrepreneur. Oh yeah, he’s also my brother. Paul’s been part of the Seattle business community since 1990 when he started ARIS, an IT consulting firm that listed on NASDAQ in 1997. He was 34 years-old then.

Today, he’s more fashionable, still in good shape, more outgoing, and some say he hasn’t aged a bit (maybe the reverse). What’s his secret fountain of youth? Maybe it’s hanging out with his 23-year-old son, Aaron. In fact, they started a business together in Vietnam called Met Vuong (means square meter), a real estate information company based in Ho Chi Minh City.

After graduating from Pepperdine University, Aaron asked his father to go to Asia with him to look for business opportunities. He knew that no one would otherwise take a 22-year-old seriously in that part of the world. Aaron had run a very successful internet company, PresalePassword.net, while studying at Pepperdine and knew he could continue that and peripheral ventures from anywhere in world.

Paul, at the time, was retired, and jumped at the chance of working with his son. First, they went to Shanghai in 2006. They soon discovered that Shanghai already was well on its way in economic development. “There’s enough money and people there that things were already being tried and funded,” Paul says.

As a former member of Asia-Pacific Business Advisory Council (a business advisory group for the governments of APEC), he visited Vietnam in November, 2006, and was coaxed by local business leaders to relocate there. They moved in mid-April, 2007 and had a difficult time finding appropriate housing: No central database of real estate listings; no internet listings. A-ha!

Paul knew that it would be critical to solicit influential real estate companies as partners. He not only signed up partners but allowed some of them to invest in Met Vuong, further solidifying the relationships. The coding on the site started in June with Aaron in charge of the website and its developers, while Paul worked his relationships and managed the business plan.

 

In September, the website launched with content from such partners as CB Richard Ellis and Savills, as well as a host of Vietnamese real estate companies. Next month, Met Vuong will launch its first magazine publication. Paul and Aaron believe this will be a vital component in becoming the de facto real estate information company in Vietnam. The business plan calls for both online and offline reach in the developing country.

 

So, what’s it like working with your 23-year-old son after having run a public company? Overall, it’s been great, says Paul, but “we’ve had to work out some issues.” Aaron had never worked in a corporate environment, but had become a successful entrepreneur at a very young age. So, he would challenge some business protocols, which weren’t necessarily bad, but time consuming to work out.

“Overall though, it’s been a great experience for both of us,” Paul emphasizes. For others contemplating doing the same thing, Paul advises to make sure NOT to lose perspective that family relationships are more important than the business itself. It’s easy to get too wrapped up on the business, but Paul’s main reason for moving to Vietnam was to have this experience with his son Aaron.

 

 

So Paul, ethnically Korean who grew up in the US, lives in Ho Chi Minh City with his son. They are very similar in many ways. They both have steely laser focus, extreme ambition, and a propensity for technology.

 

They also are very different. Paul’s more apt to be found at a night club in Ho Chi Minh City, while Aaron is more likely to be at home spending alone time with his finance, Aileen. Paul enjoys fine wine and designer jeans, while Aaron doesn’t drink and would rather be in shorts. Nonetheless, together this father-and-son team is making their mark – in Vietnam of all places.

Oh, so is it more difficult working with your brother or working with your son? “The son,” Paul says, “We’re way too much alike.” Right answer.

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