Early October 2009
Now that we had decided on the business it was time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. We embarked on this venture pumped up with an enthusiasm that comes only from working for oneself, with ones own skin in the game and for a cause that we were passionate about. Easily we slid into the roles that we had carefully honed over years of work experience.
My husband, Sandilya Vadapalli laid out the vision and roadmap and was not going to be involved in day to day activity going forward; Uyen Dinh Thi To who brought an indepth understanding of the Vietnamese market drew up the business plan and I, Aarti Ashok took responsibility for all operational aspects. Our trump card was Uyen’s husband, Nghia, who is one of the earliest internet entrepreneurs of Vietnam. He would help grow analyzeVietnam and realize its potential.
The initial days comprised endless checklists, white boards and post-its. There were so many decisions to make – “What will be the content of our website? Who will buy it? Where should we outsource the software development? From where and how do we source our data?”... And then there were even more basic ones - “How do we structure the business? What is our budget and timeline? Given our various commitments and constraints how do we work together?”
As you can imagine business was thriving in the coffee shop. Finally most of our answers were either plastered on the wall of our meeting room or were bulleted out on the white board.
We would build the prototype in Vietnam but would outsource the actual software development to India. We had the names and contacts of the various sources for the data and maps. We worked through long afternoons and late nights on templates and frameworks.
And so.. analyzeVietnam was officially kicked off and we drank one more cup of “cà phê” to that.
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