Mind The Gap

4You Have to Be There: Build Trust and Knowledge on the Ground

We’ve gotten used to doing almost everything remotely, whether it’s meeting with team members or earning an MBA. Launching a business in a new country should not be on the list. On-the-ground presence before launch is essential for two reasons: to build the trust and relationships your company will need and to gain the knowledge needed for structuring the expansion properly.

We have experienced the rewards of “being there” more than once. For openers, consider a pair of parallel cases from the growth of Vinnie’s venture capital firm, Golden Gate Ventures (GGV).

Based in Singapore since its founding in 2011, the VC firm had flourished by tapping into the rich networks of Singapore’s highly open, international-oriented business climate. By the early 2020s, GGV had a portfolio of start-ups in several Southeast Asian countries as well as an Indonesian office in Jakarta. However, it was becoming clear that one country was under-represented in the portfolio: Vietnam. With a rapidly growing tech economy and a well-educated population of more than 100 million, Vietnam showed many signs of being a prime growth market for venture investing. Yet further expansion there had proved challenging. Vietnam was (and still is) an outlier among the region’s emerging nations in several respects.

It’s one of the few countries in the world that combines a communist government with a market economy. The ethos and spirit of Vietnam reflect ...